Year 2000 problems exist in virtually all computer languages, but 9999 glitches occur almost exclusively in Cobol programs that were written for older mainframes.

Consequently, American businesses and individuals are discarding their old mainframes, personal computers and work stations at a rate of more than 10 million a year.

"In those days, it was mostly researchers and military personnel linked to a big old mainframe," Mr. Curry added.

"Very few operations outside the Soviet Union were so centralized," Mr. Smith said, referring to the old mainframe.

At first he didn't know anything about computers except how to program the old mainframes, what he learned in college.

But it has seen a resurgence in recent years as the older mainframes have also been connected to networks.

The current system is structured on an old mainframe, or hub-andspoke, concept.

Many of the keyboard's quirks are left over from the time when engineers had to balance the needs of older mainframes and the emerging PC's.

To add to customers' problems, he said, old mainframes can't run new software with additional functionality.

Here we have these fantastic chips, a whole processing unit smaller than your little toenail with fifty times the data-handling capacity of the old mainframes.