Japanese nuke glitch due to monitoring system
TOKYO (AP) -- A New Year's Day glitch at a Japanese nuclear reactor was caused by a failed clock on a monitoring system, an official said Monday.Shigehiro Ito said Tokyo Electric Power was still investigating whether the trouble at its reactor in the state of Fukushima, 150 miles northeast of Tokyo, was caused by the Y2K computer bug.
The malfunctioning system monitored the position of the reactor's control rods. Officials used another system to do the job until the problem was fixed, he said.
Plant officials discovered the trouble was due to the system's clock, which showed Saturday's date as Feb. 6, 2036.
Other glitches occurred at Japanese nuclear power plants on New Year's Day, but none led to leaks of radiation or safety problems. Most involved trouble with data transmission and were quickly fixed.
Technicians flooded by PC owner calls
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- When all else fails, set the clock back to 1972.
That's how a Minneapolis pub owner circumvented a Y2K glitch that put her cash register on the blink. That year matches up with the 2000 calendar in terms of days of the week and leap year.
"Here in this modern age we would set the clock back to pre-bellbottom era to fix a 2000 computer problem. It just cracks me up," said Robert Stephens, the computer repair expert who helped the tavern owner.
Anxious computer owners lined up outside his Minneapolis office Sunday morning, and more telephoned to get technical help, said Stephens, chief inspector for the business, the Geek Squad.
"We're going to find bugs that we never even thought of," said Stephens, who was still busy on Monday. "But they'll be really tiny ones."
Most users simply needed guidance on how to reset the date on their computers manually.
Cell phone company apologizes for New Year hiccup
TOKYO (AP) -- A Japanese cellular telephone company ran an ad in major national newspapers Monday to apologize for Y2K problems in several models that send and receive e-mail.
NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. said in its five-paragraph apology that there have been problems with nine cell phone models that allow users to send e-mail.
Messages received from Jan. 1 were treated as older than those received in 1999, the company said. If the user had too many old messages, those dating from Jan. 1 would be eliminated before those received in 1999. The system eliminates the oldest messages first.
Company officials could not be reached Monday, a holiday in Japan, to say if the problem was Y2K-related.