GPS Year 2000 Bug?

[David A. Phillips, Jr.]

The following pair of messages are from archcomp-l. My thanks to Anthony
Martinez for bringing them to my attention.

(First message, from David Carson, dcarlson@tamu.edu)

A couple of years ago I purchased a Magellan Trailblazer GPS for survey
work. Today I received the following letter from Forestry Suppliers (who
sold it to me):

"Magellan Systems has advised us that the Magellan Trailblazer GPS and
the Magellan Trailblazer XL GPS will fail in the year 2000. The failure
will be indicated by the completed [sic] system shutdown of the
Trailblazer GPS series receiver. Magellan has regretfully informed us
that there is no solution to the problem."

Granted it was an inexpensive system and I appreciate Forestry Suppliers
letting me know in advance, but I certainly didn't expect that Magellan
Systems would be shipping equipment with a built-in 4 year lifespan.

Does anyone on the list have any information about this? Magelllan
Systems web page doesn't have any information.

(Response by Irwin Scollar, a1001@rs1.rrz.uni-koeln.de)

Actually it's going to happen toward the end of 1999. The problem lies
in the programming of the GPS system itself which was programmed by
people who didn't worry about the millenium. The internal clocks turn
over through zero after several decades because they don't have enough
bits. Maybe someone will think of a kludge to fix things, but there is
going to be an awful mess, and I rather doubt it. There have been
reports on this in many of the professional programming journals. No one
has offered a solution for it yet. It has nothing to do with the price
paid for the system.


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