Post-Gazette Staff Writer City computer experts are worried that the equipment that regulates street lights will get knocked out of whack at the stroke of midnight Jan. 1, 2000. Instead of registering 2000, some older computers will calculate the date as 1900. That is just one of the challenges faced by city and county officials wrestling with the Year 2000 computer dilemma, which is also affecting federal and state governments and businesses worldwide.
New programs compute dates with four digits, thereby avoiding the problem.
Software has also been written that developers say fixes the dates automatically. But older programs, especially those on mainframe computers, such as those that run the city and county payroll programs, have to be fixed by hand. Computer systems for the city's payroll, traffic court, pensions and other offices are on a mainframe computer with more than 1.5 million lines of computer code that have to be individually fixed and tested. Schmitt says the amount of work plus the demand for programmers is driving up prices. It's skilled labor that is in great demand.