PROGRAMS ACCEPTABLE TO THE CINDERELLA COMMUNITY

IBM OS/2 Warp 3/Warp 4

Date last modifed: 1998-07-25

Assumptions:

During installation select the following modification:

  Country
      Warp 3  - Select "Canada(French)" and "Multilingual"
      Warp 4  - Select "Canada(English)"

  Manual Bypass: If you have a US keyboard, then in order to avoid
      conflicts with code pages you can find the COUNTRY line
      in CONFIG.SYS and change 001 to 002 using the E editor from
      an OS/2 Window.
      COUNTRY=002,C:\OS2\SYSTEM\COUNTRY.SYS
      (check that the CODEPAGE=850)
  Notes:
  1. this "kludge" forces YY-MM-DD as the date format.
  2. If Windows 3.1 is already installed, OS/2 will modify it.
     Check the "International" setting is still YMD, Century on
     leading zero day/month and separator "-" after the install.
  3. To install SLUG2000, move the SLUG2000.EXE file into the
     root directory. Follow the OS2 instructions for "Adding a Dos
     program and for "Running a program automatically. Basically you add
     a DOS program, Click on OS/2 System and copy the icon into the
     OS/2 startup folder. Double click on properties and ensure
     that SLUG2000 starts in a DOS window.

(Note: the following tests were done on a system with a known "bad" bios, with a tickover problem)

These tests use Viewcmos.exe and Year2000.com from GTBecker at http://www.RighTime.com

Test 1. Standard Tickover Test.

1. From bootable Dos disk set date/time as 1999-12-31 23:55
2. Switch off and wait until tickover occurs (+-6 minutes)
3. Switch on and boot OS/2
4. From an OS/2 Window:
type Date -
displays 2000-01-01

Result: On the face of it, Acceptability Index 0 - Fully compliant

BUT

5. From another OS/2 (or DOS) Window run Viewcmos

         RTC:  1900-01-01
        BIOS:  1900-01-01
         DOS:  2000-01-01

This shows that the "bad" Bios has reset the RTC to 1900 (as expected). However, OS/2 (both Warp 3 and 4) "interpret" the 1900 as 2000, which is NOT what is needed for correct operation, as CMOS memory has not been corrected.

Test 2. The crucial "Cinderella Test."

Using an OS/2 Window for typing DATE commands and a DOS Window running ViewCmos:

1. Separate and resize the Windows so they do not overlap.
2. Change date to 2000-01-01. Viewcmos displays:

         RTC:  2000-01-01
        BIOS:  2000-01-01
         DOS:  2000-01-01

This demonstrates that manually resetting the date correctly modifies and conditions both the RTC and CMOS memory.

3. Shutdown, Switch off and Reboot.
4. Viewcmos will again display 2000-01-01 in all three places.

Test 3. Leap Year Tickover

1. Set the date to 2000-02-29, Time to 23:55:00
2. Shutdown, Switch off, Wait and Reboot.
3. Viewcmos will show 2000-03-01.

Test4. Online Tickover(Important For LANS).

From a dual window environment:

1. Change date to 1999-12-31 23:59:00
2. Watch the Tickover happen in Viewcmos.

         RTC:  1900-01-01
        BIOS:  1900-01-01
         DOS:  1999-12-31

Result: the rather unexpected result is that Viewcmos (5.12) does not Tickover the DOS date, but just sits on December 31 and does not update the seconds correctly. This would seem to be a minor bug in Viewcmos.

An OS/2 date command displays the date as 2000-01-01 (See Test 1). It is unclear at this time if the act of displaying the date actually fixes the DOS clock or if it is merely a temporary display problem. Viewcmos "sees" 2000-01-01 AFTER a date command.

A reboot will startup correctly as 2000-01-01 as proved by Test 1. But the CMOS memory will still have to be corrected.

However, this may have implications for LAN's. A manual date reset may be necessary to fix an OS/2 Server. A better method would be to use Year2000.com in the startup (see test 5).

Test5. Fix Tickover(Important For LANS).

Install year2000.com from http://www.RighTime.com into the OS/2 startup 1. Change date to 1999-12-31 23:59:00
4. Run viewcmos and watch tickover

         RTC:  2000-01-01
        BIOS:  2000-01-01
         DOS:  2000-01-01

Test 6. Test date range

1. Using a range of test dates, observe which dates OS/2 will accept using the DATE command.

Result: OS/2 accepts dates in the range 1980-01-01 thru 2079-12-31.

Conclusions

Despite claims of "compliance", there are some problems with Transition. These are mainly BIOS based and reflect similar problems to those found in MSDOS.

The Operating System is capable of displaying ISO8601 format dates, and from that aspect gets an Acceptability Index 0 - fully compliant. Applications running under OS/2 must now be tested. Where applications use multiple display formats the worst case Index is taken.

System/Pgm      Display             Method  Index Iface Calc Comp Sort

OS/2 Warp 3       YYYY-MM-DD       (Country)   0   Y     Y   Y    Y
OS/2 Warp 4       YYYY-MM-DD       (Country)   0   Y     Y   Y    Y
OS/2 Clock        YY-MM-DD                     4   Y     Y   Y    Y

Acceptability Index

Meaning of Report and Table Headings and Terms

Software Products used in Compliance Testing