11/98a README.TXT -- NOTES ON YEAR 2000 FIXPAK FOR IBM PC DOS 7 This README.TXT file contains important information about the Year 2000 Fix Pak for PC DOS 7. YEAR 2000 FIX PAK FOR IBM PC DOS 7 ================================== PC DOS 7 customers concerned about displaying or processing date information after 1999 should upgrade to IBM's Fix Pak for PC DOS 7 or to IBM's PC DOS 2000 product. Testing Your System for Year 2000 --------------------------------- After you install PC DOS 2000, you should thoroughly test the remainder of your DOS environment to make sure dates are being processed and displayed correctly. If you experience a date-handling problem, ensure that your application programs and hardware are handling the date correctly before contacting PC DOS service and support. Contact your application program manufacturer to see if there are any known problems or an update available for your application program. PC DOS 2000 cannot fix date handling problems that are being caused by application programs. Only the application program manufacturer can correct these problems. PC DOS 2000 contains a fix for the "century roll-over" problem in some BIOS programs. Your PC's BIOS may have other date-handling problems even with this fix applied. Contact your PC manufacturer to see if there are any known problems or an update available for your PC's BIOS. How to Specify the Year ----------------------- When you specify the year using two digits, PC DOS interprets 00 to 79 as years 2000 to 2079 and 80 to 99 as years 1980 to 1999. For example, 7/15/78 (in mm/dd/yy format) is July 15, 2078 and 7/15/81 is July 15, 1981. To avoid ambiguity errors, whenever possible, you should specify the year using four digits. For example, specify 7/15/2078 for July 15, 2078. PC DOS does not support dates before 1980 or after 2079. General Product Information =========================== The following sections describe Year 2000. Product Year 2000 Readiness --------------------------- IBM has taken reasonable measures to provide accurate information regarding the Year 2000 readiness of this product. However, you should be aware that information regarding Year 2000 can change. IBM cannot guarantee that the information contained in this README is complete or current or that it applies in every situation. Year 2000 Ready Definition -------------------------- "Year 2000 ready" means "a product, when used in accordance with its associated documentation, is capable of correctly processing, providing and/or receiving date data within and between the 20th and 21st centuries, provided that all products (for example, hardware, software and firmware) used with the product properly exchange accurate date data with it." IBM Position on the Readiness of this Product --------------------------------------------- Information on the Year 2000 ready status of this product applies to this product only. By providing this data, IBM is not performing a Year 2000 assessment or conversion. You are solely responsible for the implementation of your Year 2000 project and IBM does not guarantee your results. You are solely responsible for the installation and implementation of any Product Temporary Fix, Customer Service Diskette(s) or other related Year 2000 modification required for an IBM product to be considered Year 2000 Ready. IBM shall not in any way be responsible for your failure to apply such correction. IBM's obligations and responsibilities regarding IBM products are governed solely by the agreements under which they are sold or licensed. Installation ============ To install this Fix Pak, you will need: - IBM PC DOS 7 installed on your system - 2M bytes of free space on your system's Drive C: - a formatted 1.44 MB diskette Install Part 1 -------------- Create a Fix Pak diskette by following these steps: 1. Receive a language-specific PC DOS 7 Fix Pak file from IBM. The file name is in the form DOS7xxY2.EXE where "xx" is the language version of your installed PC DOS 7 as shown below. BR = Brazilian PO = Portuguese DK = Danish RU = Russian FR = French SP = Spanish GR = German SU = Finnish IT = Italian SV = Swedish NL = Dutch US = English - USA and United Kingdom NO = Norwegian See README.JP for installation instructions for the Japanese Fix Pak (CSD PC DOS J 7.00C/V); the following is not applicable. 2. Place a formatted 1.44MB diskette into Drive A: 3. From a DOS command prompt, enter: DOS7xxY2 A: Where "xx" is the two letter language code from the list above. For example, to create an English version Fix Pak diskette in drive A: you would enter: DOS7USY2 A: 4. Label this diskette "PC DOS 7 Year 2000 Fix Pak" Install Part 2 -------------- To install the Fix Pak, follow these steps: 1. IBM PC DOS 7 should already be installed on your system. 