Re: Y2K War

>  >>> "Baker, Tim" <Tim_Baker@MCFA.COM> 09/15 9:39 AM >>>
>  Rindi,
>  
>  How are you doing?  
>  Can you share some of your war stories?
>  
>  Thanks
>  
>  Tim 

The war isn't over yet - I got at a download of SSA's list of Y2K related 
BMRs from OSG - the list is by official SSA "Y2K compliant version" of BPCS & 
I wonder if these bugs are "native" to BPCS, so that the 5.1 users need the 
28 year deal AND some how also get these fixes, or if this is garbage 
introduced by the Y2K rush project.

Fortunately for V405 CD Rel-2 there are only 20 or so of these problems to 
install & test, while some V6 folks have hundreds of them to contend with, 
but we are on V405 CD Rel-1, and I need to tackle the task of trying to 
extract from that whatever are the Y2K fixes, since OSG has not given us a 
list as "nice" as the one for Rel-2.

The OSG list by your version is basically in chart form ... BMR #, date it 
was released, and a one liner vague statement as to what the problem was ... 
not volunteering which BPCS module or program involved, so we have to order 
the whole lot, then look at the code to figure out which is relevant to us.  
I mentioned this inconvenience to the help line - oh they are well aware of 
it and working on a fix, but you know the clock is ticking on Y2K, some of us 
can't wait on SSA.  However user-hostile OSG navigation is, we still have to 
be thankful SSA has put this information out there, and thanks also to BPCS_L 
for steering me to this resource.

http://ogs.ssax.com/ ... you will need a corporate password ... apply at 
plain ssax.com

Some consultant (hint hint) could make some bucks or PR by doing the work 
that SSA should have done in organizing the data that we need so that it is 
intelligible in one place - list all the Y2K fixes forward of each of the 
BPCS Versions that were "sold" to us by SSA as being Y2K compliant, except 
for these fixes, and structure list 

1. whatever version release forwards to later versions releases like SSA did 
for V6
2. alpha by module & program so we can see at a glance which do not apply to 
us

I don't suppose anyone has already done this & can save the rest of us the 
many hours days it will take to dig out the info from the scattered 
documentation so we can figure out we need?

At least we finally extracted data we needed out of SSA ... I still haven't 
got to first base with the IBM site where we key in the model numbers of our 
peripherals, modems, controllers etc. to find out which might need a hardware 
upgrade to make them Y2K compliant.  I have had a bunch of co-workers with 
different PC legacy systems than mine access the site & we all come up with 
error messages about the need to input extraneous codes not explained by the 
help they can get at.  I suspect the site is REALLY for IBM insiders & 
business partners, NOT for end users like customers & IBM marketing screwed 
up in even telling us about it without it first getting a face lift to make 
it usable.

I am referring to

http://wwwyr2k.raleigh.ibm.com = Y2K readiness of IBM peripherals

and there are some other ones I plan to try out some time

There is going to be some burn-out here, in which the war stories will never 
be shared by a lot of the survivors, with important lessons lost once again 
to doom future IT history.  For entertainment regarding Y2K foolishness, if 
that is the relief you crave, check out the standard Y2K information sites 
such as

http://www.duh-2000.com = people who don't get it
http://www.year2000.com/cgi-bin/clock.cgi = links to Y2K universe & great FAQ
http://www.itaa.org = global nightmare picture still has scary aspects
I can cite lots more urls.

Al Macintyre
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