US President George Bush signed the changes to Daylight Savings Time into law this week, but 3000 managers were already at work designing changes to their time-shift programs for MPE/iX. No, that's not the software that turns back the calendar to the days of gas prices below $2 a gallon. These are the routines to adjust the HP 3000's clock to accomodate the spring-forward, fall-back shifts in time of day.

Dave Powell, the HP 3000 manager at California-based fabric and garment company MM Fab who's been beta-testing HP's 3000 patches this year, put up the first routine to accomodate the new dates when Daylight Savings Time begins and ends. He's floating his program for checking and approval on the 3000 newsgroup this week:

I now have a couple new time change routines, suitable (I hope) for use in a job that runs every morning (well after midnight) in California.  If I haven’t missed anything, either would switch automagically from old rules to new in 2007.

Do they look okay to everyone ?

!#   Check for Daylight Saving Time change -- NEW  (readable?)
!IF  HPDAY = 1
!    IF  HPYYYY <= 2006
!        IF  HPMONTH = 4   AND   HPDATE < 8
!            SETCLOCK TIMEZONE = W7:00
!        ELSEIF  HPMONTH = 10   AND   HPDATE > 24
!            SETCLOCK TIMEZONE = W8:00
!        ENDIF
!    ELSE
!        IF  HPMONTH = 3   AND   HPDATE >= 8   AND   HPDATE <= 14
!            SETCLOCK TIMEZONE = W7:00
!        ELSEIF  HPMONTH = 11   AND   HPDATE <= 7
!            SETCLOCK TIMEZONE = W8:00
!        ENDIF
!    ENDIF
!ENDIF

or, if you don't like white space....

!#   Check for Daylight Saving Time change -- NEW (condensed)
!IF HPMONTH=3 AND HPDAY=1 AND HPYYYY>2006 AND HPDATE>7 AND HPDATE<15
!    SETCLOCK TIMEZONE = W7:00
!ELSEIF HPMONTH=11 AND HPDAY=1 AND HPYYYY>2006 AND HPDATE<8
!    SETCLOCK TIMEZONE = W8:00
!ELSEIF HPMONTH=4 AND HPDAY=1 AND HPYYYY<2007 AND HPDATE<8
!    SETCLOCK TIMEZONE = W7:00
!ELSEIF HPMONTH=10 AND HPDAY=1 AND HPYYYY<2007 AND HPDATE>24
!    SETCLOCK TIMEZONE = W8:00
!ENDIF