Modular Software Corporation
Year 2000 Compliance Page

Last updated January 4, 2000

January 4, 2000 - Update

Systems at Modular Software appear to have transitioned through Y2K without incident. Even very old, non-Pick, DOS systems faired very well including some old 386 systems running fax and email servers.

One small Y2K bug reported

One customer has reported an apparent Y2K bug in the PicLan VB SDK toolkit. If you are using the VB SDK then you may want to check here.

A number of users have asked about Modular Software products and how them may impact and interact with Year 2000 operational issues.

Products that are NOT from Modular Software

Modular Software Corporation occasionally gets information requests about products that are from "Modular Software", but are not from our company "Modular Software Corporation". The following products are NOT products of Modular Software Corporation:

BOOTCON
WIZARD OF OS

If you are looking for information on these products, you will have to locate the company(s) that actually produces or distributes them.

First the Legal Statement:

All Modular Software products are licensed pursuant to the terms and conditions of an end-user license agreement. One aspect of this agreement is for Modular Software to disclaim all warranties. This is a standard clause in nearly every software product in existence. In terms of Year 2000 issues, this means that Modular Software cannot be held responsible for any malfunction that the new century may bring. Modular Software does not guarantee that it's products will be free of defects or will operate without interruption. Testing of our products to perform a particular task is completely the responsibility of the end-user.

Now for some practical information:

Now that the legalese is over with, Modular Software does strive to produce quality software products. It is our intent that these products should function without regard to Year 2000 issues. You should be aware of the following aspects:

Modular Software has tested some of our products for Year 2000 operation.

Not every product has been tested
Not every configuration has been tested
We may test some additional products and configurations in the near future
We will post information about any testing that we perform that shows problems
Our in-house testing is likely to be far from comprehensive

Even though we have not tested for Year 2000 operation, it is believed that our products will operate through the year 2000 without incident.

This is primarily due to the lack of using dates of any kind in the operation of our software
What few dates that are in use are stored in internal "Pick Format"
Some products, like Full-View, PicLan, and PicLan-IP, may have user application code that may have Year 2000 issues

If Modular Software does discover a Year 2000 issue with one of our software packages, then we will disclose that here. Depending on the severity and scope of the issue, we may choose to a) do nothing, b) document a workaround, or c) release a new version of the software. Remember, that in no event are we obligated to do any of this under the terms of the applicable software license agreement. Also remember that any action that we take may not be applicable to older releases of our software products and obtaining new releases may involve an upgrade fee or active support contract.

You should also note that date processing within Modular Software's products are generally handled with standard Pick date conversion functions like ans=ICONV(var,'D'). This means that PicLan is as Y2K compliant as the underlying Pick implemnetation. Most Pick implementations are believed to be Y2K compliant including older releases such as R83 from Pick systems which dates back more than 15 years. You should be aware that just because Pick and PicLan are Y2K compliant does not mean that your hardware is. Many PC system can have BIOS problems with Y2K. If your system is one of these, you do not need to replace the system. Just set the system date back 10 years and run a program when Pick is booted to forward the Pick clock.

Product by product information

Modular Bridge

This very old product is no longer in production and no known users are still in existence. Also hardware issues (360K diskettes) and Pick O/S extensions (COPYDOS, etc.) make this product completely obsolete.

PC-CACHE

This product does not use any internal or external dates and keeps track of time by the number of clock ticks since the software was activated. There should be no Year 2000 issues.

PC-ITEM-LOCKS

This product does not use any internal or external dates and does not even keep track of time. There should be no Year 2000 issues.

140+

This product does not use any internal or external dates and does not even keep track of time. There should be no Year 2000 issues.

Full-View

This product does not use any internal or external dates and does not even keep track of time. Some application software written with Full-View tools may have Year 2000 date issues as a part of the application code.

Smart-Tree

This product does not use any internal or external dates and does not even keep track of time. Some application software written with Smart-Tree tools may have Year 2000 date issues as a part of the application code.

PicLan

It is believed that PicLan is Year 2000 compliant. Most aspect of PicLan do not use any internal or external dates. Some limited areas, such as interacting with the Pick spooler may use some dates, but it is believed that these are coded to be Year 2000 compliant. Some user application software written to use PicLan functions may have Year 2000 date issues as a part of the application code.

Update - December 6, 1999

PicLan has been tested for Y2K compliance on the following platforms:

AP/Pro 6.1

Mentor PRO 4.1

The only area in PicLan even suspected to have potential Y2K issues is in the handling of dates when PicLan interacts with the Pick spooler. With both AP/Pro and Mentor PRO, the Pick spooler handles post 1/1/2000 dates with correct display formatting. In that PicLan uses standard Pick date conversion functions, this means that PicLan processes these dates "correctly", at least within the standard Pick 1930-2029 "window".

It is anticipated that PicLan will also function correctly on all other supported host platforms. Again, the only area that PicLan uses dates is in interacting with the Pick spooler. If the underlying Pick implementation displays LISTPEQS command without destroying the columnar formatting, then PicLan can be expected to operate correctly with Y2K processing.

It should be noted that the spooler aspect of PicLan is a very small part of the PicLan product. Functions such as ethernet driver operation, terminal emulation, etc. are immune from known Y2K issues because of the lack of date processing within these modules.

Update - January 4, 2000

One customer has reported an apparent Y2K bug in the PicLan VB SDK toolkit. It appears that there is a utility function in the PicLan VB library that specifies a date in 2 year format that does not produce the correct answers after 1/1/2000. This library is not a part of the standard PicLan interface, so it is very unlikely that it impacts you. Here are the details anyway:

VB source file is planlib.bas

Function is PL_PickToDate

12/31/67 should be recoded as 12/31/1967

Again, this function is not used by any Modular Software supplied routines and is simply included as a convenience for PicLan VB programmers. If you are not using the PicLan VB toolkit to write Visual Basic application code, then this bug cannot effect you. If you are using the VB toolkit then this bug "might" effect you if you are calling the PL_PickToDate(...) function. Modular Software has not tested the impact of this issue with various releases of Microsoft Visual Basic, so the bug may not present itself at all depending on the underlying VB run-time.

PicLan-IP

It is believed that PicLan-IP is Year 2000 compliant. Most driver aspects of PicLan-IP do not use any internal or external dates. Some areas, such as HTTP server, SMTP/POP3 server and other functions use some dates, but it is believed that these are coded to be Year 2000 compliant. Some user application software written to use PicLan functions may have Year 2000 date issues as a part of the application code.

Update - December 6, 1999

PicLan-IP code has been reviewed and no 2 digit external dates are used within the product. All date processing is handled as internally formatted dates (number of days from 1/1/67 in Pick format) and should handle Y2K issues without incident. Low level driver functions have been briefly tested with AP/Pro and Mentor PRO and, as expected, no Y2K issues have been encountered.

If you see something that worries you:

If you are testing for Year 2000 issues and are concerned about the specific behavior of one of our products, please check here first, and if you do not see the information that you need, contact us. The best method is to email support@modsoft.com. If you are really desperate, you can call or fax us at our regular number.

Remember that MultiValue systems are comparatively immune from Year 2000 issues. January 1, 2000 is just day 11689. If you are an end-user with a mandate to guarantee Year 2000 compliance, we cannot give you this as a legal guarantee. We will try to keep you informed about any Year 2000 issues that we encounter.

Thank you,
Doug Dumitru
Modular Software Corporation

Modular Software Corporation Year 2000 Compliance Page

Products that are NOT from Modular Software

If you see something that worries you:

Modular Software Corporation
Year 2000 Compliance Page