Exploration
Technique : PC MusicianMartin Walker considers the possible impact of the Millennium bug on PC musicians.
The most imminent, and most hyped, potential problem for every PC is the Millennium bug -- and the December '99 issue seems a good place to explore its ramifications for the PC musician. Scaremongering over the Y2K bug has left many PC users rather confused over whether or not it will crash their machine, scramble their existing data, or turn their beloved computer into a smouldering heap of charred remains.
A Tale Of Two Bugs
There are two possible sources of Year 2000-related problems with PCs. One arises from the actual hardware used to provide a PC's clock information, while the other stems from the way some software packages store and manipulate date information. To begin with, let's consider the hardware issues.
Before we get into details, it's fair to say as a general point that on the hardware side most PCs will either carry on working normally, or require a small one-off adjustment (either made manually or using a cheap 'fix' utility program). The source of the hardware problem is the real-time clock (RTC) inside nearly all PCs. This, in conjunction with a tiny amount of CMOS memory and a small battery, keeps track of elapsed time. When your PC is first set up, this needs to be set to the current time and date (this will normally be done by your PC supplier, but can be easily set from the Control Panel, using the DOS date and time commands, or inside the BIOS). Once set, it works exactly like a digital watch, remembering the correct time and date until the battery runs out (this often lasts far beyond the useful life of the PC,
- Y2K Compliant Music Software
For most musicians, the most important application is a sequencer, and thankfully most have already been certified Y2K-compliant. All current versions of Emagic software and hardware, Steinberg software, and Cakewalk software have been declared compliant by the developers or UK distributors. Other music software such as audio editors, software synths, plug-in effects, and soundcard utilities are even more unlikely to have problems, but no doubt some musicians will find a few more elderly utilities that perform in unexpected ways from 2000 onwards. Let me know if you find any, and I'll publicise them in SOS via PC Notes.
and therefore rarely needs changing). PCs with very early processors may or may not have an RTC, but you are not likely to be using one of these for music purposes!
The problem is that while all RTC chips were designed to update the time, day, month, and year, very few can update through centuries as well. This means that when 31st December 1999 becomes 1st January 2000, the RTC isn't aware of the new century, and updates to 1st January 1900. Suddenly, applications that rely on date information might assume that every existing file on your hard drive has been written up to 100 years in the future and throw a wobbly, or simply crash because they were not written to cope with year values outside the 20th century. However, although many RTC chips have this deficiency, it needn't cause a problem, since there is provision for the century value in the CMOS memory, and this can normally be entered by hand (once every 100 years as required!).
In fact, very few programs read the time and date directly from the RTC memory; nearly all rely on the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) chip to read the current time and date from the RTC during bootup, whenever you switch on your PC at the beginning of the working day. Various checks are made and the
Norton 2000
One software package that may help if you are concerned about Y2K software compliance is Norton 2000 (for Windows 95, 98, and NT), which tests for problems in three main areas. The System Date Test checks system rollover and leap year compliance, and also checks that you are using a four-digit year format for the Short Date, of the form dd/mm/yyyy (you can change this from Regional Settings in Control Panel). The Application Scan then compares the contents of your hard drives against a database of known compliant software. This database is regularly updated, and a Live Update facility lets you download the latest version before you use the software for the first time.
The Applications are then sorted into three categories: those with known year 2000 problems, those which claim compatibility, and unknowns (see screenshot on page 192). Potential problems are divided into five degrees of severity, ranging from 'unknown date issues' to 'critical date issues' where an application has a major function that will not operate correctly after 1999. All compatible software has direct links to the appropriate developer's Y2K information, and all others are directed to Vendor 2000 (see the lower screenshot on page 192). Although most of my music applications appeared in the 'unknown' category, this didn't worry me unduly, as there were only a few to check manually by visiting the developer's web site.
The third pass performs a Data File Scan, which searches through database and spreadsheet files for user-entered date information, reporting on any issues it finds. Norton 2000 scans a wide range of common file formats for date-related data (including Excel, Access, Lotus 1-2-3, Quattro Pro, dBase III, dBase IV, Paradox, and ZIP files). For the common Microsoft Excel spreadsheet format, Norton 2000 also supplies a Fix Assistant utility that can change problem data automatically in various ways. At under £40 (or under £50 bundled with Norton AntiVirus 2000) this looks like a fairly cheap way to check your PC for software problems, especially if you use common database or spreadsheet applications.
time/date result is stored. After the BIOS has finished initialising your hardware, it passes control to the Operating System (DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000, BeOS...). This takes the time/date value supplied to it by the BIOS, and from then on updates this initial value by itself. Applications that require the time or date nearly always obtain it directly from the OS, although a few applications may get the time directly from the BIOS value, and even more rarely by directly interrogating the RTC chip.
