What was the panic of Y2K about..?

Question

I heard something about computers exploding and what not.. >_>
Can anyone explain to me what was "Supposed" to happen in the year of 2000?

Thanks. [;

Answer 1

Here's what an 'OLD TIME' programmer can tell you.

Back when I started programming we used 'punch cards' and mainframe computers that had the most 3 or 4 MEG of memory and hard drives the size of washing machines that held only 300meg of data. Storage and manipulation of data was very tight under the original size constraints. Therefore, programmers had to find every single place to save storage/memory size. Take for example a record in a database that contains 4 dates including years. By shortening the year to two digits (78, 79, ect) you could save 8 characters of data storage over the four digit year (1978, 1979, ect.) Extrapolate this storage savings (8 per record) over a database file 100,000 records and you've saved 800,000 characters (almost a full megabyte). Keep in mind that 100,000 records is actually a pretty small database for large applications.

Now.. that's why the 2 digit year was used. The problem came in when the 'century changed' and you had data math going on in your program. 82 - 79 = 3 years but 01 - 79 = -78 years. Therefore once the 'year changed' the problem became more prevalent. Many operating systems also had issues with the date. For example, a file is stored on December 25, 1999 and it is date stamped with 991225. That file is then edited and saved on January 3, 2000 the date stamp would be 000103 and the system would have trouble determining which file was newer.

What was supposed to happen... well... if the changes were not made in time, systems would start crashing and since our electrical grids are supported by computers as well as water supply systems, air traffic controll system, etc. there was a great concern that all these system would fail causing a catostrophic 'electronic diaster'.

Obviously that didn't happen and most of us who were truly 'in the know' knew is wouldn't. Most of the doomsayers where the people trying to sell something.

Hope this answers the question.

Answer 2

There were two types of problems: hardware and software. I give one example of each.

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Some of the Intel chips (powering PCs, not Macs) manufactured in the late 80's and early 90's, used some memory space in the POST (Power On Self Test) to store the date.
(This was in the days where memory space was rare and expensive).
They stored the year as two digits. When you turned on the machine, POST would run a diagnostic and, if it found anything strange, it would store a two digit code (00, 01, 02... depending on the error) in a specific memory space. Then, the operating system would look at the content of this register to determine if it should continue to turn on the machine. If the digit corresponded to an error code (small number) it would go into repair mode (or simply, not turn on at all); otherwise, it would simply continue.

It is this memory space that was used to store the two-digit date: as long as the date was a large number (e.g., 93), no problem.

Before a certain date (1986?), the register was simply not used for the date, therefore no problem. After a certain date (1995?), they stopped using the register for the date, as memory space had become cheaper. No problem.

(To confirm what Paul S is implying: this is how far back 'they' knew about the Y2k problem. However, they felt that people would all change their PCs before the five year period was over)

This was easy to test: set the clock to Dec. 31, 1999 at 11:59 pm. Let the machine run past midnight. Turn it off. Wait. Turn it back on. POST will do its thing and you could see what happened.

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Some applications (like accounts) kept information on various things in data banks. Because memory space was rare, all info was kept in as little space as possible. So databanks would contain only the last two digits of the year.

Let's say you want to compare the year of birth of a driver (say 52) with the current year (say 07) to determine if the person can legally have a driver's licence.

Age = Today - Birth.
If Age < 18 then no.
Else yes.

Age = 07 - 52 = -45 which is less than 18 (it's a minus number!)
Therefore driver's licence was issued in error (claims the program). Issue warrant!

This was the problem that really scared the people.

However, it was a problem that would NOT be solved by going to a 'better' computer (the problem was the program, not the computer). Still, lots of people were scared into changing their computers to solve the second problem...

