1 Jan
2021
1 Jan
'21
7:40 p.m.
On 2021-01-01 19:08, Paul Koning wrote:
Hmm. 10.1A, which was done by Mentec somewhere close to the end of the
90s should probably have some fixes/improvements. Unfortunately, I do
not have the sources, and I cannot even find any release notes for it...
On Dec 30, 2020, at 5:11 PM, Johnny Billquist
<bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
Well, for another year from now, this isn't even being tested. Only on Nov 9, 2021
will the value exceed 32767, at which point things could potentially become funny.
VMS apparently seems to just truncate at 15 bits, so it reports dates back in 1977 again
after that time. But we don't know if that truncation happens at sender or
receiver...
RSX should continue to show correct dates on events up until 2065, treating the value as
an unsigned 16 bit value.
Since any kind of fixing will require changes in the code anyway, I do think the least
intrusive change is to just adopt what RSX did, and use all 16 bits as an unsigned value,
which means nothing really changes beyond that we continue as things are.
If I got things right, VMS might show and/or report dates back in 1977 again. Annoying,
but nothing worse than that.
Tops-10 seems to currently do a BUGHLT, so that really needs fixing.
TOPS-20 is a bit unknown, but it might just report wrong dates.
RSTS/E? Paul, could you check? I would hope that maybe the last release/patches would
make RSTS/E do the same thing as RSX.
As shipped by DEC, it wasn't even Y2K compliant. At least not the version for which
I have sources; perhaps it was fixed in a patch I have not seen. Recently I repaired the event logging code to fix
this, and since I knew of the Nov '21 problem I changed it to use unsigned 16 bit
values. So it should be like RSX, good until 2065. You can find the fixed version in
https://github.com/pkoning2/decstuff in the "decnete" subdirecty.
Excellent!
And we really should try and put a comprehensive page together with
RSTS/E patches and fixes...
(And I really should do that for RSX as well...)
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol