( ESNUG 270 Item 1 ) -------------------------------------------- [10/31/97]
From: Sean Murphy <skmurphy@netcom.com>
Subject: Get Apollo OS Patch Before Sysclock Strikes -0.25s On Nov-2-97 !!!
John,
Even though it's Halloween today, what follows is not a Halloween prank for
those of your readers still using Apollo workstations for designing or as
an archive server for old designs. The Apollo system clock was based on
counting the number of 1/4-seconds since January 1, 1980, and on this
Sunday, November 2, it will roll over the sign bit in the 32-bit number that
it is stored in. Here is the HP field service description of the problem:
D500186213 - After 14:59 GMT on November 2, 1997, penultimate bit of the
system clock will be set. This may cause numerous problems
as not all of code is doing timer comparisons correctly.
and warns that data corruption may ensue after the "Rollover" date. Patches
are available from the HP web site (http://us.external.hp.com/) for several
versions of Apollo Domain SR9 and SR10. An HP user group, the InterWorks
Technical Users Forum, has a long and detailed article about the best way to
implement these patches at http://www.interworks.org/Tech/apollonov2/ and if
you are still relying on V7 based data archives, Concurrent CAE Systems
(http://www.ccaes.com/) has released a free utility that can be used to
unload all of the design database information into an ASCII dump format.
- Sean Murphy
Consultant
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