+DarkLord Posted January 20, 2022 Share Posted January 20, 2022 (edited) Okay, I've got a Mega ST4 setup that runs my BBS. It's got 4 megs, AdSpeed accelerator, Cloudy TOS board, and a Lightning ST board. TOS version is 2.06. The Mega ST has it's own real time clock with battery backup. Something happened that I'm pretty sure that I've never had happen before, or on any other Atari I've used. The time/date changed itself... I received messages from some of DarkForce's users that they were being kicked off almost immediately after they logged in (time exceeded). Apparently BBS Express! ST was going by the bogus date and marking everyone as time exceeded and booting them. So I stop Express and look at the CALLER.LOG file and the "Who's Called Lately" screen. In the log, the timestamp for one caller before midnight on the day in question is correct, but the next caller after midnight has jumped (dropped?) to April of 1939. 1939? Express gets it's time/date from the system clock on the ST. At first, I just thought that Express had done something funky and misinterpreted the date from the Mega ST. So I went to the Control Panel and checked it. Oh boy - it's showing April of 1939! What the heck... I reset it, rebooted, rechecked it, still accurate and restarted the BBS. It's working fine at the moment but as I said, I've never had any ST do that before and am at a loss as to figure out why it did it or what caused it? Anyone every have this happen to them? Thanks... PS I'm attaching a screenshot taken from the BBS. You can see the correct date as "1/20/<2" then the (very) incorrect date of 04/02/=9. Keep in mind, Express is not Y2k compliant so it shows the first digit in the year as a symbol/character. So <2 is 22 and =9 is 39. That's a known issue that has been around for a long time and has nothing to do with this... PSS I just noticed, the times in that picture seem to be all over the place... Edited January 20, 2022 by DarkLord Additional information... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterMotorola Posted January 20, 2022 Share Posted January 20, 2022 1939? Obviously, there is a Nazi Virus on your drive. Time to start sleeping with a Webley under your CPU. Seriously though, that is very strange. My gut is telling me it is a glitch because BBS Express! ST is not Y2K compliant. It may be time to offer a prize to anyone who can hack the software to make it handle 21st century dates properly. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParanoidLittleMan Posted January 20, 2022 Share Posted January 20, 2022 It is most likely because of age of computer, components. And may be that will not happen more. ST is actually Y2K compliant. Starting with TOS 1.02 and Mega ST - RTC chip (Ricoh) can handle this years (not sure until which year, but is easy to check). If no RTC chip it still can work, but need some SW for corrections, and manual setting from time to time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted January 21, 2022 Author Share Posted January 21, 2022 9 hours ago, MasterMotorola said: 1939? Obviously, there is a Nazi Virus on your drive. Time to start sleeping with a Webley under your CPU. Seriously though, that is very strange. My gut is telling me it is a glitch because BBS Express! ST is not Y2K compliant. It may be time to offer a prize to anyone who can hack the software to make it handle 21st century dates properly. Keep in mind, this is a system that's been running the same software for literally like...decades. Because of that, I'm trying to figure out what happened now, or rather maybe what has changed now...Otherwise, I dunno... I'd love to have it brought, kicking and screaming, into the 23rd century with an update by someone talented. LP was nice enough tolook at it once, in hopes that it could be easily updated to support faster than 19.2k speeds, but it seems that it was written in such a way as to require an almost total re-write. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted January 21, 2022 Author Share Posted January 21, 2022 8 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said: It is most likely because of age of computer, components. And may be that will not happen more. ST is actually Y2K compliant. Starting with TOS 1.02 and Mega ST - RTC chip (Ricoh) can handle this years (not sure until which year, but is easy to check). If no RTC chip it still can work, but need some SW for corrections, and manual setting from time to time. Right. The problem with the date (as shown in the picture I posted) is the software's fault. The Mega ST4 has the battery backed RTC that shows and keeps the correct date and time in the Control Panel. Which is why I was a little shocked to see it showing April of 1939... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParanoidLittleMan Posted January 21, 2022 Share Posted January 21, 2022 Btw. date stamp for files starts at year 1980 - FAT file systems, and that was used by TOS too, as was already standard in those years. There are 7 bits for year, so it is good up to 2107 . And normally, internal TOS clock is working by that year as start. How and what years are supported with different RTC chips is not so relevant here. Usual for SW is that if there are only 2 digits for year displaying then if value shown is under 80 that it is year 20xx . So, what that sloppy programmed SW shows is rather 2039, not 1939 . Ergo this is not BTTF1 but BTTF2 case ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ripdubski Posted January 21, 2022 Share Posted January 21, 2022 On 1/20/2022 at 1:14 PM, DarkLord said: Okay, I've got a Mega ST4 setup that runs my BBS. It's got 4 megs, AdSpeed accelerator, Cloudy TOS board, and a Lightning ST board. TOS version is 2.06. The Mega ST has it's own real time clock with battery backup. Something happened that I'm pretty sure that I've never had happen before, or on any other Atari I've used. The time/date changed itself... I received messages from some of DarkForce's users that they were being kicked off almost immediately after they logged in (time exceeded). Apparently BBS Express! ST was going by the bogus date and marking everyone as time exceeded and booting them. So I stop Express and look at the CALLER.LOG file and the "Who's Called Lately" screen. In the log, the timestamp for one caller before midnight on the day in question is correct, but the next caller after midnight has jumped (dropped?) to April of 1939. 1939? Express gets it's time/date from the system clock on the ST. At first, I just thought that Express had done something funky and misinterpreted the date from the Mega ST. So I went to the Control Panel and checked it. Oh boy - it's showing April of 1939! What the heck... I reset it, rebooted, rechecked it, still accurate and restarted the BBS. It's working fine at the moment but as I said, I've never had any ST do that before and am at a loss as to figure out why it did it or what caused it? Anyone every have this happen to them? Thanks... PS I'm attaching a screenshot taken from the BBS. You can see the correct date as "1/20/<2" then the (very) incorrect date of 04/02/=9. Keep in mind, Express is not Y2k compliant so it shows the first digit in the year as a symbol/character. So <2 is 22 and =9 is 39. That's a known issue that has been around for a long time and has nothing to do with this... PSS I just noticed, the times in that picture seem to be all over the place... Looks like the time gets adjusted after phigan calls. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted January 21, 2022 Share Posted January 21, 2022 27 minutes ago, Ripdubski said: Looks like the time gets adjusted after phigan calls. Aha - he's winding the time back to get more time on the board! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MasterMotorola Posted January 21, 2022 Share Posted January 21, 2022 DarkLord, I just reread your post and realised that your system clock was changed to 1939, so it wasn't just BBS Express. Why not try an experiment and change the Control Panel date back to 1/20/2022 just after midnight and see if it happens again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted January 22, 2022 Author Share Posted January 22, 2022 5 hours ago, Ripdubski said: Looks like the time gets adjusted after phigan calls. I've been looking for someone/something to blame...Hmm... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted January 22, 2022 Author Share Posted January 22, 2022 5 hours ago, Stephen said: Aha - he's winding the time back to get more time on the board! Oh, the deviousness! The inhumanity! Impersonating a Time Lord will result in dire consequences! (I'm sure Dr. Who would agree!)... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DarkLord Posted January 22, 2022 Author Share Posted January 22, 2022 1 hour ago, MasterMotorola said: DarkLord, I just reread your post and realised that your system clock was changed to 1939, so it wasn't just BBS Express. Why not try an experiment and change the Control Panel date back to 1/20/2022 just after midnight and see if it happens again. Well, keep in mind since it's running a BBS it's up all the time, 24/7, 365 days a year. It's not done anything strange since I reset it after that initial episode... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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