Subj : A: ARTFIX08.ZIP Y2K fix for Timed and Netmgr
To   : ALL
From : TOBIAS ERNST
Date : Tue May 23 2000 11:28 am

Hello Everybody!

Because there have been some reports of users that continued to have problems
with the DOS versions of Time dand Netmgr even after using ARTFIX07.ZIP, we
now release ARTFIX08.ZIP. If you still don't know it: This file contains a
set of patches for the fidonet utilties Timed 1.10 and Netmgr 1.00, and if
you are using one of these utilities, you should definitely apply these patches
before 1/1/2000.

In this version of the fix kit, there were, again, no changes for OS/2 or
DOS/386 users. Even users of the 16 bit DOS version of Time dor Netmgr should
only upgrade to ARTFIX08.ZIP if they really were encountering problems with
ARTFIX07.ZIP. If you did not encounter problems with ARTFIX07.ZIP, you'd better
stick with ARTFIX07.

The distribution sites are as usually:

ARTFIX08.ZIP 98736 12-23-1999 Timed and Netmgr Year 2000 bug fixes.

- via fidonet f'req at 2:2476/418 or 2:24/600
- via WWW: http://www.physcip.uni-stuttgart.de/tobi/projects.html#artfix
- soon at ftp.juge.com or f'req at 1:106/2000
- soon at all GFD and BBSNet sites

Following a more detailed explanation of what has actually changed in this
version:

The DOS versions of the Artfix patches use software interrupts to communicate
between netmgr.ovl and netmgr.com, resp. timed.ovl and timed.com. For this
to work, of course, those interrupt numbers that Artfix uses should not be
used by any TSR program or by the operating system itself.

When implementing Artfix I have always only used interrupt vector numbers
that, according to my lists and the best of my knowledge, are unused. However,
it turned out that those interrupt numbers that I was originally using were
used on quite some systems, in particular Windows 95 and Desqview systems.


When one of the software interrupt numbers that the artfix'ed Timed and Netmgr
programs are using is already in use by some TSR or by your operating system
itself, almost anything can happen.  Symptoms include:

  - General Protection Violation
  - Complete System Freeze or Reboot
  - Other sorts of strange behaviour of your system
  - Timed displaying wrong dates
  - Timed writing wrong dates to the message base
  - Timed corrupting the dates of your message base even when you just *READ*
    mails (but don't *SAVE* any mails).

Quite some users reported some problems like these, and in all cases, they
could be solved by just switching to different interrupt vector numbers.

Now, the one and only difference between Artfix7 and Artfix8 ist that I 
switched
to a different set of software interrupt numbers.  There are *not* any other
changes, the Y2K functionality has stayed entirely the same.

Consequently, if you are already using Artfix7 and it works for you, stick
with it. Nobody can guarantee that the new interrupt numbers work on your 
system.
Maybe while on other systems, the new ones work but the old ones don't, your
system could behave just the other way round. - Only if Artfix7 does not work
reliably for you, try Artfix8.

If you have not yet installed any Artfix version, try Artfix8 first. If you
have any problems, try using Artfix7 instead.  For your convenience, the 
Artfix7
level files are also included in the "DOS-OLD" subdirectories of the TIMED
and NETMGR subdirectory.


Finally, we wish everybody a Merry Christmas, and hopefully no bad surprises
on New Year's Eve :-).

Kind Regards,
Tobias.

--- MPost/2 v1.21
 * Origin: Badnerland BBS, Stuttgart (2:2476/418

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