[Info-vax] Y3K for PDP-11 Operating Systems

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <H9mdnUTgT5LYfF3QnZ2dnUVZ_uOdnZ2d at giganews.com>,
	"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
> On 5/3/2011 8:07 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> In article<7d287cc3-4605-49a0-826e-fb92fc14e98d at j28g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,
>> 	onedbguru<onedbguru at yahoo.com>  writes:
>>> On May 3, 2:39 pm, Henry Crun<m... at rechtman.com>  wrote:
>>>> On 03/05/11 20:51, Bob Koehler wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>    >Bob Koehler wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>>> In article<bdd4fd3d-bb52-43fb-ad9c-746b901f4... at gu8g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>, jjh<jjhu... at gmail.com>    writes:
>>>>
>>>>>>> To make sure I understand, y3K =3D 3000, it is 2011 now...um that is 989
>>>>>>> years from now...or roughly  12.5 lifetimes....I seriously don't think
>>>>>>> that anyone in the year 3000 will want to know anything about DEC hw
>>>>>>> or sw.
>>>>
>>>>>> You obviously have not read the historical documents.
>>>>
>>>>> I am curious, I have not read the historical documents.
>>>>> Can you please post a link?
>>>>
>>>>> As for Y3K for RT-11, since the date is presently managed
>>>>> up to 2099 as of V05.07 of RT-11, dates starting in 2100
>>>>> become the next problem.  And since adding support only
>>>>> for an additional 128 years seems like a complete waste of
>>>>> time, then 3000 CE was chosen as the next minimum step.
>>>>> In practice, at least an additional 4000 years would probably
>>>>> be added, more than enough to handle dates until the rules
>>>>> for the CE (Commercial Events, Common Era, Christian Era
>>>>> or Gregorian - all are identical and have a 400 year cycle)
>>>>> Calendar requires a rule change to handle years which are
>>>>> less than the current 365.2418 days.
>>>>
>>>>> So Y3K is really just Y2.1K if that makes a difference.
>>>>
>>>> IIRC there was an article by someone from DEC who promised that RSTS would be
>>>> patched to accept five-digit years before the year 9999. However I doubt that
>>>> current versions would be supported until then...
>>>>
>>> question... who cares??? I can almost guarantee that none of us will
>>> be here in 2099... and by that time you might be using neural-net
>>> technology that will make the PDP look like a TRS80.
>>
>> Hey, just what xfdo you think was wrong with the TRS80?
>>
> 
> Other than primitive hardware and primitive software?  It was a good 
> machine in its day but its day is LONG GONE!
> 

Now that's funny, here.  Just how is the Z80 more primitve than the PDP-11?
And software?  At least 5 different OSes.  Wide language support.  Many
commercial applications.

And, at this point it is probably debatable which one between the TRS80
and PDP-11 has more users on both real hardware and emulators.  I have
quite a bit of both.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>