My Sony date setup seems to only goes up to year 2037

4 years 1 month ago #677756 by Victor.E
I just picked up a second hand Sony, and strangely enough the date setup only goes up to 2037.  

So what happens in 2038?


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4 years 1 month ago #677758 by Nikon Shooter
1, you will have grown over it anyway or
2, you will be informed of a firmware! :P

Be patient, Victor. :)

Light is free… capturing it is not!
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4 years 1 month ago #677760 by Victor.E
Yeah, true.  But found it interesting why it stopped at 2037.  


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4 years 1 month ago #677776 by garyrhook
Because the datum storing the date (in seconds) is a signed 32-bit quantity.

The epoch, according to Unix, occurred on December 31, 1969.

A 32-bit signed integer can hold a maximum value of 2 billion, or, to be exact, 0x7FFFFFFF (hexadecimal) or 2,147,483,647 in decimal. This represents the date, in the number of seconds since the epoch.

Thus, midnight on Jan. 2, 1970 would be represented by a value of (60*60*24) = 86,400.

Extending this, the maximum number of seconds since midnight, Dec. 31, 1969 turns out to be 
60 * 60 = 3600 seconds / hour
3600 * 24 = 86400 seconds / day
86,400 * 365 = 31,536,000 seconds / year (non-leap years)
which gives us
2147483647 / 31536000 = 68 years, with 3 million seconds left over, or about 35 days.
Taking into account the leap years between 1970 and 2038, we get 16 more days.

So, a signed 32-bit value can represent the dates starting Jan 1, 1970 up to Jan. 19, 2038. Most data systems simply stop at the end of 2037.

If I've done my math correctly, of course.

The solution for this problem is to move to a 64-bit value to represent the date (still relative to 1970), but capable of handling dates until the year 446,676,600,546. This is been done in most computer systems.

But apparently not in your Sony. One presumes that any copies of the files will be recognized as only supporting 32-bit dates, and interpreted accordingly.


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4 years 1 month ago #677794 by CatherineW
Another super detailed answer from Gary, if you need any other details, this should help:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

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