There are three possible scenarios when your PC enters the new Millennium. The most basic is that you may need to manually enter the new date. As long as your PC retains this date after being powered down and then rebooted, you can normally continue to use the PC with no problems. If not then you are one of the (hopefully) very few people who will need your PC repairing or updating.
However, you may not need to make a manual date change, as most BIOS chips can cope with the changeover, even though the RTC chip can't. You may well find that your PC BIOS 'rolls over' automatically, and when you switch it on on the 1st January 2000 the correct date will already be shown.
The third and more critical area is where PC systems are being used continuously, 24 hours a day, since in this case it is important that the date is correctly updated during the transition from midnight on the 31st December 1999 to the starting minute of the year 2000. Here you may need a small utility program to carry out any change needed, to ensure that software is always supplied the correct date. By the way, Apple computers and MacOS don't suffer from these hardware problems at all.
Y2K Hardware Testing
It's perfectly possible to test your PC by hand before the Millennium arrives, by manually changing the RTC clock to the last few seconds before the next century starts, and then seeing if the correct date appears after the rollover. It's important to do this from DOS, since so many processes are loaded automatically by Windows, and these may not take kindly to being subsequently operated with an incorrect date. However, there's little point in doing things by hand if you have a modem, since there are various test programs available free on the Internet that not only test whether the date can be changed properly, but also whether or not your PC will cope if it is switched on during the rollover, and whether it works correctly during subsequent leap and non-leap years.
I downloaded such a utility from Year 2000 Consultants, which you can find at www.y2000fix.com/download/pc2000.zip. This file contains both DOS and Windows versions of the utility. During the process your PC will be rebooted several times before the final results are shown. These are then saved in the root directory of your hard drive as a tiny text file named Y2000.LOG. An extensive but fairly easy-to-read manual is also available for download from the www.y2000fix.com web site, and explains how to interpret the different tests.
You can see the results for my Pentium II 300MHz PC in the screenshot above, which shows that despite the fairly common problem of the RTC not being correctly updated during rollover when the PC is switched on, the changeover will be dealt with automatically by the BIOS, and will not need changing by hand. My older Pentium 166MHz MMX machine failed both RTC and BIOS tests during rollover when switched on, but Windows 95 still passed and changed the 01/01/1900 date reported by the BIOS to 01/01/2000 (more on this in a moment). However, all other tests were passed, so the first time I switch this PC on in the year 2000 the BIOS date will be correctly updated as well.
For those of you whose BIOS does not update automatically, or who need to leave their machines running during the rollover, a number of software developers offer utility programs for sale or download. These range from the simple detection of the wrong date after rollover and a request to enter the correct date manually (really only a bit of hand-holding, but useful for the more nervous) to those that will not only update the change automatically the first time you boot your PC in the new Millennium, but also do the same automatically at midnight on December 31st 1999 if your PC is still switched on. Businesses and studios may prefer this approach to avoid mistakes. Norton have a free BIOS test utility available at ftp://ftp.symantec.com/misc/americas/sabu/n2k/nbfixall.exe: although at 1.25Mb it does take far longer to download than the 92kB of the pc2000.zip file, it also includes a BIOS fix utility if you find that yours is not Y2K compliant and needs auto-updating.
However, even if your BIOS has a rollover problem, the operating system may take care of the update anyway. Windows 95, 98 and NT 4 all increase the century if a date of 1900 is found. In fact, most PCs with a BIOS created from the middle of 1995 onwards should be Y2K-compliant, so anyone with a more recent machine (for instance featuring any Pentium-based processor) should have no hardware problems at all. You can normally see the date of your BIOS on screen briefly during the bootup procedure.
