So who's GPS has failed today then?

norwester said:
My old Magellan 300 gives todays date as 21 Aug 99 ! Other than that, it seems to be working fine.
I wonder, though, will it still survive when it reaches December 31 or will the millennium bug finally bite? ☺
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I do get fed up with those who perpetuate the myth that the "millennium bug" was not real.
The problem was that many old (bespoke) computer software systems used just 2 digits for the year, as in YYDDMM. Everyone (amongst us IT chaps and chapesses) knew that at the turn of the century, date comparisons for less than, or greater than, would cease to work (99 is greater than 00). As you can see, it was in fact, an end-of-century bug. The fact that it happened to be a millennium was merely coincidental.
So why didn't it all go tits up?
Because all over the world, tens of thousands of computer programmers like me spent years and years going through the code line by line fixing it as we went.
Please, please, do not perpetuate the myth that it was not a real problem. What TV and newspaper people did not realise was that we all knew about it years in advance, it was all sorted through a great deal of work (well renumerated - thankyou ASDA, IBM, and RDF).
 
Plum said:
the program is here http://www.gawisp.com/perry/garmin/gpseow.exe but I have not tested it. From what i understand, this program will upload a current date to the Garmin device to force it to ignore the August 1999 date that it is stuck on. Subsequent updates from the satellites will then work. Once i get my USB cable to link my GPS12 to my PC I will give it a try. If it wrecks my Garmin it does not matter as it does not owe me anything. If you are willing to try it on yours first, please report back.

www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk
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Wow, it brought my old Garmin 12 back to life! Even the stuck in 1998 for the last few years has been updated to todays date! Now, will the onboard battery take a charge?
 
Checked my ancient Garmin 128 today and has the correct time and date, so no problem. It is at least 15 years old and feeds my Yeoman Plotter, my Standard Horizon AIS radio, my radar which shows a lollipop and a NASA repeater in the cockpit, all without a problem.
 
skipper_stu said:
Wow, it brought my old Garmin 12 back to life! Even the stuck in 1998 for the last few years has been updated to todays date! Now, will the onboard battery take a charge?
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I have now tried the program http://www.gawisp.com/perry/garmin/gpseow.exe on my old Garmin GPS12 and it worked for me too. Corrected my 1999 date to the current date. you need to follow the instructions about the correct interface selection on you Garmin menus. I could not use my Windows 10 PC as it does not have a serial com port, even though I tried a serial to USB cable, so I used an old laptop running Windows XP. Problem solved! I beleive this program works on othe Garmin models too.

www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk
 
Fired up my venerable Garmin Etrex HCX.
No problems with satellites or the date/time
That machine hasn't had an update in the last 5 years...
 
LittleSister said:
I have a Standard Horizon CP300i but haven't yet used it this year. However, I did find that the last update I had by the nice people at SH they told me I couldn't have any more because the innards of the device itself was slightly too old to accommodate it.
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No sure what this means. Are you saying the hardware was too old for the software update? Sounds a bit fishy to me. Are you able to elaborate?
 
Bilgediver said:
My TomTom Via 135 only finds satellites after a restart and though it then operates it cannot tell ETA and thinks it is 2011
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Further to the above I used laptop to update and as well as doing maps traffic and speed cams it did a system update. Now the via 135 is back as good as new.
 
My TomTom Start 25 worked OK yesterday, but failed to fix after a pause later in the day and now cannot find any satellites anywhere ... perhaps because it thinks it's September 2009. Replacement looms, I fear, though that was already on the cards because it's one of the models for which "lifetime" updates are no longer available because its lifetime is over because map updates are no longer available ....
 
