Y2K8 Zune quirk really a Freescale bug?

Well, here's an interesting twist to this story. That mysterious and completely enraging "Zune bug" that cropped up on the final day of 2008 may not have been restricted to Microsoft PMPs. A much smaller cadre of Toshiba Gigabeat users reportedly experienced similar issues, and some even noted that the whole "discharge and re-date" rigmarole fixed their unit right up as well. Upon further investigation, it seems that the issue may actually reside in the Freescale MC13783 processor, which -- coincidentally enough -- is used in the Zune 30 and a few of Toshiba's alternatives. We suppose it's a little late to ask, but did any non-Zune owners experience similar issues just prior to the dawn of '09? Or were you too busy, um, partying like it was 1999?

[Thanks nywytboy68]

[Jason Randazza @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:07AM]

Shouldn't it be Y2K8?

[Max @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:18AM]

i think you mean 2k9...

[DarkLight @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:19AM]

No, that'd be 2800

[1234321 @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:37AM]

no 2K8 is 2008
it's just dumb names people are trying to make up, Y28 is even stupider than Z2K which I heard earlier
2800 is 2K8H

[Joseph @ Jan 3rd 2009 3:19AM]

The bug will only happen on Jan 1, 2009, Jan 1, 2013, Jan 1, 2017, etc. assuming your battery/Zune lasts that long.

[Ellianth @ Jan 3rd 2009 3:32AM]

The bug happens on the last day of the old, not the first day of the new year.

[PyRo1509 @ Jan 3rd 2009 6:30AM]

I call it steve

[EricC @ Jan 3rd 2009 1:07PM]

@ Dark: That would be Y2.8K.

You always do that. You always mess up some mundane detail!

[DarkLight @ Jan 3rd 2009 6:53PM]

Messed up on the different uses of the term...

In electronics, 2k8 IS 2800.. But I stand corrected when talking about years :-)

[Cody @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:15AM]

My Toshiba Gigabeat S60 pulled the same stunt, and, of course, it started working again today.

[Alvester Garnett @ Jan 4th 2009 11:58PM]

My Gigabeat S 60 had the same Zune 30/Dec. 31st problem too but came back to life a day later BUT now whenever I try connecting it to my desktop Vista machine it looks up. When I try connecting I hear the Windows USB connection sound, WMP 11 pops up and then on the Gigabeat it says "connecting". Then it moves on to saying "initializing" but gets stuck at this point.

Once this occurs the only option is to toggle the battery switch (while disconnected from USB and charging) and it just goes back to the same Dec. 31st problem - it locks up on boot-up. Here's the clincher - if I wait a day and let the battery drain out and recharge it, it starts OK. I've figured out this scenario since this is my 2nd day of going through this sick ritual.

In essence my S60 works fine as long as I don't try to sync it. Yuck...

[Knee to the Groin @ Jan 3rd 2009 12:33PM]

My iPhone 3G kept dropping calls and the 3G service kept fading in and out all day... so pretty much normal operation.

There is a good fix for the dropped calls at least, unlock -> T-Mobile....

[Nathan @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:18AM]

It's because the driver was written by Freescale with a bug in it, microsoft didn't write the driver themself, neither did toshiba, but they both used the driver for the zune/gigabeat S series that the zune was based on.

[Goatee Man @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:27AM]

That is what the article says, yes.

[Joachim Bengtsson @ Jan 3rd 2009 9:15AM]

@Goatee Man:
No, the article talks some unrelated bs about using the same processor and doesn't mention the shared drivers.

The old news is that it was Freescale's FUBARed driver that caused the problem (it's not Microsoft's code (but still Microsoft's responsibility to QA that code)); the new news is that more devices uses the very same driver.

And since everyone's plugging their blogs, here's my take (with an actual bug fix): http://overooped.com/post/67804305/the-code-that-allegedly-broke-the-zune

[Joel @ Jan 3rd 2009 1:30PM]

I have a friend with the same Zune30 I have (but in pink) and she didn't have this problem. Upon further inspection it turns out she was still using the old firmware.

[The Joker @ Jan 4th 2009 12:17AM]

Reading is fun-duh-mental.

