Hypatia Y2K Compliance Details

30 April 1999:

All Model 306 and 307 instruments are date independent in that they contain no code with any date relationship of any kind, nor is their operation affected in any way by the date. The Model 306 has no processor of any kind, and the Model 307 has only a simple logic device which controls the test timer, but this device handles only minutes and seconds, and does not have any date relationship of any kind. These are basically "dumb" instruments and are inherently and entirely date insensitive and thus Y2K compliant.

Model 308 and Model 309 instruments are fully Y2K compliant when running any version of their Operating Software, but for different reasons. Earlier versions of the Operating Software contained no date information. So even though these are processor based instruments, when running the earlier versions of the Operating Software the instrument's operation is inherently and entirely date insensitive. Later versions of the Operating Software, current versions, and all future versions, do and will contain date information. However, this software was originally designed and verified to be fully Y2K compliant, and remains so - we never developed any software which uses two digit year information anywhere. So regardless of which version of the Operating Software is utilized, the Models 308 and 309 are fully Y2K compliant.

All Model 308 and 309 support software, including the Model 309 Utility application, was also originally designed and verified to be fully Y2K compliant, and remains so. Again, we never developed any software which uses two digit year information anywhere.

All other Hypatia products, such as probes, do not have any date relationship of any kind. These are basically "dumb" devices and are inherently and entirely date insensitive and thus Y2K compliant.

All Hypatia in house test fixtures and instruments are date independent or verified to be Y2K compliant. The instrument which was of greatest concern, and the last instrument verified, an HP 34401A precision multimeter, is Y2K compliant - it performs no date related processing (according to the HP web site).

Since its inception, Hypatia has been and continues to be a Macintosh based company. All our corporate systems, including all in house engineering, manufacturing, sales, support and marketing systems are Macintoshes. Since the Macintosh and its Operating System has been Y2K compliant since its inception, we do not suffer from vulnerability from those systems. We have verified that our important applications, including our product tracking and accounting data bases, and engineering applications, are Y2K compliant. We have not verified minor application or utility software which is of no operational or corporate significance, such as some public domain material, but suspect that the vast majority of these are Y2K compliant since they almost all use Macintosh date handling toolbox items in their date handling code. But in any case, failure of these minor items would not affect Hypatia operations.

Hypatia does use one "Wintel" type computer system. It was not Y2K compliant originally, but it's BIOS has been updated and we have verified that it is now Y2K compliant. The only applications of any significance that we run on that system are custom Hypatia software products and in house support software, all of which was originally designed and verified to be fully Y2K compliant, and remains so.

Since and before its corporate inception on 10 March 1989, wherever possible Hypatia has consistently utilized the military type date format of Day Month Year, with the month in text where possible, and the year always fully expressed. For example, 20 April 1999 or 20 Apr 1999. This has always appeared to us to be the most disciplined and logical date format, thus minimizing any chance of date confusion. Our Macintosh systems support this format. Some "Wintel" type computers and their operating systems and application software don't support this format as pervasively as we'd like. But they do provide an automatic conversion, so in our in house "Wintel" system we use the most compliant underlying four digit year format provided, and have set the system to convert to our preferred format at the earliest possible point.

Hypatia depends upon a single third party vendor for software development. Our relationship with this vendor is very close, they have thoroughly followed all the Y2K compliance matters described above, and we have tested all Hypatia software to verify this.

Hypatia depends upon multiple vendors for components to support our manufacturing operations. Due to resource limitations, we are not able to verify that all our component suppliers will be able to deliver on time through the critical period. So we are managing our material inventories in such a way as to insure that we will have component inventory sufficient to insure uninterrupted operation through the last quarter of 1999 and the first quarter of 2000.

Hypatia Inc. Contact Information ucecage@Hypatia.com. Report mail misconduct to uce@ftc.gov.