> Yeah, but after I posted my message I thought of something: The date and
> time is always correct, even after several days without mains power.
> It's only the year that's wrong. How come?

I don't know if this is the case for VAXen, but:

The time chip used in these beasties (and PCs as well) records time with
a two-digit BCD year. This will obviously be a problem come Y2K. The
DECstation (pmax) folks deal with the rollover problem by keeping the
clock chip programmed for sometime in the '70s and then adjusting the 
system time based on what the clock chip says relative to some base time
stored somewhere in the filesystem.

Roger Ivie
ivie@cc.usu.edu