[time-nuts] Thunderbolt Rollover

[Matthias Jelen]

Hello,
I got a Trimble Thunderbolt a few months ago and implemented 
a simple monitor on a MCU to display time, no of satellites 
etc. on a lcd display.
While working on this, I found the hint for the upcoming 
rollover in 2017 in the user manual. I couldn?t find any 
details on this in the internet - the question for me was if 
the unit becomes useless in about three years (which would 
minimize my motivation to put all the stuff in a shiny 
enclosure) or if simply the calculation of the date will fail.
So I took the unit to work and hooked it to a signal 
generator capable of simulating GPS, GNSS etc. systems. As 
expected, everything works fine until July, 2017. If I try 
dates later than this, Lady Heather refuses to display time 
and date. The strange thing is that time and date are still 
sent in the serial protocol. August 20th, 2018 is decoded as 
January, 4t, 1999. As expected, time is OK.
So, hopefully this is only a problem in LH and the 
Thunderbolt will be usable after July, 2017 - I?d be happy 
to live with a wrong date.
Can anyone confirm this observations or does anyone have 
more information on this topic?
Thanks a lot and regards,
Matthias, DK4YJ