Answer 3

Y2K was where computers to save space where programed to recognize the last 2 digits of the year and not the full year, in fact alot of new software is developed to only recognize the last 2 digits but for 2000 not 1900 like it was before. (which means we will have a Y2.1K scare lol) the scare came from uncertainty, no one really knew what would happen to programs that did accounting and finance, or controlled other date important information, meaning if you had $100 in the bank and it calculated interest monthly, now set the clock back 100 years what would happen? you would owe the bank alot of many, the sad part is the government made it worse by making it a big deal and people like they all ways do over reacted because to most people computers where still scary to them (we have come along way since 1999 hu?) and most people didn't know how they worked on an elementary level. which is why it when from a easy fix to a congressional matter, the sad part is most of the important people knew of this "bug" 3 years in advance and had most of the important businesses and such fixed before America made it into a end all life as we know it panic.

Answer 4

Because about 30% of the computers in critical industries (Banks knew about this back in the 80's, but never said anything about it) had chip-sets that only allowed the computer to calculate date based on the two digit (being the decade and year) ideal, when the year 2000 rolled around, they were worried that critical programs would suddenly stop running properly (crash), or come up with some "interesting" calculations, since the computers would suddenly think they are in 1900, not 2000. There was also a concern that if the computers crashed, they would not re-boot.

The entire Y2K scam was about 99% hype and 1% substance.

The chucklesome part was that in 1999, about 1% of the computers in critical industries were still "vulnerable," and they estimated that they would finish tracing and replacing "vulnerable" systems about March 2000...
Then there was the fact that ANY system running Windows 98 (or the then Mac OS) were already protected.

Like I said 99% hype. :D

Answer 5

The Y2K problem was real, and many programmers worked very hard in the years leading up to 2000 to ensure that computer systems that had stored data in the antiquated 2-digit manner would still work properly.

On the other hand, there was also a lot of hype blown out of proportion, such as predictions that nobody's car would start!

At my own place of employment, we had a Y2K bonus! Our license to use a certain kind of software installed on our mainframe computer expired in the late 90's. But in the year 2000, we were able to use it again because the software thought the year was 1900!

Answer 6

Many of the computers before 2000 were programmed such that years were stored as two numbers (for example, 1999 would be 99 and 1985 would be 85).

People were afraid that when the year 2000 began that all of the data would become corrupted because the year numbers would start all over again. (...98-99-00-01...) Mainly people were worried about losing their money in banks because most of the banks had started to rely on computers to track funds.

In the end it was much ado about nothing. Software programming practices have changed however to include the entire 4-digit year number.

Hope that makes it clear!

The attached link goes into much more detail about it all.

Answer 7

A lot of computers couldn't deal with the millennium change for a couple of reasons. 1. They only used two digit dates so "00" was either 1900 or 2000. 2. Most PCs couldn't handle the changeover and reverted to Jan 1st 1980. If either of these scenarios (there were others) had been allowed to happen then billing information and goodness knows what else would have gone bananas. As it was, because of the actions taken to anticipate these problems the only documented casualty was a Japanese Railway ticketing system.

Answer 8

In our arrogance we assumed that the world revolved around the 12 month calender - other countries are not all on our time frame. When computer were evolving we programed them to accept dates in our format - mm/dd/yy - assuming that all things had taken place in the 20th century (1900 -1999). So a person born in 1916 would be in the year "16" - for social security purposes he would cease to exist once the year "00" (2000 or Y2K) arrived. The assumption was that all computer systems would overload and shut down - and since we depend heavily on computers the problem was grossly exaggerated.

Answer 9

In the 80s, some computer makers only put two digits in their date; 1980 would be 80, 1981 would be 81, etc.

Consequently, 2000 would be read as 1900, causing all sorts of scheduling issues.

In practice, it was a damp squib.

(edit: there is a joke about it, runs something along the lines of 'In preparation for Y2K, KY Jelly have released a line called 'K2Y', enabling users to get four digits into their date)

Answer 10

Dad's found yer scooter and wrkey have correct answers. The problem was spotted as early as the 1970s but of course much of commerce and industry ignored it for as long as possible and then it was panic stations.

The problem was real enough by the way, it was just that the media overstated it. As "Dad" said, one railway ticket machine went spla, there were two or three other fairly minor problems around the world as reported in January 2000.

This was not a damp squib, the problems were avoided because of a lot of work by a lot of people round the world.