500 DAYS 'TIL 2000; FIRMS SHELL OUT MILLIONS TO BEAT COMPUTER CLOCK.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer

The new millennium is just 500 days away and a two-letter, one-digit bug - known in techno-geek slang as Y2K - is threatening to turn cyberspace into an electronic mosh pit of computers.

The problem is as straightforward as a common cold; the solution as vexing as translating Latin into English.

As clocks strike the new millennium, some computer systems that use old programming languages like Common Business-Oriented Language, or COBOL, and Formula Translating System, or FORTRAN, won't be able to distinguish between 2000 and 1900. The possibility for havoc is real because computer systems that one day easily communicated with each other could be complete strangers the next.

It's an event horizon that San Fernando Valley-area companies are approaching with varying amounts of dread and advanced planning.

Bruce Zaman, owner of Best Data Products Inc. in Chatsworth, a company that makes modems and products for videoconferencing and 3-D graphics for the personal computing market, took the fast-track approach to the problem.

Zaman spent about $20,000 on upgrades to make sure that Best Data's internal software systems are year-2000 compliant. The switch-over started in April.

``It was very time consuming but after making the decision on what the solution was it was not that difficult,'' he said. ``We had to purge very old information. Basically our system is lighter and has less information but we are compliant with the year 2000.''

The conversion at Best Data, which has about 100 employees, is considered small by Y2K standards. But collectively, businesses and governments worldwide are spending up to an estimated $600 billion to avert a monster crash Jan. 1, 2000.

``If you're not losing sleep at night, you don't understand the problem,'' said Timothy F. Scudder, vice president at The Gartner Group, a Stamford, Conn., technology research firm that is a large purveyor of Year 2000 advice. ``Year 2000 is not a tech-weenie problem. It's a business problem.''

Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc., which bought Great Western Bancorp of Chatsworth and is in the process of buying H. F. Ahmanson & Co. of Irwindale, already has spent $3.7 million making its computers Y2K compliant and will spend at least $13 million more on the problem.

This comes on top of a $30.3 million systems upgrade Washington Mutual made before it went on its Southern California buying spree.

``Its primary purpose was to easily integrate large acquisitions but it clearly has Y2K utility,'' Washington Mutual spokesman Tim McGarry said of the large capital outlay.

This type of conversion is so big in fact that Woodland Hills-based Litton Industries Inc. has two divisions devoted to marketing solutions to the problem and is in the midst of making sure its own systems will be compliant, said spokesman Brandon R. Belote III.

Litton PRC in McLean, Va., with 5,000 employees, does Y2K remediation work for federal agencies and Litton Enterprise Solutions, with 425 employees, focuses on the nuclear power plant market.

Trouble-shooting Y2K problems accounted for about $10 million in revenue for the commercial unit in the fiscal year ending July 31, Belote said.

The cost of a fix depends on how complicated the problem is. Litton executives are still totaling up their tab and have been replacing some in-house systems for the past 18 months.

``We are still working our way through the issue and as most people realize it is not unreasonable to say the problem isn't going to be totally resolved by Dec. 31, 1999. There will be a level of activity that goes beyond that magic date,'' Belote said.

The fixes can be time-consuming. Jody J. Maxwell, owner of Jam II Consulting Inc., has been working on Long Beach-based Pacific Century Bank's system since February and his contract takes him into the first part of next year. His rate is $65 an hour.

Basically he looks at the bank's master programs line by line so that customers will not encounter any problems on the day of the big date change.

``You've got to determine where every date-sensitive field is and even fields related to date-sensitive codes. It's not something that can be done overnight,'' he said.

Nor is Maxwell worried about running out of work any time soon.

``There is going to be an even bigger push next year. That's when everyone is going to have to do their heavy testing,'' he said. ``And my anticipation is that a good two years after the year 2000 there will still be a lot of cleanup work that has to be done.''