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Date:      Fri, 19 Jun 1998 13:46:39 +0100
From:      Andrew Aitchison <andy@tridentgroup.co.uk>
To:        "'questions@freebsd.org'" <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        "'freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Millennium compliance
Message-ID:  <41AF9163AA46D0118D7F004095245CC707DE4F@NTSERVER2>

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Hi

I have a couple of questions regarding Millennium compliance:

Firstly, does FreeBSD interrogate the RTC chip directly for the
time/date information or the system BIOS instead? This is important
because virtually all machines currently shipped, even those with
Millennium compliance statements or stickers still fail one important
aspect of the date change. This aspect is the live rollover. 

I have tested many systems, including virtually every large
manufacturer's PC and they all fail to change the century byte on the
RTC chip until the machine is power cycled. In most cases the BIOS
infers 00 as 2000 and so reports correct rollover, however the century
byte still does not get updated until a power cycle has happened. 

Some manufacturers get over this by supplying a TSR fix that intercepts
RTC calls and supplies the correct date however these fixes will not
work with operating systems such as FreeBSD, Windows NT and so on, they
only work with Windows 95, 98, 3.11 and DOS.

Although we are not related to Computer Experts, their site
www.computerexperts.co.uk has the tester freely downloadable and this
will demonstrate the problem even with so called millennium compliant
computers.

The second question I have is what will happen to FreeBSD if the
computer BIOS is not millennium compliant when the century changes? 

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope you can help. I have
spent quite some time trying to understand the whole millennium
compliance issue and as we run a non-stop Internet service it is of
quite some concern to me.

Andy Aitchison.

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