Wait a second, let me get this one straightened out.
January 1, 1970, presumably 0:00 - 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 (or 0 base 10)
January 17, 2038, 3:14:08 - 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 (or 4,294,967,296 base 10)
January 17, 2038, 3:14:09 - 1 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000, but the one instead carries to the carry register. Which means that technically speaking, nothing extraordinary will happen for another second after 2^32 is reached. Not really the point, though. So, let's walk through this.
0 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 - fine and dandy.
0 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 - fine and dandy.
1 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 - fine and dandy.
1 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001 - fine and dandy.
1 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000010 - Can't happen. Instead, the counter will reset to....
0 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001 - but with the Overflow flag raised. This signals a negative number. If they use a One's Compliment system, which would be absurd, the time would be effectively read as:
-1 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111110 - Or about October, 1698. With 2's compliment, the time changes very slightly, but you don't worry much about negative zeroes. Those are absurd. It would simply change to...
-0, which is the same as +0 with a one's compliment. What do you get 0 seconds after January 1st, 1970?
January 1st, 1970. Not 'OH MY SWEET JESUS THE COMPUTERS ARE ON FIRE!'.
January 1st, 1970. That can be accounted for, the error rectified. Hell, just use a 64 bit computer. If you're still running into the issue 2^64 years later,
upgrade your system in that timeframe.It is past midnight and I am tired. I might be mixing up one's and two's compliments, and as such what I am saying could be switched around. This is also assuming that the embedded counters for computing systems contain standard carry and sign flag registers. This is also assuming that 1970 is the 'zero' date, and they didn't pick some arbitrary number like 1900 as zero and waste a bunch of seconds. This is also assuming that I am fully remembering my microprocessors notes while running on 4 hours of sleep.
Good night everyone, I'll sort this out in the morning, inconsequential as it is to the subject of this thread.