Potential April GPS issues for older units

[u02sgb]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2019/ ... poch_ends/

Like the Y2k issue but for GPS. Might be worth contacting your manufacturer to see if yours is affected. My Garmin watch got an update yesterday which says it was for GPS wonder of it's related.

Hope Mountain Rescue aren't busy in April!

[ianfitz]

I thought this was going to be another brexit-shambles based problem!

[sean_iow]

Good spot that thanks, I'll have to check if my eTrex or SPOT will be affected as April is when I will need them for the first of this years events. This line from the article caught my eye,

GPS.gov also notes that the new CNAV and MNAV message formats will use a 13-bit week number to solve the epoch migraine right up until the planet becomes uninhabitable via climate change or we all blow ourselves up.

I would have thought that the way things seem to be going lately that there is no need to change the system to avid the issue, just rolling over the old system would give us another 20 years which seems more than long enough for one of the above to have occurred

[Richard G]

I thought this was going to be another brexit-shambles based problem!

We'd really have to be going some to get ourselves excluded from GPS!

[Bearbonesnorm]

Like the Y2k issue but for GPS.

I was drag racing over in the states Nov 1999 ... never seen so much panic over nowt. Strangely, no one seemed to be stocking up on food, candles or useful items for the impending doom but guns, ammunition and such. Very odd it was.

[ScotRoutes]

Like the Y2k issue but for GPS.

I was drag racing over in the states Nov 1999 ... never seen so much panic over nowt.

It was only "nowt" because the problem was identified and resolved satisfactorily.

[PaulB2]

Around 5 years of identifying potential issues and software development made it 'nowt' but the media did get quite hysterical.

[Bearbonesnorm]

It was only "nowt" because the problem was identified and resolved satisfactorily.

*Genuinely asking* But were those problems real or were they problems that wouldn't have amounted to anything at one minute past midnight regardless. Is it not possible that nothing would have happened anyway? I recall some companies spending thousands in preperation and others doing nothing ... outcome for both seemed the same?

[Borderer]

Ok - this is potentially very crap as I will be in the middle of nowhere in April, reliant on GPS. How can I tell if my device will conk out or not?

[pistonbroke]

I was drag racing over in the states Nov 1999 ... never seen so much panic over nowt.

Which one was you , Stu?

[Bearbonesnorm]

The pretty one.

[ScotRoutes]

It was only "nowt" because the problem was identified and resolved satisfactorily.

*Genuinely asking* But were those problems real

The collapse of the UK banking system real enough? It was a genuine problem.

[wriggles]

Yeah, was the same in grocery retail. Everyone from Spar to Tesco used a derivative of the same supply chain software and if it wasnt fixed no orders = no food on shelves. Of course because it was fixed before hand everyone asked what the fuss was about. But where is the fun in preparing properly for a major event that could affect everyone, and not "leaving" everything until the last minute Good to see we learn from history

[Richard G]

It was only "nowt" because the problem was identified and resolved satisfactorily.

*Genuinely asking* But were those problems real or were they problems that wouldn't have amounted to anything at one minute past midnight regardless. Is it not possible that nothing would have happened anyway? I recall some companies spending thousands in preperation and others doing nothing ... outcome for both seemed the same?

I was working for a pharma company at the time and when we tested our production lines we realised they'd have failed catastrophically come the end of the year.

So in that particular case, with certain drugs at least, people could very well have died.

It does amuse me to see Y2K brought up a lot regarding Brexit. Because the reason everyone says Y2K was a non issue was BECAUSE WE HAD COMPETENT PEOPLE IMPLEMENTING PROPER PLANNING TO AVOID A POTENTIAL CATASTROPHE.

Ahem... please go about your day.

[Bearbonesnorm]

I'm just trying to get my head round this please humour me ... so, what everyone's saying is that Y2K was a problem for some companies relating to their software / hardware and not a complete meltdown of the internet and electronic world as was touted about at the time?

[RIP]

Possibly Stu, but from my direct knowledge many individual companies WOULD have had localised problems if they hadn't been checked for and fixed; but of course also nobody really knew whether a problem supposedly local to one company might not have affected the whole planet as well . Would you have wanted to be the company that took the whole planet down? Bit embarrassing. Rich is quite right.

You've given me a flashback now. I also worked on several of those projects at the time. Amusingly, a few weeks before The Big Day, the rather large institution that I was working for in the final few months asked for a "volunteer" from my group to sit at a desk with a terminal and a big red telephone and a mug of tea as the clock ticked past midnight, to field any IT problems. Everybody else ran rapidly in the general direction of "away", but I thought about it and then volunteered (well, offered to get paid ). My view was that if nothing happened then I would have just had a quiet evening with a big red telephone for company. If something HAD happened, what, seriously, would I or anyone else have been able to do on the spot that we hadn't already spent four years or so trying to sort out? . I might have been able to squirt a fire extinguisher at something but certainly not much else. Luckily we all did a quite superb job beforehand so nothing (noticeable) happened .

[Bearbonesnorm]

Me, I just reset the clock on my computer to 12.01, Jan 1st, 2000 a week or so before ... nowt happened, quite disappointing really.

[RIP]

"I just reset the clock on my computer to 12.01, Jan 1st, 2000 a week or so before ... nowt happened" - WADR, that's probably because us lot had tested exactly the same scenario considerably earlier than that in a controlled situation, then put the fix in with plenty of time before you were naughty and tried to break things .

And as Rich says, don't worry because we'll all have a lovely opportunity, in about six weeks time, to see what happens when we've taken the opposite approach to a potential/real problem .

[ianfitz]

I thought this was going to be another brexit-shambles based problem!

We'd really have to be going some to get ourselves excluded from GPS!

Given the staggering levels of incompetence in the current government I would not put this past them!

[Lazarus]

Ok - this is potentially very crap as I will be in the middle of nowhere in April, reliant on GPS. How can I tell if my device will conk out or not?

the link said that any device after 2010 was likely to be ok

I would contact the manufacturer/ make sure it was updated

[GregMay]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2019/ ... poch_ends/

Hope Mountain Rescue aren't busy in April!

We're pretty much always busy. Shouldn't affect our mapping capabilities though.

[whitestone]

Still we've got just short of nineteen years to deal with the end of 32 bit time

[u02sgb]

Sorry Greg, was more meaning for the extra work! Don't think you'd have got into basic training relying purely on a GPS.

[Richard G]

I'm just trying to get my head round this please humour me ... so, what everyone's saying is that Y2K was a problem for some companies relating to their software / hardware and not a complete meltdown of the internet and electronic world as was touted about at the time?

Well, the internet would have melted down for sure had the infrastructure guys not patched the hardware. But obviously you don't hear about it... because they did!

I can't speak for planes falling out of the sky etc. My assumption would be that aeronautical systems would have probably needed patching the same as most other systems, but I haven't read what catastrophic effects if any would have occurred (not my industry).

[mechanicaldope]

So basically, we didn't all get lost and stranded in the snowy mountains because we realised that it would be better to have a look at the map before we set off. I think.