Sam Izzo wrote to All on 01-26-98:           
 SI> noticed it said that the year
 SI> in the CMOS is stored as a BCD ranging from 00 to 99.  Has this been
 SI> fixed in more recent CMOSs, or are they all like this?  I figured they
 SI> would all have to
 SI> be like that, because otherwise Ralf would've had it in his list.
You've probably already had a few replies on this, but the problem's not
with the 'year' byte - it's with the 'century' byte (offset 32H - also
in BCD - see CMOS.LST). A lot of older ATs do not increment the century
byte with the passing of midnight, Jan. 31 1999 (mine included). The fix
is easy (for most 80XXXers) - just increment it manually. From what I've
read, the big problem is with some BIOSes in the late 486/early Pentium
era - these require a replacement BIOS to function correctly. AFAIK,
most (if not all) of the newer generation BIOSes have had this problem
fixed. IMHO, the even _bigger_ Y2K problem is is not a firmware one, but
a software one. A lot of the programs in use today don't even bother with
checking the century, and this is going to lead to a _lot_ of problems
come New Year's Day, 2000. Couple this with the fact that, according to a
recent survey, only about 20% of Amercan businesses contacted had
started to seriously work on the problem, and you can see that we're in
for some "fun times" ahead!
                                                  Ken
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