No, they meant weeks. The weeks counter goes to 1024 and then rolls over to
0. Some GPS devices did not have the programming adjusted to figure in the
rollover. Thus when August 21, 1999 at 8:00 P.M. ET (8/22/99 0000GMT)
arrived it thought it was January 6, 1980 and calculated position wrong.
They have been alerting pilots and boats for a while now. It wasn't just
Japanese cars, it was all GPS. Most units manufactured in about 93 were
ready for the rollover. Also the time does not originate in the unit, its
transmitted from the satellite, so the baseline for the 0 time comes from
when the military turned GPS on for the first time, January 6, 1980.
Jim Altman jaltman@altlaw.com Illigitimi non Carborundum
http://www.altlaw.com/metro/jaltman.html 69-TR6#CC28754L(O) W4UCK
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-triumphs@autox.team.net
[mailto:owner-triumphs@autox.team.net]On Behalf Of Michael D. Porter
Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 11:56 PM
To: Andrew Mace
Cc: Scions of Stanpart
Subject: Re: we don't need no steenkin' navigation system
Andrew Mace wrote:
>
> Per the following news item: A show of hands, please, for all of you whose
> Triumphs were affected yesterday...I thought as much. ;-)
>
> ************************************************************************
> NAVIGATION SYSTEMS FAIL IN SOME JAPANESE CARS
> In Japan, the navigation systems using the satellite-based Global
> Positioning System failed to operate correctly in some Japanese cars
> yesterday, because they had been designed to count to only 1,024 weeks and
> when the maximum was reached on Sunday the clocks reset to zero. Pioneer
Hmmm... I find this a most curious explanation for the problem. If the
week counter was absolute, i.e., the device began counting weeks from
the time it was first turned on, that would mean that Japanese cars have
had GPS navigation for 19.69 years... perhaps they meant days....
Cheers.
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