STORY:
More Y2K glitches reported

For the most part, the worriers were proven wrong and computers operated smoothly New Year's Day 1999 and the first business day of the year. But the few glitches that did pop up were a sign that a year from now thing could get tricky.

For example, as Everything 2000 reported yesterday, computerized taxi meters in Singapore went dead at noon Jan. 1 for about two hours, according to The Sunday Times.

The Associated Press reports two medical products, a Hewlett-Packard external defibrillator and Invivo's Research Inc.'s Millennia 3500 multiparameter patient monitor, perform basic functions properly, but display the wrong time and date if not reset properly. More than 39,000 of defibrillators and more than 2,000 patient monitors are in use around the world;

According to the Sunday Telegraph in Sydney, Australia, computers at police offices in three Swedish airports failed at midnight Jan. 1, when they were unable to recognize the year 1999. Travelers who needed temporary passports were unable to have them issued, although the problem was fixed some hours later.

In Anchorage, Alaska, the AM radio station KFQD was unable to receive The Associated Press' wire when the date changed. Jay White, chief engineer for the station told the AP the software for reading the wire went down Saturday morning and wasn't brought back up until Monday morning. When the date changed to Jan. 1, 1999, a bug in the out-of-date software hit the "99" and ceased to function.

One of the problems that some organizations faced this weekend was the number 9, which is the highest digit that can be plugged into a date code. Programmers over time have used a series of 9s to indicate "end of file" or "cease operating," and this code can make the following dates risky:
-- Jan. 1, 1999 - the beginning of the last year in the century;
-- April 9, 1999 - the 99th day of the last year for the century;
-- Sept. 9, 1999 - The four nines of "9-9-99."

DATE: 1/6/99

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