While universities and corporations worldwide are scurrying to avoid massive computer system failures in the year 2000, College computer administrators say Dartmouth is well-prepared for the coming millennium.
The "year 2000 problem" that many systems operators are struggling to correct arises from a small programming defect in a computer's capacity to handle dates.
If the computer reads the year as two digits, the advent of the millennium will cause failures because "00" is not greater than "99." This illogical progression, as computers see it, from "99" to "00" is expected to cause systems to behave unpredictably, in some cases, shut down altogether.
The College, for the most part, expects to avoid the year 2000 problem, according to Director of Administrative Computing Bill Barry.
Barry said the College is taking two steps to ensure its computers avoid problems at the turn of the century -- regularly buying new systems which have been programmed to deal with the century change and implementing "in-house developed software," programmed by the College to fit its special needs.
But there are still some older systems on campus which could be affected by the coming of the new millennium.
For example, the D1 system, Dartmouth's original time-share system, was set up in the late 1960s and could be affected if it is not phased out.
Though there were plans to shut down this system several years ago, there are still some programs run on the system, Barry said. The D1 is now scheduled to be replaced next year.
In tongue-in-cheek fashion, Barry also warned that Dartmouth computing may have to go through another program adjustment in the future -- to accommodate five-digit years.
In an Interface computing magazine article from last term, Barry wrote, "We have not yet initiated planning to ensure systems operations through to the time we will need five-digit year dates (after December 31, 9999). The status of the work will be announced in a future Interface article, in approximately 8000 years."
Outside of the College, the year 2000 problem is expected to cause enormous problems for systems worldwide -- particularly those used by financial institutions to calculate interest -- and many companies and institutions fear they may not be able to correct it in time.
Many older computers have the problem because of a "limitation on the design in terms of systems that were designed 20 and 30, in some cases more, years ago," Barry said.
The problem, Barry said, is that 20 to 25 years ago, programmers were encouraged to keep program designs as simple as possible because of smaller memory capabilities.
In many case, these programmers did not forget the coming turn of the century in their programs, Barry said. They just "assumed that they'd be replaced by '95 or so."
Many of these systems were still in use a few years ago, and when the problem was discovered, administrators of these older systems began to try to rectify the situation.
A lot of companies have hired programmers and consulting firms or purchased utility software that works to fix the glitch, Barry said.
In an ironic twist, many companies are reportedly hiring ex-programmers who are in their 50s -- laid off a few years ago to make way for a new generation of computing "whiz kids" but now highly sought-after since they are familiar with the older computing language that needs to be updated.
