y2k and auto ecm's

[Michael D. Porter]

rbraun at mail.enter.net wrote:
> 
> I've been reading some stuff lately on the y2k bug and several places
> say cars will stop running.  As far as I know the date is nowhere in
> any of the ECM's that are in use.  Are there any automotive app's
> that use date and time in the ECM?  The clocks don't even know AM
> from PM.

Hmmm. A possibility, but I don't think likely, unless the chip is
designed to mark a date and time of an event, and I don't think cars are
so equipped, at least not universally. 

However, I wonder about some commercial diesel truck engines. One
particular model from Detroit Diesel uses a single-board computer which
is Intel 386-based. No telling what its BIOS will do, since I believe
its program dates events. Chances are it won't stop the engine, but
rather, store codes with an errant date, that's all. That's probably
what other car computers would do, were they capable of date/event
storage. 

Y2K problems occur when an errant date produces an illogical statement
when running a program. If it doesn't matter that an engine burped at
14:10:23:06 on Jan. 1, 1900, then it won't stop. <g>

Cheers.