How The Millennium Bug Gave Birth To Personal Computers
Things were going on well in the computing industry and firms until Computer gurus that all Computers were to mistake year 2000 for 1900. The first time since the invention on Computer History scientist were running against time to overcome the would be an end to Computer Era
All major companies had been using Mainframe Computers and were not thinking of upgrading to more powerful Super Computers. Mainframe Computers at that time were running on the hard drives called Hollerith card where dates and programs were stored on a Punch card which was limited to certain number of characters, as a result of character limitation; earlier programmers came up with a mechanism to have years truncated into two digits.
The main challenge here was that dates could only be recognized by the last two digits e.g. 78 rather than 1978. The millennium bug was a headache but the solution was very simple and it was just a matter of adding the first two digits of the year which early programmers did not put into consideration. At the time of the problem Personal Computers were developed with the right code to handle the four digit limitation
The big cooperation would not just let the mainframe Computers go away and were unsure if the small personal Computers could handle the sophisticated programs without crashing. The millennium bug poses various challenges at that time including companies were to revert to paper work storage mechanism.
All institution using computers including schools, hospital, and military system were to fail function and the airplane was to come crashing on the ground and to Crown it all: Computer era was coming to an end
Post millennium Bug has seen the development of enhanced Computing systems that are able to handle large amount of data and has also resulted into upgrade of Computer Components and the entry of Window Based Operating System and Application programs
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Comments
it was kind of a false alarm, i guess.
- AUTHOR
@creativeone59 - Thanks for your compliment, I just thought of bringing about this Computer bug problem which many people do not know
@fastfreta- Yes there was so much fear about computers being
unable to code year 2000, it was the millennium bug about
computers and at this time the majority of computers were
mainframe. I have some Hubs on Computers and this can help you learn more about computers
I am so computer illiterate that I don't really understand most of what I just read, however I do recall the big buzz about y2k being detrimental to the PC's, or computers in general, but it seemed the fear wasn't justified. Good hub.
Very knowledgeable hub keep on trucking. creativeone59
- AUTHOR
Nelle Hoxie - This was the most uncertain time in the computing industry but all was well without company loosing their data. The Millennium Bug had been Sorted Out
Another interesting hub Oderog. I remember preparing for Y2K. I had canned food ready, a little stash of cash, I was safely home listening to my refrigerator hoping it would keep working. My husband and I cheered at 12:01 when the lights were still on and the electrical grid held. Of course we had been watching the New Year as the first time zone went Y2k so we had a good idea everything would be okay.
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