THE STORY BEHIND SLUG2000 (For changes and updates see SLUG2CHG.TXT) At 09:25 1998-05-19 +0200, Pravesh wrote: >I noticed, in the cinderella method you state that >when testing the BIOS, you should not set the clock >back to 1980. Why... Why? Because that's what causes the damage! That's why we always run Y2k tests from a diskette. So that your main disk system does not see the 1980 date and fiddle with registries and other such sensitive stuff. Why encourage your system to propagate errors? If you write files to disk with an earlier system date, you store the wrong date. I am rather fussy about the integrity of my system, so I safeguard it. But I suppose you are actually looking for a more technical explanation than that. B>) Understand that you can corrupt your system data even with a fully compliant BIOS and RTC (Real TIme Clock). Y2k is only one of many causes for the RTC to be set back to zero. The normal state of an RTC is zero when power is disturbed or a master reset occurs. Because the FAT directory year is a 7bit field, the operating system interprets zero as 1980. You can accidentally reset the RTC when plugging cards into the motherboard. I have personally experienced a reset after a lightning strike. Changing CMOS batteries on a system will result in a reset to zero. A failing power supply can cause CMOS corruption. (Note: To a certain extent machines connected to a Network can automatically recover IF the system has been set up to take the date from the central server). And these events can take place today. Well before 2000. And they will take place after 2000, up until 2099, when all FAT based systems will die. You can buy or download BIOS patches or Fixes. One is called Windows NT 4.0 B>). These check if the RTC is 00 and assume that the year is 2000. Awkward, if you are actually in 2005 or 2010. Some of these solutions stop working after 2000 and some after 2079. Everyone is panicked about Tickover, the once in a hundred years event that takes place at midnight on 1999-12-31. So they put all these Year 2000 specific sniffers in to fix this "problem". They conveniently forget about the rest of the hundred years when their systems will be unprotected from accidental RTC reset. How you protect your RTC from accidental reset is up to you. I use SLUG2000, a simple QBASIC program that sits in the autoexec.bat and calls the DATE command if it detects 1980, whether caused by Y2k or not. My own personal copy tests for any date before 1998, but I try to keep things simple for those who are brain-damaged from surfing the Y2k Web. B>) This is not a new or unique concept. Charles Petzold wrote TEST1980 way back when the 286 came out. Patrick O'Beirne uses a simple BAT file to do the same thing. At 14:08 1998-03-13 +0200, Charmaine Oosthuizen wrote: >I cannot believe that there are professional >institutes at this late stage that still do not know >that one cannot publish a simple "Date change test" >while it can cause problems for the user of that PC. Excellent point. If you used one of the more reputable procedures (such as Cinderella or WG2 ) you would always boot from diskette. Which is of course all very well if you are just testing the BIOS. If you are going to get serious and test your applications with the system booted in 2000, you need to use a dedicated machine. DON'T use a production machine for the test unless you are 100% sure of what you are doing. The entire point of the exercise is to find out if your system does in fact have expiring products, etc. If you only have one machine, back everything up, use DATE to set 2000-01-01. (DO NOT set 1999-12-31 unless you have proved your BIOS is 100% AOK). It is not a bad idea to have a backup of the registry anyhow. Now this leads me to a totally different (but related) thing. Last weekend my machine was struck by lightning and in the course of fiddling and replacing cards my BIOS got set back to 1980 (aha!). It was only a couple of hours later that I discovered the error, and several of my files had wrong dates, which really fouls up my backup procedures. Now if I had been using Win 95 my registry might have been corrupted. It is rare but I have seen it happen. In fact I might not have been able to boot. So we now have another scenario. What happens if we have some event (wobbly battery, lightning) anytime from now until 2099? (I should live so long). Goodbye Registry and Hello Y2k problems. Now even our favourite year2000.com from Tom Becker will not help us here. It will detect 1980, but will set 2000 and switch itself off. This is an old problem, so I went back to my archives to find an old solution. When the Earth was still Young, Charles Petzold, (of "Programming Windows" fame) wrote a little utility that was published by PC magazine. It was called TEST1980, and combined with a goto loop in AUTOEXEC.BAT would detect if the date was 1980 and if so the batch file would branch to a DATE command. To quote the Guru, "This is very useful in detecting dead or dying clock batteries before you accidentally stamp a lot of files with the wrong date". And that is the key word. "Accidentally". Now of course, applied laziness came into play. I really didn't feel like typing all this guff into my AUTOEXEC.BAT. So, I had a little idea. (Those who know me well will realise that I then fell off my chair laughing). The Y2k Cinderella Project is delighted to present you with a freeware program with source, that you can download from Cinderella. SLUG2000 - The "Perpetual BIOS Fixer". This little beauty will check if the date is 1980 and loop until you put in a non-1980 date. (I nagged Tom Becker to do this with year2000.com and Y2kPCPRO, but he ignored me). And it works now, before 2000, and works after 2000, until 2099. It's Perpetual. B>) The full 1.5 version of SLUG2000 ensures that the date cannot be set backwards without user approval. So not only does it fix Y2k but solves all sorts of other little problems. You just unzip it into the root directory, edit AUTOEXEC.BAT, enter SLUG2000 as the first line, and voila. You just leave it there and forget it. If you are using a BIOS patch program then place SLUG2000 after that, as a "Belt and Braces" insurance. Now obviously we have to test the little beast. It might not work