Oxford/Canberra LB5100 Y2K problem

["Vincent Chase" <CHASEV@war.wyeth.com>]

We had several older systems that were not Y2K compliant and that could not be upgraded without significant cost.  In some cases, the cost of the upgrade was almost as much as purchasing a new model.

Because some of these instruments had minimal, but critical, use, we decided to reset the date.  After doing a little research, I found that 1972 is an exact copy of 2000, including the leap day in February.  This makes decay correction easier since you don't have to worry about whether to include a leap day in your calculation.  The researchers find it easy to substitute 1972 for 2000, 1971 for 1999 and 1970 for 1998 and not have to worry recalculating the month and day.

The only glitch to this system is if you use MS Excel to calculate the date and have upgraded to Excel 97.  Excel 97 only goes back to 1980.  We contacted our IS department and made sure that the units using Excel did not get upgraded to Excel 97.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Vince



Vince Chase
Radiation Safety Officer
Wyeth-Ayerst Research
CN 8000
Princeton, NJ 08543

phone 732-274-4478
    fax  732-274-4592

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