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. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
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