Did any electronic devices fail due to Y2K?

Question

Did any electronic devices fail due to Y2K?

Answer 1

I did the audit for my company. I spent many hours investigating all the microprocessor based equipment that had no date capacity because of the hysteria caused by Y2K.



At the end of the day, nothing was affected. however Y2K was a bigger issue than Jan 01 2000. There are other critical dates we have not got to yet. Also, one solution was to move the time back by 10 years on equipment that didn't matter so that may be a ticking time bomb if no-one moves it back again before it reaches 2000 in 2010.

Answer 2

I did a Y2K audit in 1998, and the only device that failed was my VCR.



1. It would not accept a date/time after 31 December 1999, either on its clock, or for recording.



2. Friday 31 December 1999 rolled over to Tuesday 1 January 00 (i.e. 1900).



3. If I set a recording to start the evening of 31 December 1999 and told it to end at some time after midnight the date calculation overflowed and crashed the VCR's processor.



I've seen many devices that were set to the year 1976, the last leap year that started on a Saturday. The months and days are right, even if the year isn't.



The problem was real. The fact that very little happened showed how much work people had put in to fixing it.

Answer 3

Nothing major or critical. Probably nothing minor, either.



There may have been an isolated failure here, and there for some systems with 1960s technology, but certainly nothing that caused any loss of time or data after the fact.



It would be very hard to tell if all the effort to correct problems before Y2K really paid off, or if systems would have just kept on running without a lot of effort to correct them.

.

Answer 4

No. It was one of the biggest hoaxes we've ever seen. I was the Y2K director for my company and even though I knew nothing would happen, we had to do a ton of work to cover our butts.

Answer 5

The underlying programming problem was real, but more subtle than many realize. The practice of using two-digit dates for convenience long predates computers, notably in artwork.

Answer 6

Yes. But, they are not documented as the system failed. lol

Answer 7

None that I know of.