November 30th, 1999
 
To: Everyone
From: Dr. John Harwood, Director, NMR Facilities
Re: Y2K and the NMR Facilities
 
The purpose of this memo is to inform everyone of the Y2K compliance status and preparedness plans for our NMR Facilities. The plans given here are the same as those submitted to the University as part of our departmental preparedness program. The compliance status information is for your own reference.
 
Compliance Status
Bruker Avance DRX-500 and DPX-400. The operating systems on the SGI computers that are part of these spectrometers was upgraded to Y2K compliance by myself a few months ago. This upgrade involved downloading and installing all of the system patches SGI indicated were needed to ensure compliance. The Bruker NMR software release that we use is guaranteed by Bruker to be compliant.
 
Bruker AM-400 and AC-200. The operating system on these old Aspect-3000 based spectrometers is not Y2K compliant and cannot be made Y2K compliant. However, my own test indicated that when the date rolled over from 12-31-99 to 01-01-00, the year of 00 did not crash the system (note: the computer thinks this date is 1900, not 2000). Thus, these systems will be left to run as is; if problems are seen, the dates on the computers will be manually reset to 1990.
 
Varian VXR-300S. I have not yet tested this spectrometer. If problems arise the system date will be reset to 1990. Keep in mind that this spectrometer will be upgraded with a new console and computer during the first quarter of 2000; this new equipment will be Y2K compliant.
 
Preparedness
The two occurrences that are potentially problematic to our NMR equipment are power failures and long-term (two weeks or more) disruption of cryogen delivery. In order to deal with these as well as possible the following plan was devised.
 
In keeping with the University's declaration that the campus shall be "closed" from January 1st to January 3rd, on Friday, December 31st, all of our NMR spectrometers will be shut down and unplugged from power. In addition, all of the magnets will be topped up with liquid nitrogen. The spectrometers will then be brought back up on Tuesday, January 4th (barring problems beyond our control). Liquid helium fills and extra liquid nitrogen deliveries will be arranged to allow us to manage without cryogen deliveries for up to two weeks after January 1st.
 
NMR data on the Bruker Avance spectrometers will be backed up to a Jaz disk prior to the shutdown on December 31st. NMR data on the other spectrometers WILL NOT BE BACKED UP. As a precaution, I STRONGLY recommend that groups make their own backups of any data, from ANY AND ALL spectrometers, that they consider valuable.
 
If you have any questions please contact me.