Albert Smith in Scunthorpe at 22:50:37 Thursday March 27 97
Hi Uncle Cliff,
Can you tell me which Amstrad machines have bioses that work
with the year 2000 and which will count up to 31st Dec 1999
then switch to 1st Jan 1980. Or aren't you affected by those
types of problem.
Albert.
Amstrad answers: I think this probably works easier if you
tell me which machine you've got and then I'll go an use DATE and TIME
to set one here to 23:59 on 31/12/1999 (an experiment you can perform
yourself) and then I'll tell you what happens. Of course it's not just
the BIOS that has to get this right, the operating system has to cope
properly as well. I say this because I just tried the experiment on my
9486i that I have here and the following happened. At the stroke of
midnight 1999, Windows 95 popped up and said "I've just adjusted your
computer automatically for daylight saving time" and set the machine
back to 23:00 on 31/12/1999. I had visions of it being stuck in this
"Groundhog Day" kind of a loop and wondered if it would repeatedly set
the time back to 23:00 each time I reached 23:59..00:00, so I used TIME
to wind it on to 23:59 again and waited. Only this time it wound on
correctly to 00:01 1/1/2000. I'm not sure if this perculiar (but one
off) adjustment for daylight saving is as a result of a bug in the BIOS
or a bug in Windows 95 (the latter I think!). Before anyone else
mentions it, this had nothing to do with the real daylight adjustment
that took place last Sunday. My machine had already done that one for
me this morning anyway.
Cliff,
Thanks for the answer.
I have a certain loyalty to Amstrad and have the
following machines. CPC 464, CPC 6128, PC 1512,
PC 1640, PC 2386.
Thanks for highlighting the "groundhog" bug in
Wonders 95. I guess we should all use OS/2.
Amstrad answers: Personally, I'm not sure I'd want a life of
purgatory just to avoid setting the date on my PC on the morning of
1/1/00