Bit by Y2K

[George Gilpatrick]

I shouldn't have laughed about Y2K. Does anyone have a fix for Y2K BIOS problem?

[Lance Edmonds]

I'm afraid you'll probably have to contact your BIOS manufacturer. I suppose a replacement motherboard is out of the question? (ie, upgrade?)

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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
( mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A> )

[George Gilpatrick]

I understand about the BIOS itself, but I was led to believe the values were loaded into RAM and it's possible to change them there.

[Gary Stout]

I use a program put out by Parson's called
Year 2000 detect and correct. With 2 older
486 workstations at work and this program
installed, the date roll-over seemed to
be just fine. Not sure how it works exactly
but for $20, it seems to do the job.

Gary Stout

[G Grant]

Depending on how old your motherboard is, you may be able to find a flash
upgrade for your BIOS at:

www.windrivers.com/company.htm

You can find drivers and upgrades for just about anything you can think of
there, assuming the hardware is software upgradable.

[George Gilpatrick]

Alas, its an old 386 and I suspect "flash" cant be used in any context in the same sentence. Its running Point of Sale software from a company that went out of business two years after purchase, in a database that I had never heard of even back then. There is no hope for the POS software short of buying some new system and since the business can't afford that, I was hoping at least fixing this may help something. I keep thinking I read something somewhere before all the hype, but I've waded through all the marketing blurbs in the search results and can't find any information except for all the sales stuff. I hate to give up.

[Mike Luther]

George ..

Send me your email address with a message to me since you did not
want to add it to the infobase. I've got what I think is a PD
utility that I picked up recently that reportedly will fix it
with a low level splice. I didn't have any need of it since
OS/2 had a chunk of that stuff built into it and every box I had
that, in theory, couldn't possibly roll by itself .. did!

Amazing! Thank you again IBM! Even OS/2 version 1.0 in all the
ATM's all over the world .. rolled painlessly!

One of the other systems I was playing with had this snippet installed.
However, converted to OS/2 it 'auto-rolled' as well, thus I have no
system at all to use with which to check it!

I'll email you a copy of it as a MIME attached file and let's see
what it can do? OK?

I really haven't done any research with it and if it is truly PB and can
help folks like you I'll upload it to the tools section here as well.


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Mike Luther
[email protected]

[Mike Luther]

David .. Lance .. others

I just checked the docs on the Y2K tool that I saw that was claimed,
and I've been told by one FidoNet user whom has it working. It
sayeth it is free for non-business use. It is a shim that works
just after boot in a DOS system to 'fix' some boxes which cannot
otherwise handle BIOS dates of Y2K varient.

Accordingly, I've sent a copy of Y2K.ZIP, as it was distributed,
to [email protected] with a note to all. If they see fit to
chuck it up for folks, based on what they read and check.. all
you chickens and ducks can have at it.

I make no claims or guarantees .. even to you too, Bruno the Horse!
But just maybe your old BIOS will be fat enough to straddle the
milleneum fence with this little boneless dainty!



HNY2Kah!


-------------
Mike Luther
[email protected]

[Anton Lasich]

Have you tried using Dr-DOS? It solves most of the problems I have encountered with old
machines like 286's, 386's and 486's - even Pentiums. For example, under
MS-DOS 7 (Win 95) 10 machines failed but when using DR-DOS they passed!

Take a look at
http://kwazulunatal.com/lazcom/infodos.html

Thanks
Anton

[Michael Torrie]

On most systems, even those that are "non-y2k compliant," all you need to do is simply run the DOS date command (or do it in the BIOS) and force the date to 2000. It usally works just fine. Most bioses only have a problem with the rollover itself. So far I've done this to 3 computers, 2 486s and one old Pentium 75. Try that before spending any money.

Michael

[George Bleck]

Not sure if this will help... but we had the same problem with a few 386/486 machines what were still using DOS programs. We just up and copied the files from the old PC to a new one which was Y2K compliant and all was well. Being DOS is normally NOT hardware dependant it should work for you unless the POS software is expecting specialized add-in cards, which should also work when moved to the new machine.

cheers!

--- George

[Jim McClellan]

Originally posted by George Gilpatrick:
I shouldn't have laughed about Y2K. Does anyone have a fix for Y2K BIOS problem?

Well, even this I.T. guy held his breath 12/31/1999, and expected
some problems, but none occurred. Even on the antique '386s at
my job, I just set the BIOS date manually to 2000. The 4 386's
did fail the rollover, but a manual BIOS setting to 2000 solved
the problem. They roll over just fine everyday now. So, get on
the software issue of your Y2K glitch, that seems to be where most of
the problems occured. As for the BIOS date, simply enter BIOS
setup and set the date manually. My Quicken 8/DOS reports:
"You haven't backed up since xx/xx/19100", the ONLY Y2K problem I've
yet to see that can't be fixed!



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[Lance Edmonds]

My Panasonic Fax machine thinks it's 1900... I can manually set the date to 2000, but as soon as it hits midnight, It rolls back 100 years... All my PC's here were fine, bar one 486/25 that rolled to 1980 - a quick Bios date change cured that.

Not too bad after all!

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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>