19991103: OS/2 and Y2K

>From: address@hidden
>Organization: University of Northern Iowa
>Keywords: 199911032030.NAA03549 OS/2 Y2K

Hi Alan-

>       Our department applied for some
>college funding to replace our OS/2 McIDAS 
>boxes with Linux-capable machines, but was
>not successful in obtaining the money.  

That's too bad. With the cost of a McIDAS-X capable machine being less
than $700-800, it's too bad that you can't get $2500 from the college.
you already have the monitors, so that would reduce your costs.

>As Y2K approaches, I'm wondering about the
>functionality of the OS/2 boxes after the 
>clocks turn over Jan. 1.  There are 3 boxes
>that are running version 2.11 of OS/2; they
>work fine and serve their intended purpose
>very well.  I'd rather not have to try and
>make changes to their configuration (at the
>risk of creating problems) unless I know for
>certain that OS/2 2.11 will die at the Y2K
>witching hour.  So my question is this:  do
>we know for certain that 2.11 will die Jan. 1?

I don't think it will die, but you might find some weird things happen.
This version of OS/2 is definitely not Y2K compliant, but what that will
translate into I can't really say.

>If it will, are you aware of any patches?  

No, OS/2 2.11 is not supported by IBM anymore. As far as I know, only
version 3.0 was patched for y2K.

>Also, even if OS/2 doesn't die, will OS/2 McIDAS 7.10 die?

I'm not sure how your machines are set up. Are they reading their data
files from findeisen or is findiesen feeding one of the OS/2 boxes which
is then decoding files locally. If it is the former, I'm surprised that
things work now because the date formats in the MD files changed with
the 7.5 McIdas-X release unless you are still running version 7.4. If
you are running McIDAS-X 7.4 on findiesen, you may run into problems
decoding the AREA files after Jan 1. If you upgrade to McIDAS-X 7.5, you
will need to upgrade your OS/2 systems at the same time. However, the
McIDAS-OS2 7.5 release will not run under OS/2 2.11 - it needs 3.0 or
later because of the way the binaries were created.  You would
need to add a bunch of patches to 3.0 for Y2k compatibility, so you
would be better going to  4.0.  

>Our college computer sys. admin. suggested I turn
>the OS/2 clock ahead and see what happens but I
>wasn't sure if McIDAS would just reset the clock
>to the correct time anyway.  Thanks in advance for
>any suggestions.

This would only test what will happen to OS/2 but is probably a
worthwhile exercise. Until year 2000 dates are in the data files, you
won't really test what will happen to McIDAS.

All in all, your current situation is not looking good for continuing to
run smoothly after Jan 1 in its current configuration. For McIDAS-X to
continue running smoothly, you should really upgrade to version 7.5 or
later. But if you did this, you would need to upgrade your OS/2 systems
to McIDAS-OS/2 7.5, which means you would need to upgrade the Operating
system.   We will not have an OS/2 system around after this month,
so if you run into runtime McIDAS-OS2 problems with 7.5, we will
be limited in how much help we can give you.

If you need more help with this, let us know and we'll do what we can.

Don
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