Glitch deflates Powerball sales

By WILLIAM PETROSKI, Register Staff Writer

01/21/2000

Powerball got overpowered by computer glitches Thursday.

Iowa lottery officials said Powerball and other online jackpot games were shut down at 1:30 a.m. Thursday. Workers still scrambling to restore operations to 1,500 lottery terminals statewide Thursday night. They hoped to have the problem fixed by this morning.

Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer said the computer troubles were the worst to strike the Iowa lottery since it was established in 1985. Lost sales could total about $125,000. GTECH Corp., the lottery's contractor, is expected to make up the losses, she said.

Other Iowa lottery games linked to statewide terminals include Cash 4 Life, $100,000 Cash Game and Pick 3.

The problems were not caused by the so-called Y2K bug, officials said. Troubles began to develop Wednesday while Rhode Island-based GTECH Corp. was installing new software.

"This is an aberration. GTECH system's average up time is 99.9 percent," said Marc Palazzo, a company spokesman.

Iowa lottery Commissioner Edward Stanek apologized. "We hope our players will bear with us as we fix the problem," he said.

Des Moines Register; Des Moines, Iowa

http://www.dmregister.com/news/stories/c4788998/10236725.html

-- Lee Maloney (leemaloney@hotmail.com), January 26, 2000

Answers

I guess the question should be "Why were they installing new software?" IF it was because of any Y2K problems, then the root cause of the problem was Y2K.

-- Dave Hall (dhall@enteract.com), January 26, 2000.

Dave, my feelings exactly, but our hands are tied. We can't blame problems on Y2k until people in the know speak up one way or the other. (hint, hint)

-- Lee Maloney (leemaloney@hotmail.com), January 26, 2000.