With corporations and universities world-wide currently fearing massive computer system failures at the turn of the century, Dartmouth computer administrators say the College is well-prepared.
"Dartmouth has avoided this problem by being proactive ever since 1991," Director of Administrative Computing Bill Barry said. "We were way out ahead of things and we had our act together."
The "millennium bug" arose from a small programming defect in a computer's capacity to handle dates. When computers were designed 20 to 30 years ago, programmers failed to take the year 2000 into account in an attempt to keep program designs as simple as possible to accommodate for limited memory capabilities.
If a computer reads the year as two digits, the advent of the millennium will cause failures because "00" is not greater then "99." This illogical progression, as computers see it, from "99" to "00" is expected to cause systems to behave unpredictably, and in some cases, shut down all together.
But the College has kept on top of the matter.
Even before publicizing the millennium bug problem in 1993, Dartmouth Computing had already taken steps to avoid it by upgrading or replacing some of the College's systems, Barry said.
He told The Dartmouth last year that the College has followed two paths to avoid the problem -- 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.
Although there are still some older systems on campus which could be affected, Barry said they will soon be "2000 compliant."
One such system, Dartmouth's original time-share system called "D1," was set up in the late 1960s and is still being used by Instructional Services and Physics 13.
But Barry said Computing Services has almost completed a replacement system, and the College should be off the D1 system in eight to nine months.
He added that some of the older research lab systems may have to be replaced, and a multi-year replacement of the financial aid and academic record system will be complete by October 1, 1998.
Outside the College, the millennium bug has sent computer programmers scurrying to prepare systems, particularly those used by financial institutions to calculate interest.
Just this week, Wall Street's major exchanges and securities firms began the biggest test to date of how well their computers will handle the transition.
By setting test computers to December 29, 1999, 12 exchanges and 29 Wall Street firms made mock trades of stocks and bonds to see what will happen to trades that will settle on January 3, 2000, the first business day of the next century.
Dartmouth seems to be ahead of the competition in the year 2000 computer scramble.
"Many of our peer institutions are struggling with this and some of their plans to replace and upgrade have run into delays," Barry said.
He said Princeton and Brown, in particular, are currently spending large sums of money on the problem.
But Barry made it clear that "Dartmouth Computing Services is not resting on its laurels here."
Computing Services and the Internal Audit Department are currently taking inventory to make sure the changes will work.
Not everyone agrees what could have happened at the change of the century if the programming glitch had gone on undetected. Barry said reports of elevators and pacemakers not working are just products of "exaggeration and histrionics."
Although Barry said he is not nervous for the millennium to come, he was quick to add that "the joke in this industry is still don't be on a plane or go to a hospital on the first of the year."