Owners of PCs with an Award BIOS dated between April 26th 1994 and May 31st 1995 will find that the century digits are forced to 19 whenever you reboot. However, even if you have this BIOS problem, Windows will still update correctly in most cases. The only remaining problem will be with the rare software that reads the time and date directly from either the BIOS or (very rarely) the RTC chip rather than from Windows. In this case those with 'non-compliant' hardware may still have problems even though Windows shows the 'correct' time and date.
Software Compatibility
By now you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. Well, the hardware aspect is only half of the problem -- as I've already mentioned, software can also suffer from the Millennium bug, and the implications here can sometimes be rather more serious. Any software that relies on dates (such as spreadsheets, databases, financial programs, and email programs) has until now only needed to use two digits to save the year, so that 1989 is saved as 89, 1995 as 95, and so on. Once software written in this fashion stores any date in the year 2000 onwards, it will increment from 00 again.
So, a date of 15/08/05 in a financial program could be interpreted either as 1905 or 2005 -- and it may not be obvious which is correct. The result is that any calculations or sorting carried out with this data may (or may not) cause problems: it is this uncertainty that needs to be thoroughly tested, so that PC systems can carry on smoothly during the changeover. This is where the Y2K commercial solutions go beyond most cheap BIOS tests, by also testing a wide range of software for Y2K compatibility. McAfee market the Y2K Survival Kit (around £25 from most PC software suppliers) and Symantec have Norton 2000 at around £40 (but which is currently being sold as a better value bundle with Norton AntiVirus for £48 -- see the box on page 190).
This is where the Mac (and other computers) re-enter the picture, since although Mac hardware is
"Scaremongering over the Y2K bug has left many PC users rather confused over whether or not it will crash their machine, scramble their existing data, or turn their beloved computer into a smouldering heap of charred remains."
already Y2K compliant, some of its software applications may not be written to take account of century rollover, and so can still malfunction. Even if the software itself is compliant, users of programs like spreadsheets that may rely on user-defined calculations could also have problems with their own data being misinterpreted. The problem for the PC musician is that it can be difficult to determine whether music applications rely on such things. Even though there may be no obvious uses for date-stamping, the date might be used as part of associated routines such as the timing of automatic backups, installation routines, and authorisation; it is just possible that a rogue application might refuse to run at all.
The easiest procedure is to make sure that each piece of software you use has been declared Y2K-compliant. Some music software developers provide details of Y2K compliance on their web sites, although sadly not all (see the Y2K box ). Those of you who run spreadsheet programs for your accounts, or customer databases, should check compliance as a matter of urgency. However small your operation, paying bills and sending
Windows Y2K Compliance
The only known problems found on my PC by Norton 2000 were Microsoft ones: none were found in my main Windows 98SE installation, but on my Windows 95B installation, Internet Explorer 4, File Manager, and the DOS command.com file and Date needed an upgrade. These were easily addressed using the free w95y2k.exe update file that I downloaded from www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/. This is a 2Mb download, but if your installation of Windows 95 doesn't feature Internet Explorer with a version number of at least 4.01 you may be in for another hefty download (Microsoft estimate about two hours!). This can be handled automatically during the w95y2k.exe update procedure. Thankfully, however, many PC magazine cover disks include this IE update.
Y2K fixes for the original release of Windows 98 are minor, and the latest SE version already includes them. You can read details of the issues addressed and download the updates from www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/. The Microsoft product guide also states that Windows 3.1 is Y2K compliant, but there is also an updated version of Winfile.exe available, and several date issues with the underlying MS-DOS. Windows NT updates can be found at www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/.
invoices at the right time for the right amounts is still important. This is where utilities like Norton 2000 can help, since they are aware of most spreadsheet and database packages, and can perform such checks on your own data files as well.
You are still likely to be left with various unknown quantities, and here you may be forced to try some empirical performance testing (otherwise known as 'suck it and see'). The problem with this is that where calculations are concerned, there are no comparisons available: you may have to verify your results manually with a calculator! Some packages may need extensive testing before real data is used, and this is what businesses have been encouraged to do during 1999, before the big event. Notice here that I didn't say 'the big day', since many accounting systems won't be fully operational until a month after the rollover -- the first time a payroll is run in the new Millennium. For this reason, don't assume that your own programs are running normally until you have used them fairly extensively in the year 2000. In truth, the tabloids have had a field day with the Y2K bug, but most home users should have few problems, especially if they spend a little time checking in 1999.
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