FYI - GPS date rollover

DerekW · February 13

You may wish to read about a date issue with the GPS system, see:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/12/current_gps_epoch_ends/

alanb · February 13

We briefly discussed the week rollover problem a while back in this thread: http://forums.gpsreview.net/discussion/comment/208489. The consensus seemed to be that Garmin had addressed this issue in most of its modern devices.

privet01 · February 13

Probably will mirror the big event we had December 31, 1999 as we changed to January 1, 2000. No big deal, much like the end of the Aztec calendar.

Chris_Sav · February 14

privet01 said:
Probably will mirror the big event we had December 31, 1999 as we changed to January 1, 2000. No big deal, much like the end of the Aztec calendar.

The reason 1999/2000 was not a big deal was the preparation that went into it, months and months of testing date assignments and replacing older systems

privet01 · February 16

True there was preparation for the y2k event. Just like there is preparation for this event too. Date problems exist programs, computers and other devices that will happen at various times through out the coming years and decades. Just like y2k and the half dozen or so that will happen in the next 50 years, designers and engineers of software and firmware were aware of the issue when they chose to use that date/time format and will have made allowances for it's handling.

Older devices that are no longer supported may finally have to be replaced, but most of those are probably just used for personal reasons. If all of my older Garmin's were to stop working correctly, it's no great loss as they only serve to be spare for a more recent spare.

Boyd · February 16

privet01 said:
Older devices that are no longer supported may finally have to be replaced, but most of those are probably just used for personal reasons.

I hope you are right, but I wonder..... what kinds of industrial, agricultural, aviation, commerce, marine or military equipment have integrated GPS - and are they all up to date? I mean, there are still millions of computers running Windows XP! :)

DerekW · February 16

The Y2K event caught out some main frame systems that had been written in 1970s that would have date formats that assumed the application would only need 2 digit year numbers. ie the application would be long gone before 2000 or date calculations would never require a year number greater than 99. However these systems just kept running. Function to support the business would be improved but basic things like dates would not be considered until Y2K planning/panic and analysis took place.

Tim · February 17

This thread is relevant:
https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1058676834940776450

I know of at least one government agency that has lots of integrated GPS devices in remote locations that were found susceptible to pretty much the exact same bug. Long story short, even when the original manufacturer wrote a firmware fix they were a massive pain to update not only because of their remote location, but because the government typically doesn't give employees administrative access to their computer, which they discovered was required to run the firmware update.

alanb · June 4

Garmin is apparently still releasing some fixes for this. I have two old nuvi's, a 755T and a 855. Today they both received firmware update Ver 3.0 for GPS Chipset type M to "fix a possible bug in the reported date". I suspect this might be related to the "Week Rollover" date issue but don't really know. I am not sure what conditions cause the date error because both of my devices showed the correct date both before and after the update.

menhir · June 15

My Zumo660 was affected, but you wouldn't know it until you removed and replaced the battery.
In any case, a fix was made available by Garmin a couple of weeks ago.

FYI - GPS date rollover

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