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The Live RTC rollover

Live RTC Rollover (Direct I/O)

This is the test which most commercial testers carry out. It is the one most likely to fail on most machines. It tests whether the RTC century byte 'rolls over' from 19 to 20 in the transition from 1999 to 2000. In most cases it does not. This can be very misleading to users, especially if when re-booting the PC the date is shown as 2000. In this case, it is usually due to "inference" by the BIOS.

It is true that most applications get their dates in the following ways.

1. From the Operating System.
2. From the RTC via the BIOS.

Most PC's are now declared to be compliant because they have a BIOS that infers the correct century if the RTC reports the wrong one. Thus if the RTC says that it is 1900, the BIOS infers that it means 2000, and reports accordingly. If all of the applications get their date by interrogating the BIOS (which is the way it is usually done) then all applications will always get the correct date, because the BIOS will always be correct (infer) everything the RTC reports.

However if an application gets the date directly from the RTC, then there is the opportunity for an incorrect date to be obtained. Unfortunately, nobody knows how many applications exist which obtain the date in this direct way.

The BSI (British Standards Institute) document BSI PD 2000-1 allows for this inference. It is public document, not a standard. It could be argues that since that document allows for inference, therefore any PC which has a BIOS fix which includes the inference therefore complies with the outline in that BSI document.

The Millennium Bug 2000 Fix has obtained 100% in independent reviews for the thoroughness of tests carried out. If a PC fails the RTC rollover (Direct I/O) test it may never present a problem to the user. But we have to alert the user to the problems described above. It is then up to the user whether they implement our TSR fix. We beleive that it is useful to install the fix as a "better safe than sorry" approach. It will certainly help if there are ever any applications on the computer or later put on the computer that directly interrogate the RTC.

Our TSRFIX.EXE program can easily fix PC's that fail this test.

Live RTC rollover (Via BIOS)

This is another test that most commercial testers carry out. It tests the date reported to the O/S by the BIOS. There are arguments that this is sufficient test, in view of the fact most programs obtain the date via the BIOS, and not by directly interrogating the RTC. We tend to rise above the debate by insisting on completeness of testing for all situations, thus creating higher standards of compliance.

Our TSRFIX.EXE program can easily fic PC's that fail this test.

�1999 Horizons. All rights reserved.