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The Crouch-Echlin Effect
May 22nd, 2008 by Ice Cream Jonsey

FROM THE MAILBAG: I was recently asked about the kinds of projects I worked on at Cyrix. I don’t mind saying that I was an insignificant cog that got laid off when Cyrix was sold. But nevertheless, the statute of limitations is over, so out come the gory details.

STORY #1: THE CROUCH-ECHLIN EFFECT

In 1998, the world was ablaze with the Year 2000. Computer systems would come crashing down, and our financial markets would dissolve into little else but pig futures and shares of Big League Chew.

Two guys, Jace Crouch and Mike Echlin, started documenting and discussing a weird effect when it came to computers.

Imagine if you will, setting the time of a PC to past the year 2000, in 1998. So you tell the PC, through BIOS, that it’s January 1st, 2000. And then you let it go. The effect people were seeing was that of time dilation. While the PC (and I believe people said they saw it on Intel and Cyrix processors, can’t remember if AMD were a major player here or what) was perfectly fine when the time was pre-2000, it would get wonky when set beyond that time.

Well, certainly that was going to be a problem, no? We can’t have that. I was asked to test this behavior.

So I did. I took a couple Cyrix chips, popped them into motherboards, and told them it was the year 2000 and change. And sure enough, I do solemnly swear, they experienced time warping. I do remember that, at the end of the week, they were a couple months into 2000. Set, fakely, for Jan 1st 2000, one was into the end of February and one into March.

I said, with confidence, that these two chips did exhibit the Crouch – Echlin effect.

Unfortunately, I no longer have my notes, so I can’t say what chips they were. And certainly, BIOS has something to do with it, and we were running experimental BIOS. There is definitely a possibility that my report got sent to someone on the BIOS team, they checked some code, said, “oh,” and quietly fixed it. There is also the possibility that my report was completely ignored. But no known computer, anywhere, exhibited the Crouch-Echlin effect in the “real world,” when we actually did get into the year 2000. No PC that I know of showed time warping. And in fact, doing a search for the effect today leads you to people who believe it was all just a scam to sell a “solution” to it.

I don’t know what to say. There was about a year to do something about the effect when I was done testing – but I really don’t think anything was done. I can’t explain why those two computers acted the way they did, and they were soon requisitioned for other purposes. It remains a bit of a mystery.

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