[Joni @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:37AM]

My ATT Tilt running WinMo5 wigged out New Years Eve only to return to normal after powering off and letting it charge over night.

[Phoenix @ Jan 3rd 2009 8:17AM]

Umn... why is your Tilt running WM5? Step backwards much?

[Joel @ Jan 3rd 2009 1:35PM]

Dude! Why in the heck is your Tilt running WM5 when WM6.1 is available? That device didn't even come with WM5.

[1234321 @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:40AM]

The Gigabeat S was a really good player for it's time, but instead of getting a modest upgrade Toshiba hooked up with Microsoft, and used the exact guts of the S for the Zune 30, by taking away some features, and adding useless wifi.
In fact there were some leaked shots of development Gigabeats that became the 4/8 and 80 Zunes, again cutting some nice features

[Jonathan @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:53PM]

Sorry, but wireless sync is one of the best features ever.

[inteller @ Jan 3rd 2009 9:12PM]

yeah, I'd like to see an iPod, or any other player for that matter, sync wirelessly.

[Bryant @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:41AM]

Actually, given that the bulk of my post delves into the zealotry and not so much the the coding aspect (though I give a quick answer to what happened), I'll just post what the chunk of code responsible for the mishap was supposed to do and what went wrong right here:

ORIGINYEAR = 1980 (as stated in the code).

The loop is designed to find out what the current year is by dividing the number of days since ORIGINYEAR to find the current year.

Basically, the loop runs through and subtracts 365 from the number of days and increments years by 1 if the current year is not a leap year and subtracts 366 from the number of days (and yes, increments years by 1) if the current year IS a leap year.

On 2008, it was supposed to subtract 366 from 367 (and add 1 to years total, which was 2008) to get day 1 of 2009. However, the loop didn't properly handle the case where days = 366, so an infinite loop was the result, hence the issue.

This is basically the content for my post tomorrow on the issue.

[Graham Wellington (formerly tyrone washington, or marsha goldberg) @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:48AM]

my ipod didnt do anything, haha!!

j/k im not That asshole.

...btw, cant wait until next leap year for the same rigmarole

[--------- @ Jan 3rd 2009 3:14AM]

You think that 4 years from now those Zune 30s will still be working, maybe even running the latest free firmware update?

Could be...

[The Joker @ Jan 4th 2009 12:28AM]

So which asshole are you?

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jan 3rd 2009 2:50AM]

The Zune 30 was just a Gigabeat plus WiFi. MS just put their own skin on it.

So of course they have similar problems.

MS is generally not great at hardware (mice and keyboards excepted), so it's probably a good thing that MS let Toshiba design the whole thing.

[Quikboy @ Jan 3rd 2009 3:20AM]

"it's probably a good thing that MS let Toshiba design the whole thing"

Not really. In Engadget's article, they said other Toshiba players were messed up with the bug.

Also, how can you explain the Zune 30GBs all going out, but not the Zune 4's, 8's, 16's, 80's, and 120's? All the other other Zunes, after the Zune 30, were built through Flextronics, not Toshiba.

So if you ask me, I wouldn't be recommending Toshiba to make any PMPs for anyone.

[Mark Anderson @ Jan 3rd 2009 5:10AM]

@nohone

Pretty much. It doesn't absolve MS from lack of user testing but it's no different from the nVidia GPU failures experienced by Macs.

Apart from the coverage obviously.

[Mark Anderson @ Jan 3rd 2009 5:12AM]

Oh , and while we're at it, can you guys run an article on how crap the comments system is? I'm sure that would get vitriolic hatred from everyone and be this year's number one post.

Gah!

[Decoy @ Jan 3rd 2009 8:44AM]

The Zune bug fixed itself and got several articles to remind us all about it.

The Macbook problem, well, lets not get into that. It was caused by a third party anyway. Shh.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jan 3rd 2009 12:01PM]

The Zune fixed itself after a day. Compare this to the RRoD. On the whole, a bug like this isn't that horrible compared to what MS has inflicted on themselves in the past.

Have you used the Microsoft Racing Wheel?

