Fixing the Date with DATETEST.EXE

The HP 200LX's built-in calendar suffers from some of the same problems that effect the calendar in other computers. On occasion, if the machine crashes or you are forced to do a hard reset (CTRL+Shift+ON), the date may be reset to Jan. 1, 1980. When this happens, you typically have to reset the calendar to the current day and update the Appointment Book by pressing the F5 (Goto) and F4 (Today) keys.

The DATETEST.EXE program can help alleviate some of these reset-hassles.

To use the DATETEST program simply transfer it to the Palmtop and include the command DATEST 1999 in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. The next time you restart the Palmtop, DATETEST will check if the value of the year that pops up is less than the value of the year indicated on the DATETEST command line. A hard reset is most likely to reset the date to 1980. In this case the DATETEST program would find that 1980 is less than 1999 and the program will then ask you to enter the correct date from the keyboard. The DATETEST program is the work of Lihu Avital / Pitron pit@actcom.co.il.