I have only limited knowledge of this, but I think this was the most common
Y2K problem around these parts.  It is a BIOS limitation, so the PC will
need an BIOS upgrade or replacement, I think.

Jim Johnson

| A friend asked me to help him resolve the Y2K  problem. He has old
| DOS Clarion 2.1 application, that acted strangely when Y2K appeared. His
| program rolled the current year from 2000 to 1980. How is that possible?
| I am not a Clarion expert, so if someone could help me, I would be very
| gratefull.
| Is it a Clarion instruction, or is it a DOS instruction?, since the app
| runs from DOS batches.
| Only executable program is available, no source code files. How can I
| hack this protection?
| Thanks!
|

If the date is a 4-digit year, you probably have an old BIOS in the computer
and the computer's date is a problem.  Clarion apps generally pick up the
data from the PC, so if the PC is itself confused as to the date, the
application will also be lost.
    Tim

HTH

Karl

Hi Gordana

You probably have problematic BIOS in your PC, but don't lose hope.
Successfully replacing BIOSes on older MBs, like some folks suggested in
responses to your question, is quite suspicious as manufacturers
probably cut their production long time ago. There is, however, another
possible solution.

Most BIOSes on MBs manufactured after 1992-3 behave on 1999/2000 border
like this:
if the computer was shut down in 1999, turned off and left until 2000
and then turned on, BIOS clock will show 4-Jan-1980 after restating.

If you now manually set date to, say, 2-Jan-2000 or whatever the new
date is (entering _four_ digits for year 2000), BIOS will continue
tracking date and time _correctly_, and will keep it even after PC being
shut down / restarted, like nothing happened at all. The date and time
should be entered presumably from MS-DOS,  don't involve Windows in this
operation (but even Windows 9x should work properly afterwards!)

This (quite strange) behaviour was verified in my firm RTS on more than
two hundred older PCs with various BIOSes (many of them still running
Clarion 2.1 apps), which kept functioning properly in 2000 after being
treated this way.

Even if this doesn't help (an ancient BIOS, date setup is lost after
shutdown/restart), there's probably still another solution to circumvent
the problem. Simply let the user enter date and time on every startup
(include appropriate DOS commands in your AUTOEXEC.BAT). If the BIOS
doesn't reject entering date higher then 01/01/2000, it will keep
running w/o problem until next shutdown, which is acceptable as a
solution.

Good luck and regards

Zoran Bujandric