2. Insert the "PC DOS 7 Year 2000 Fix Pak" diskette into Drive A: 3. From a DOS command prompt, enter: A:UPDATE drive: Where "drive:" is the drive where PC DOS 7 is installed. This is an optional parameter and defaults to drive C: This program may take several minutes to update your system. 4. Remove the Year 2000 Fix Pak diskette from Drive A: The update is now complete. Eurocurrency Symbol Support =========================== PC DOS provides support for the new Eurocurrency symbol defined by the European Community as part of the European Monetary Union (EMU). The symbol is provided in code page 850 at offset 0xD5. You can invoke the symbol through the keyboard by using the same AltGr or AltCar + character key sequence that is used for many other country-specific symbols (the AltGr and AltCar keys are the same as the right-hand Alt key). For additional information, see the "Multiple Characters on a Key" section in the PC DOS 7 Keyboards and Code Pages book which is sold separately. The table below shows the particular key sequence for each country supported. The symbol comes in 8x8, 8x14 and 8x16 pixel resolutions in code page 850 in both the EGA.CPI and EGAX.CPI code page information files, and in 8x16 pixel resolution in code page 850 in the ISO.CPI file. These CPI files are specified in the MODE command that is placed in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file by SETUP. SETUP automatically installs the Eurocurrency symbol support for the countries listed in the following table. The support is activated in the same way that code page 850 support is activated, as the following examples shows. Note: These examples assume PC DOS has been installed in the \DOS directory on your hard disk. For additional information see the section "Customizing Keyboards for International Use" and the specific commands in the PC DOS 7 Command Reference and Error Messages book. 1) When you install any keyboard or country other than the default U.S., SETUP adds a command to the CONFIG.SYS file to allocate a buffer for the code page: DEVICE=C:\DOS\DISPLAY.SYS CON=(,,1) 2) Commands are also added to AUTOEXEC.BAT to load, prepare and select the code page: MODE CON CP PREP=((850) C:\DOS\xxx.CPI) (where xxx is either EGA, EGAX or ISO) MODE CON CP SEL=850 3) A command is added to AUTOEXEC.BAT to load the country-specific keyboard support: KEYB yy,,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS (where yy is the keyboard code) For Turkish keyboards 179 and 440, code page 857 is the default in the above commands and not 850. To activate the Eurocurrency symbol support for these Turkish keyboards, install code page 850 in addition to the default code page. For more information, see the section "Customizing Keyboards for International Use" and the specific commands in the PC DOS 7 Command Reference and Error Messages book. The following command can then be added to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file or entered at the command line to activate code page 850: CHCP 850 For International English, you must select both International English as the country and US English as the keyboard to get code page 850 and the Eurocurrency symbol support. The following table gives the key sequence for each supported country (the AltGr and AltCar keys are the same as the right-hand Alt key). KEY SEQUENCE FOR EUROCURRENCY SYMBOL SUPPORT COUNTRY KEYBOARD KEYBOARD CODE EURO KEY SEQUENCE ------- -------- ------------- ----------------- Belgium Belgian BE AltCar + e Canada (French) Canadian French CF AltCar + e Denmark Danish DK AltGr + 5 Finland Finnish SU AltGr + 5 France French (189) FR AltGr + e France French (120) FR AltCar + e Germany German (129) GR AltGr + e Germany German (453) GR AltGr + e Iceland Icelandic IC AltGr + 5 International US English UX AltGr + 5 English Italy Italian (141) IT AltGr + 5 Italy Italian (142) IT AltGr + 5 Latin America Latin American LA AltGr + e Netherlands Dutch NL AltGr + e Norway Norwegian NO AltGr + 5 Portugal Portuguese PO AltGr + 5 Spain Spanish SP AltGr + 5 Sweden Swedish SV AltGr + 5 Switzerland Swiss (French) SF AltGr + e Switzerland Swiss (German) SG AltGr + e Turkey Turkish (440) TR AltGr + e Turkey Turkish (179) TR AltGr + e United Kingdom UK English UK AltGr + 4 Notices ======= The following are trademarks of the IBM Corporation in the United States or other countries or both: IBM Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. IBM DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND MERCHANTABILITY WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT. BY FURNISHING THIS DOCUMENT, IBM GRANTS NO LICENSES TO ANY PATENTS OR COPYRIGHTS. (c) Copyright IBM Corporation 1981, 1998. All rights reserved. **** End of Document ****