Y2K+9 Bug... Microsoft... really? come on now?

[kblessinggr]

Zune players hit by crippling Y2K-like bug, iPods unaffected - iPod touch Fans forum

Hundreds of disgruntled 30GB Zune users on the official Microsoft Zune forums are reporting that, as of 12:00 AM Pacific time, their devices are no longer functional. The digital players are not responding to typical reboot sequences and, so far, the only user-provided solution involves cracking the back off the device. The bug appears to be similar to the Y2K bug that affected some electronic devices and software systems at the beginning of the millennium. There is no word from Microsoft yet on any reasons or solutions for this problem. There is no indication that iPod devices will be affected by this bug, which seems to be constrained only to a specific Zune model.

Seeing as how it's on a specific model, I wonder if someone put a timebomb on the firmwares when they were shipped out of whatever chinese or taiwan factory, or someone just fucked up a digit on that specific model. (Kinda like how for a very breif time a small handful of iPods actually got shipped with viruses preinstalled)

I do find it funny however that a mere date change would cause the kind of havoc many expected for Y2K, but on an mp3 player. Maybe I'll set my iPod Touch to 1984: "OMG! I haven't even been born yet. Does not Compute. *pzthk*"

 

[kblessinggr]

Erm... I thought I posted this in 'Shooting the shit' ?

 

[audax]

Mine still works.

 

[audax]

Problem turned out to be an infinite loop in the real-time clock supplied by Freescale for the Zune.

year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */

while (days > 365)
{
    if (IsLeapYear(year))
    {
        if (days > 366)  // BUG: When it's a leap and the days = 366, nothing happens and loop repeats forever
        {
            days -= 366;
            year += 1;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        days -= 365;
        year += 1;
    }
}

Problem is when the year is a leap year, the function gets called on the last day, the days = 366 which puts into an infinite loop.

 

[kblessinggr]

Problem turned out to be an infinite loop in the real-time clock supplied by Freescale for the Zune.

year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */

while (days > 365)
{
    if (IsLeapYear(year))
    {
        if (days > 366)  // BUG: When it's a leap and the days = 366, nothing happens and loop repeats forever
        {
            days -= 366;
            year += 1;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        days -= 365;
        year += 1;
    }
}

Problem is when the year is a leap year, the function gets called on the last day, the days = 366 which puts into an infinite loop.

Yea found that out later. I guess one little mistake upsets a couple hundred users. Though I guess the quick fix is to just turn the thing off, then turn it back on , on the new day.