Y2K was not the world-ending catastrophe that the media, governments, and tech gurus had predicted. But it still led to some weird, expensive, and sometimes hilarious glitches.

was anyone else disappointed that planes were not literally falling out of the sky on Y2K?

anyway, here are some real world examples of actual problems that did occur

I did like the Leonard Nimoy video with experts attempting to rate how bad things were going to be :)

and of course the Y2K survival kit commercial was unintentionally hilarious with the shattered glass and sirens going off in the background

did anyone here have to deal with issues caused by Y2K, or spend time preparing systems beforehand?

  • visiblink@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    1 year ago

    I was still a student and had an older laptop running Windows 3.1, which was offline with the exception of using Terminal for dial up access to my university’s library catalog and a few local bulletin board systems. In the six years since 1994, it hadn’t ever seen an update. Back then, if you didn’t have internet access, you could write a letter to Microsoft to get updates sent to you. I never did.

    In any case, when the moment came, I just rolled the date back to 1972 (or rather, “72”), which was the last leap year starting on a Saturday. That seemed to work, since the only programs I used much at the time were Word and Excel, and neither seemed to be bothered by the date.

    I’m still not sure whether the switch to “72” was necessary, or if an almost completely offline version of Windows would have existed happily in “00”.