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A June 5, 1997, story from TechWire reports on the findings of Karl Feilder. He reports that 2,568 out of 4,000 new sofware packages failed some 2000 test. Of these 2,568 packages, 724 were claimed to be year 2000-compliant.
As for 1997 BIOS chips in the hardware, 47% were not compliant.
If 1997 PC's are not compliant, think about what happens to all the pre-1997 units and DOS-based software. Feilder says that over 90% of pre-1997 units are not 2000-compliant.
We may think that everyone has upgraded. If so, we think wrong. Old PC's are in use all over the world. These PC's may be hooked into mainframe systems. I offer these possible examples: medical offices hooked into Medicare and Medicaid and their equivalents in other nations; local insurance agencies; the average small business that is required by law to file withholding taxes with the Internal Revenue Service, some beginning in 1997 and universal in 2000; credit card terminals in stores. These systems are not compliant. There is not much time remaining to get them all compliant.
Then there is the really scary part: older PC's used in systems such as oil pipelines. On this aspect of the y2k proboem, the media are silent. I can understand why.
The problem is bigger than mainframes. The problem is integrated systems -- systems that must be 100% compliant for any component to remain compliant.
(Reminder: sometimes magazines drop older stories from their Web sites. If this link reports the dreaded 404 report -- dead link -- please let me know.)
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