[nohone @ Jan 3rd 2009 3:01AM]

I personally would say that even though a different company created the chip and created the software, Microsoft takes the responsibility in that they were shipping the final product. However, some here have made it an issue (Zak, Clak, Paul Chapel, etc.) that if a company ships a defective 3rd party product (defective NVIDIA chip in the Mac, defective Mac touch pad, defective Mac display, defective Mac memory controller and so on, and so on, and so on), it releases that distributor from all all responsibility because it was not their fault. So we should not pin this issue on Microsoft, it is Freescale's problem.

[Decoy @ Jan 3rd 2009 8:47AM]

"So we should not pin this issue on Microsoft, it is Freescale's problem."

No. As a software company Microsoft should be held to a high standard about this kind of thing.

The contributors you mentioned simply hold Microsoft to a higher standard in software than they hold Apple in hardware.

[Shugg @ Jan 3rd 2009 4:02AM]

Typical microsoft failure,.,now u regretting going with apple trying to be different n shit,. Zune still little to zero car integration,n very few docks . Weak!

[--------- @ Jan 3rd 2009 4:35AM]

Typical MS failure, due to a glitch in a vendors code, 3 year old personal entertainment devices became unusable for 24hrs.

[Gnormie @ Jan 3rd 2009 5:34AM]

Shugg: Because a PMP's worth is measured by the amount of docks available...

[The Joker @ Jan 4th 2009 12:46AM]

wut u b talkin bout homes? u not b scoping the w3rds? Not MS$ bad so chill. u r so dope bro.

"And by 'dope' I mean the street colloquialism that suggests that you are a person of enviable qualities - not that you're an idiot, ahem"

[nohone @ Jan 3rd 2009 4:05AM]

Shugg: "now u regretting going with apple"

Yep, I regret every Apple product I have purchased.

[Derry Quinn @ Jan 3rd 2009 5:54AM]

It's funny because he was M$ bashing and mean to say "regret not going with Apple".

How come trolls etc. never use -roper punctuation or grammar? AAAAAAAAARGGGGGHHH! That annoys me more than whatever they're trying to say...

[Eric @ Jan 3rd 2009 4:17AM]

I bought a gigabeat s60 specifically for rockbox (we call it the gigabeast because of its 532 mHz processor + FPU)
plus rockbox also adds msc usb support (no more mtp yay!) with its usb stack and fm recording.
The only problem is we don't have a way to recover the original firmware after install that is user friendly (yet) only way is to take the drive out and put it in an ipod video to read the filesystem before install.

[Derry Quinn @ Jan 3rd 2009 5:49AM]

Very Informative, thank you very much for the info!

[Javier @ Jan 3rd 2009 6:18AM]

Makes me want to get a Zune tattoo.

[SiXiam @ Jan 3rd 2009 6:59AM]

Y10K
Y100K
Y1M
Y10M
Y100M
Y1B

Do we see an ongoing problem here?

It's sort of the ultimate I'll do it tomorrow, when you have thousands of years to wait...

[Boards of Canada @ Jan 3rd 2009 7:00AM]

Are you using safari?

[Robert P @ Jan 3rd 2009 8:47AM]

All you PC people, get Macs and iPods, this would never happen to Apple products

[Gnormie @ Jan 3rd 2009 9:04AM]

I do so hope you're being sarcastic before someone with more time then me throws the few hundred news stories at you about broken/exploding/crashing/dangerous Apple products.

[Jay Evans @ Jan 3rd 2009 9:40AM]

Yea, Apple does things in a bigger way....

ATLANTA -- The new iPod Nano is hot. But one Douglasville man said his old Nano got even hotter -- hot enough to burst into flames.

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/14271878/detail.html

An investigation into the safety of the iPod Nano has been ordered after a reported case of one of the popular music players shooting out sparks while recharging.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-531788/Apple-iPod-probe-Nano-shoots-sparks-recharging.html

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jan 3rd 2009 12:04PM]

Any device sold in sufficient numbers will have a few bad examples. Apple has sold over 100,000,000 iPods. If you hear of two burning, that's a 1 in 50,000,000 being bad.

If Zune's sales ever reach a sufficient level, you'll hear of it having problems like these too.