[rescue] SunOS 4.1.1 - Can't set date

[foo bar]

On Mon, May 4, 2026 at 10:36 AM Steve Hatle via rescue
<rescue at sunhelp.org> wrote:
>
> All,
>
> With the help of fellow lister Walter Belgers, I’m getting my 3/80 back up and running,
>
> After getting a good framebuffer from Walter, and getting the NVRAM programmed (correctly, I hope…) I was able to find a ZuluSCSI image of a running 3/80 with SunOS 4.1.1_u1 from a post of VCFED. I downloaded that, and put it on a BlueSCSI, and the machine boots up as expected.
>
> The image is supposed to have the Y2K patches applied, and the system thinks its date is sometime in February of 2000. The clock keeps time - if I leave it unplugged for an hour, come back and start the system again, the clock will have advanced an hour.

I would be doubtful of any Y2K patches for anything before 4.1.3. I
know Sun claimed 4.1.3_u1b and 4.1.4 were Y2K compliant with patches.

> However, if I try and set the date, it won’t change. Using (doing this from memory, but following the man page)
>
>  YYMMDDHHMM
>
>  2605040924
>
> It would come back with
>
> Setting the date to 09:24 May 4 2026
>
> And then show the old date again.
>
> If I use a year prior to 2000 it does the same thing.
>
> Not sure if this is a SunOS quirk, an NVRAM hiccup of some kind, out an issue with the image and/or BlueSCSI.

I think this is just a sign of the system not being fully Y2K
compliant. I just set the date in NetBSD and it seems to work fine in
SunOS without any patches altho I haven't done any testing beyond
basic desktop use.