New Digital access for Canyon Lake, Seguin, McQueeney and Marion customers is here. The new number to use for this service is 830-606-2076. Most of you in Seguin, McQueeney and Marion are already using this number. Many of our customers that use this number have reported recent access improvements. If your computer is already set to dial this number you don’t need to make any changes. Just sit back and enjoy the new speed! For those of you in Canyon Lake, most of you have been dialing 830-608-0818. That number will be discontinued. You MUST change the number your computer dials to the new 830-606-2076. This number will provide you with a more stable connection and will support the new 56K digital modems.

As a general announcement to all our customers (especially the old-timers), we are retiring one of our older access numbers permanently as of April 1^st, 1999. Please check the number your computer dials and make sure it is NOT 608-0818.

The 608-0818 number was our "original" phone number, so it is possible that some of you "surfers" out there who have been with us since the early days, still have that number configured in your computer. Please check it. We want you dialing the best number possible, and we don’t want you to be "scratching your head" when April 1^st rolls around and the 608-0818 number goes out of service.

Registration will go through April 7th at 3 p.m. and the drawing will be held at that time. The winner will be announced on Thursday, April 8th during the morning radio show on KNBT 92.1FM.

In our last newsletter, we began an article about Y2K issues. This article is the second part of a three part article:

Here are Microsoft’s recommendations for working with the PC BIOS issue:

First, take inventory of your environment. Due to the number of variations of potential BIOS problems, it is crucial that you take inventory of your environment and understand how many versions and makes of BIOS you are dealing with. Unfortunately, it is possible that within a single purchase order your computer supplier delivered machines with differing versions of BIOSs. This means that your best bet is to verify each machine.

It is highly recommended that you get in contact with your system supplier and the BIOS manufacturer to understand the scope of this problem. If you have a BIOS that has a different kind of Year 2000 problem, you will likely need to contact the BIOS manufacturer.

Manually set date. If a desktop has the most common BIOS problem, and is running an operating system that does not automatically fix this problem, it is possible to manually set the date once and have the system work properly from that point forward. In fact, this will be the most common fix for the home user. For many large organizations where it is too time-consuming to touch every desktop, IS departments will disseminate to the end users the instructions necessary to manually set the system clock once after the year 2000. They will prepare their helpdesks for the flood of calls and will rely on their contingency planning of monitoring critical data feeds to ensure that all desktops have made the move properly. Make use of Microsoft programmatic solutions. Windows NT 3.51 service pack 5, Windows NT 4.0, Windows NT 5.0, and Windows 98 have a BIOS fix for the most common problem. Make use of third-party programmatic solutions. Many companies produce products to assist in dealing with the BIOS problem. Microsoft provides a list of BIOS fix vendors in the Tools Guide located at http://www.microsoft.com/year2000.

Plan contingencies Appropriate contingency planning for this problem will require the monitoring of critical data feeds. In many cases, applications will stamp a form or a transaction with the current system date. This will allow for monitoring on the back-end for BIOS failure dates which will tell you that there are PCs which have not made the switch properly.

Operating systems It is important for the customer to identify all operating systems being used and obtain appropriate Year 2000 information. The Microsoft Product Guide discusses specific date handling for Microsoft operating systems.

Microsoft operating systems all store and manipulate dates in four-digit formats. Additionally, the system clocks have been designed to recognize the year 2000 as a leap year. Within the operating system, the file systems have been designed to handle dates beyond the year 2000 as well. The File Allocation Table (FAT) 16bit and 32bit versions used by MS-DOS, Windows, Windows 95 and Windows NT recognizes dates up to 2108. The File Allocation Table for the Windows CE operating system recognizes dates up to 2999. The Windows NT File System (NTFS) recognizes dates to 29,601.

Applications Some applications have internal calendars that could miscalculate the leap year; others may force a two-digit date, depending on the manufacturer of that particular application. Microsoft applications that store and manipulate dates do so in four digits. We calculate the year 2000 as a leap year. We do not use any special date codes.

This is the second in a three part article about Y2K issues. Stay tuned to the next newsletter for more information. To view back issues of our articles see our web site http://www.compuvision.net

For more information on Y2K issues see:

Microsoft has been working on a new Windows NT operating system to replace their existing Windows NT 4.0. Do you know what it will be called? Well if you guessed Windows NT 5.0, you are wrong. Microsoft has announced it is making a name change in their product line. The next version of the server will be called Windows 2000 Server. Similarly the next version of the Office product suite is called Office 2000.