So....who goes first?

-- Diss C. Ussion (trying@to.start one), November 30, 1999

Answers

Embedded "chips" are NOT going to cause Y2K failures. The posibility of an individual chip causing a failure is minute, contrary to anything you have heard. The person, Dave Hall, who started this urban legend now admits he guessed when he came out saying 40 billion chips would have a 5-10% chance of failing.

He now denies chips will be a problem, he speaks of embedded "systems"(systems now being defined as a device that is not a computer but does digital processing).

There are not 40 billion of any kind of systems in existance, much less embedded ones. Even on those he says they will be impacted as apposed to failing due to Y2K date functions.

He now states that even those have less than .001% of those being impacted.

Most industries that depend on safety measures have taken the possibilities of these devices failing in normal daily life and either have backup systems in place for safety, or only used these digital devices for cosmetic or as a secondary system to ease the difficulty of doing it the old, hard way. Such as monitoring nuclear power plants. The computers allow the workers to see the information on a computer screen rather than having to walk around their huge room and look at individual guages.

There have been found Y2K problems in "embedded systems". The majority of the problems have been traced back to a monitoring or control PC which had to be made Y2K compliant.

Yes, had they not been looked for and allowed to go on as they were they would have caused many problems, maybe even lives.

They were searched searched out and found and fixed.

A lot of overkill went ointo looking for and finding potential problems, I doubt anyone can think of an area that has not been checked.

Contingency plans were already in place where safety is an issue, and has been re-enforced for Y2K.

This is being posted as a quick bit of information for those new to Y2K so they can understand the basic steps that have been taken in this area.

I am not stating that none have been overlooked, it would be impossible to find every one. That is why contingency plans are in place in the first place.

Be aware that some people who do not work on and never studied embedded chips and embedded systems feel they will be a big problem.

It is easy to become frightened of something you do not understand. But the fact is that there are those who do understand them and have worked on them (some for many decades) and they are the ones who believe there will be little or no problem with them.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), December 30, 1999.