STL Time Machine Report #20 - Saturday 13 June 1998 (1998-06-13) There are a few problems testing with Group 3. In each group the previously tested systems are run as infrastructure. Cory will understand this one - they had to increase the number of initiators from 5 to 15. The test LPAR is supposed to provide 32 MIPS of CPU power, and they've had some delays in batch job processing. For the non-mainframers, the number of initiators under MVS will limit the maximum number of concurrent batch jobs. I'm not an OS-jockey, but I don't believe CICS regions (started procs) or TSO address spaces are limited by the number of initiators. Go to http://www.dejanews.com and search bit.listserv.ibm-main for "Y2K test". There's been a lot of questions lately on Y2K testing with LPAR's, and how to set the TOD clock. New Assignments. It looks like I'm being shifted from production support back to a couple of small Y2K projects. One is a batch system I wrote back in 1989. It's been fixed for Y2K and unit-tested. It doesn't qualify for time-machine testing. It was tested with a date simulator for Y2K date overrides, and my original code had a problem with the year-to-date history file at rollover, which is in the middle of a billing period. I got to help the programmer fix that one last February. For the next change I get to do the Y2K user acceptance testing with the business owner. PC/LAN Problems. On Wednesday, 1998-06-03, they upgraded my PC from NT 3.51 SP5 to NT 4.0 build 1381 SP3. They swept everyone in my group, and all our PC's run slower now, but we've been told they're compliant! We've also been upgraded from Office 95 to Office 97. At the same time, our LAN's seem to be a little less stable than usual, and Lotus Notes databases are being relocated all over the place. Spent a lot of time irritating the help desk people over NT problems. I got NT 4.0 to lock up three times in one morning trying to tweak it to my liking. COBOL and HLASM Status We're finally converting all our old OS/VS COBOL programs to COBOL II. When we get the third party Database converted to LE/MVS, we'll be able to migrate to COBOL for MVS and VM. The High-Level Assembler controversy seems to have finally been resolved. Seven older assembler programs have been converted to HLASM and will be tested in the Time Machine with Group 3. Anything else will be converted to HLASM the next time it needs to be re-assembled. As of 1998-06-13, My countdown now reads: 140 days until 1998-11-01 (Beta Test begins) 201 days until 1999-01-01 (External Testing begins) 566 days until 2000-01-01 (Rollover) Previous Year 2000 Time Machine Reports are available at: http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/tmr.htm STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I am NOT an official corporate spokesperson. My opinions should not be held against my benevolent employer. -- Arnold Trembley http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/ "Y2K? Because Centuries Happen!"