WWNC '09 official announcements and the 2010 bug

Each year, a crew of Newton users, developers and devotees gathers to celebrate the little green device, discuss projects, share resources and generally have fun. As a Newton owner myself, I've wanted to attend one of these for years.

This summer's event features sessions by Grant Hutchinson, Ryan Vetter and (tentatively) Paul Guyot, who will discuss NPDS, modern uses of the Newton and the Einstein Project, respectively. You can get a full list of presentation topics here.

One topic that I'm sure will be on everyone's mind is the 2010 bug. Briefly, the Newton's clock has a 17-year life, which was born in 1993 and ends in 2010. January 5, 2010 to be exact. Some users have reported erratic behavior when they've tried to schedule calendar events after that date, sometimes requiring a hard reset to escape. This seems to be limited to Newton OS 2.1 devices only.

Eckhart Köppen is working on a fix, but it won't be easy, as a system patch will be required. Former Newton team engineer John Arkley had this to say in 1999:

"...Building and testing a System Update is complex and expensive process and no single engineer could do it. The Newton OS only supports ONE system patch, so ALL the existing 'fixes' and any new ones have to be combined together to combined to create the 'next' System Update."

Still, Eckhart feels it can be done. From what I know of him through the NewtonTalk mailing list, I'm inclined to believe him. In the meantime, check out the "Ramp Up Clip" to get yourself in the mood. WWNC '09 will take place from July 31st - August 2nd in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

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Source: http://www.wwnc2009.com/Home.html

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Each year, a crew of Newton users, developers and devotees gathers to celebrate the little green device, discuss projects, share resources...

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splorp

Further reading courtesy of the illustrious Mr KÃ¶ppen:

Newton Year 2010 Problem
http://xrl.us/y2010problem

Y2010 Diagnostic
http://xrl.us/y2010diagnostic

2010 Fix Alpha Testers Needed (via the NewtonTalk Mailing List)
http://newtontalk.net/archive/newtontalk.2009-04/0027.html

April 07 2009 at 11:25 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

splorp

Careful, exNewt â€¦ there are issues with Aviâ€™s Fix2010 that can cause issues when alarms and calendar events roll over. The problems with the current â€œfixâ€ and possible solutions are being documented by Eckhart KÃ¶ppen on his site.

April 07 2009 at 11:08 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

exnewt

I installed Fix2010 v1.0a1

by Avi Drissman â€¨
Requirements
A Newton device with Newton OS 2.0 or greater.
About 5K free on your internal store.
Purpose
Fix2010 allows your Newton's clock to be set past 2010, and allows it to roll over past 2010 without incident.

March 04 2009 at 8:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Drew

Forget the new Macs. This is definitely Apple's greenest product ever.

March 04 2009 at 4:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mabhatter

Wow, Apple plans WAY ahead for thrown fruit at events!

"One topic that I'm sure will be on everyone's mind is the 2010 bug. Briefly, the Newton's clock has a 17-year life, which was born in 1993 and ends in 2010. January 5, 2010 to be exact."

Isn't this the same time as the next MacWorld they "just decided" not to attend...

Let the conspiracy theories commence!

March 04 2009 at 4:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply