(Excerpts from a message dated 12-01-99, George White to Ian Moote)

Hi George--

GW>On 29-Nov-99, Ian Moote wrote to GEORGE WHITE:

 IM>> Is this true of _all_ versions of OS/2, that they all use the RTC
 IM>> for for their TOD clock? (Is the 2079 a C thing?)
 IM> GW>
 GW>> Afaiaa it is true of all versions since OS/2 2.0. The 2079 is an
 GW>> OS/2 thing. Years >= 80 are considered to be 19xx, years < 80 are
 GW>> considered to be 20xx.

 IM> What?! I don't understand this. DOS is good until 2099, being
 IM> limited, really, only by the directory structure, but surely to
 IM> gawd OS/2 is good until at _least_ then! No, this doesn't sound
 IM> right. I've got to check this out. Hold on...

 IM> ...

 IM> Aw man! This really bites! I set my RTC to 2080 and OS/2 thought
 IM> that it was 1980! What an abortion! So what am I supposed to do in
 IM> 2080 -- go back to DOS? Yahoo. Don't throw out those copies of
 IM> Himem.Sys and Mscdex, folks -- what's old will be new again!

    Come 2080, Ian is going to be very surprised when he attempts to set
his DOS system clock to 1-1-2080.  When he reboots, it will tell him
that the date is 1-1-1980!  And it won't give him the nice warning OS/2
does (error 237, invalid date/time) when he tries to set a date after
2079 from the command line.

GW>DOS will only get you 20 more years. It breaks in 2100 :-( Anyway,
  >how many of us are likely to care in 80 years time?

    It will last 20 more years only if he sets his date prior to
1-1-2080 and never shuts down.  The minute he reboots his system, he's
back to the "century window" effect when the system tries to read the
RTC.  Unless there is a completely new DOS on completely new hardware
before then.  If that comes to pass, I wouldn't mind betting that there
also will be a completely new OS/2 :-).  But I'm with you: I don't
expect a completely new OS/2 on completely new hardware in the
foreseeable future.

    Regards,

        --Murray

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 * MR/2 2.25 #120 * Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future

--- Maximus/2 2.02