JumbleDuck said:
My TomTom Start 25 worked OK yesterday, but failed to fix after a pause later in the day and now cannot find any satellites anywhere ... perhaps because it thinks it's September 2009. Replacement looms, I fear, though that was already on the cards because it's one of the models for which "lifetime" updates are no longer available because its lifetime is over because map updates are no longer available ....
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Personally I was quite content with my ancient TomTom One. Map updates are not a big feature in my day-to-day work/life. Cant think of any new roads in my part of the world in the last decade or more. New housing developments are on going, I suppose that could be helpful eventually.
Now I have committed to a Garmin Drive 51. Different screen/features/voice, linked to Bluetooth etc etc.
I sometimes wonder if there is a tech kit that doesn't have to re-invent itself every now and then just so we all have to replace with new stuff.
If boat nav is kaput I will revert to paper charts and eventually tablet. Keep taking the tablets,haha.
 
pagoda said:
Fired up my venerable Garmin Etrex HCX.
No problems with satellites or the date/time
That machine hasn't had an update in the last 5 years...
Click to expand...

+1

I fired up my venerable MLR VALSAT 2008 (from 1996!) today: couldn' t find the date display, but time and position were OK.
 
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Plum said:
My GPS12 is running 4.57 software and I did have the problem but now fixed. See my previous post.

www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk
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Mine is still showing as 3.53 but the date is accurate finally! I used an old usb to serial port doofer that was very generic, it pulled up the search for drivers thing on win7 on my old atom netbook which failed then I did a quick google and the prolific drivers worked to connect it. Set it as garmin to garmin, comm port 3, gave the program a prod and it did the biz in a couple of secs!
 
The Garmin issues may not be due to the rollover, apparently there is a software issue that Garmin are aware of, and this is in the antenna rather than the plotter itself. My GPS 5012 was showing a spurious date some weeks ago and I reproduce below the email I received from Garmin that has fixed the problem. Obviously this would not apply to hand held units with a built in antenna.

To update device software you will need to use a microSD / SD card and PC with SD card reader.

You can download the latest software for your chartplotter at the link below. Please open the link and click 'Download' you will need to 'run' the .exe file on your PC and follow the onscreen instructions to install the software update to an SD card. To confirm that the software update was successfully installed please confirm that 'GUPDATE.GCD' is present on your microSD/SD card.

Legacy GPSMAP software update: https://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=8745

To install the software to your chartplotter, please power your chartplotter on and wait for the HOME menu to appear. Now insert your card and select 'software update'. The chartplotter will now load the software update.
 
The patch for the Lowrance HDS Gen2 is now available on their website. Although I registered to be told when it was in place I heard nothing from them.
The update didn't go as smoothly as last time with the device hanging during the reboot. Eventually I had to turn off the power twice. However, it now seems to be working properly.
 
MonniotC said:
I do get fed up with those who perpetuate the myth that the "millennium bug" was not real.
The problem was that many old (bespoke) computer software systems used just 2 digits for the year, as in YYDDMM. Everyone (amongst us IT chaps and chapesses) knew that at the turn of the century, date comparisons for less than, or greater than, would cease to work (99 is greater than 00)...
Click to expand...

You're right that the bug was real (although fewer systems used trivial date comparisons than had been thought and/or it was a long-overdue reminder for companies to buy more up to date accounting packages for reasons little to do with avoiding the millennium bug) but I do fight the notion that variables in embedded software are somehow decimal, and/or arithmetic is done in base 10. The GPS satellite transmits week number modulo 1024 I grant, but no software variable in any receiver will be inherently 10 bits, let alone, as some have suggested, do arithmetic modulo 1000 (ie would go from 999 to 0). One would had to have explicitly and deliberately written it thus, with the sole purpose of making it fail at a not too distant date! At Posix Time roll-over I'll be a lot less skeptical because this is a 32-bit signed roll-over, and so is an inherent data type.

Furthermore, In my opinion, any set which can't accept the GPS week-number roll-over was programmed by an idiot who hadn't actually read the GPS spec, and then was sloppily tested both by the chip vendor and by the plotter manufacturer as roll-over handling is an entirely obvious regression test; any release board would expect to see it covered. I suspect that some companies are playing on the roll-over as a way to persuade customers to upgrade in order to fix unrelated errors they've made in their UI software.
 
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