in all situations. It will take me a little time to test it on all the Win and OS/2 environments. So take it and test it and let me know what happens. Just don't sell it without my permission. Enjoy. It hangs out at ftp://ftp.cinderella.co.za/pub/slug2000.zip or you can get it from the Cinderella page at http://www.cinderella.co.za/cinder.html. What a service. I'm getting so sharp I'm going to cut myself. At 21:59 1998-03-13 -0600, Don Bayomi wrote: >re: slug software- not the most confidence inspiring name :) >I offer kudos to all those who are coming up with these pc >testers or bios fixers. >However, I must admit that I get somewhat queezy about software which >comes off a website with a cutesy name like "slug" dealing with y2k. Chill Dude. Just rename it to something that fits your eclectic tastes. Win99.exe sounds good to me. Forgive me if my moniker makes you queazy. But I am not going to change it. Many people have discovered that SLUG is their friend and talks good sense about Y2k. >I am beginning to think that the biggest problem that might strike PCs >near 2000 will be from viruses which people will download after assuming >that they are properly functioning PC testers You worry about a lot of things, don't you? Just for you, here is a guaranteed virus free version of the program. You can type it in, compile it, and name it anything you like. I call it TWOLINE.BAS. 10 CLS:YY$=RIGHT$(DATE$,4):IF YY$="1980" THEN SHELL "DATE":GOTO10 20 SYSTEM To ensure virus free operation, get hold of the source of SLUG2000 in text form, compile it yourself and run viral scanners to your hearts content anytime during the process. Just for fun I have bundled TWOLINE into the SLUG2000.ZIP, compiled it and scanned everything using Mcafee and Norton. What a service. I didn't write the compiler so cannot be blamed that the executable ends up quite fat. >So what do you tell the home user about how to test and fix their PC? I tell them to go and read the Cinderella Method (which has specialised in this area for more years than I care to remember). HINT: BIOS tickover is a very minor part of the problem. >Several people convinced me that the only real problem >is the application software...and that most people >should just wait till 2000 and set their date >manually to 2000, and that would hold after rebooting >and be fine for about 30 years. Correct. Actually they will be fine for 99 years, until 2099-12-31 to be precise. But don't forget about your data files. Karl Feilders' "5 Layers" model sums it all up quite nicely. >However, I just received some email from a person who >says that he has had many problems with 486sx >computers and a few 486dxs for which a manual >resetting of dates would not hold. And you also believe that The Tooth Fairy is alive and well and living under your bed, don't you. Don't worry about hypothetical things that people tell you. Test YOUR machine yourself using the procedure below and De-stress. There are some machines which cannot hold a 2000 date, but they are very few and far between, and we will discuss them later. >So I will be reading more here to get the "final word" >on how to test a PC and set it up to work thru 2000 >and later. Don't hold your breath waiting. This was discussed ad nauseam in 1996 and 1997 and most people on this list are sick of the subject. Read the MINIFAQ: http://www.cinderella.co.za/minifaq.txt Read the Test Reports: http://www.cinderella.co.za/cinder.html#testreports >Most people that I know with a 486 bought it from >local assembly PC stores that have now gone >broke.(aren't available to phone and ask if the >computers that they sold would be compliant) So I >can't tell them to contact their store....and I guess >they may be able to find out what motherboard they >have and what bios is inside. Otherwise I will just >say...its probably okay. My own machine is exactly as described above. And it is fine. Do the Cinderella tests and find Freedom. >I went to a Y2K seminar which made me recall how they >used to sell vacuum cleaners....make you see how bad >your existing vacuum was and how only theirs could get >the big mound of dirt that they put on your rug out. >They showed several pcs failing the test with the >viewcmos program and said that even businesses that >bought dozens of pcs from the same store on the same >day could be in trouble...because each pc could have a >different bios date. The message was pretty >well...buy new pcs. They even said that the Pentium >200s that they just purchased in Feb 98 failed the y2k >rollover test. Oh sure they demonstrated the rollover test didn't they. The one little event that happens once in a hundred years, and which is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT. If the machine accepts a 4 digit date in the range 2000-01-01 thru 2099-12-31 and retains it correctly over a Power off and reboot, the machine is fine. If it fails that test, throw it away. Well don't actually really throw it away, it is one of the few instances where replacing or flashing the BIOS or using a BIOS bypass card is truly cost justified. The percentage of machines that have these badly corrupted BIOS chips is so small as to be almost nonexistent. >Few business people want to take any chances....so >they need to be assured >of what the hardware problem >is. Why would I care? What have they done for me? I supply a freebie fix for you and you turn up your nose at it. It is the attitude of the "business people" that is the problem. Y2k is a simple exercise in Business Management. But they want Silver Bullets and someone to hold their hand and carry the can so they don't have to admit how bloody incompetent they are. For a PPT that describes precisely what business people need to do, download my Powerpoint presentation given to the Mercury/Kessel Feinstein Business Buzz Breakfast in Durban on 3 March 1998. It tells you all about setting up Windows for yyyy-MM-dd operation, installing the Microsoft Year 2000 patches, and getting on with fixing your applications. ftp://ftp.cinderella.co.za/pub/cinder.zip Have a nice day. PS Just for fun, read the WG2 test Procedure: Testing your PC BIOS for Compliance http://www.cinderella.co.za/pccomply.txt ----------------------------------------------------------------------