Re: Mastery Development software broken by Y2K?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Jack Countryman <jcountry@seidata.com> wrote:

>Update...
>
>I've been able to get one of our two systems running by replacing the
>older ProDos 8 file on their program with the P8 file (renamed to
>ProDos) from the GS/OS 6.01 system disk.  
>
>This gets the file server working again, and the workstation IIE can
>once again access and run software from the server.

Yup.  Because it is a later version of ProDOS 8, most likely.

>The thing that still doesn't work is the 'backup' feature on the server
>software that would save the scores/progress of each student using the
>system.  It seems that it records the date of the last backup and
>compares it to the new date.  That part of the software is still not
>liking the 2000 date, or perhaps it only reads the last two digits (its
>proprietary software, and Mastery Development won't tell me where/how
>this is done....they have announced they are dropping support on the
>system all together).

It could still be ProDOS 8.  My impression is that this
software is not correctly understanding relative dates.  It
will always treat 00 as earlier than 99.  I think there is a
patch to ProDOS that provides a workaround.  I've read
in recent csa2 threads that the patch written by the
author of ProSel shifts 00 to 99 forward 40 years so
that relative dating will work.

If all else fails, you can reset the server back 10 years
to 1990.  It'll give you an incorrect year, but let you have
backups.  I think for a classroom, backups are more
important.

>We can probably live without that feature...even if students end up
>having to re-do parts of the drills.
>
>The second system still isn't working...I can't boot it from my system
>disk to access/replace the ProDos on that one because we can't get  a
>mouse to work on that IIGS.  Now we're looking for a different cpu to
>use for that system as we suspect the current one has hardware problems
>on the adb circuits....

Have you tried resetting the control panel to read slot 4
as 'Your Card'?  If not, the mouse disappears under P8.
If this is not the case, then does the KEYBOARD work?
If it does, the ADB controller is fine.  It is the second
ADB connector on the keyboard where the mouse
attaches that's faulty.  Get a Mac ADB keyboard for this
IIGS and plug the mouse into that keyboard.  All will
work fine then.