The following reply was made to PR port-cobalt/30405; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Erik Berls <cyber@netbsd.org>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: port-cobalt/30405: can't make network connect with date set before 1970
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 08:01:58 +0000

 As of September, 2006, port-cobalt (and just about everybody else)
 was converted to use the new TODR code.  This code has sanity checks
 on initialization to ensure that the time of day is reasonable on
 boot.  Currently it checks for:
 
 Filesystem time > 5 * SECYR
 Realtime clock > 25 * SECYR
 
 The code ensures that the date is beyond 1970, which should allow
 ping to function.  Note that many other programs may fail on negative
 date values along with ping, this also helps them.