Going Back To Past For The Future: Using Digital Watches Beyond Its Calendar's End
I had a handful of digital watches whose calendar had reached its maximum date value. For the longest time, I believed that once a watch reached the furthest date it could display, then it was pretty much useless and needed to be retired. Much to my chagrin, I was wrong.
Take my old Casio Data Bank DB-510 with the 262 module. The furthest date it could display was December 31, 2019. Everything was good until January 1, 2020 when the calendar year didn't turn over. It just stayed in 2019. When that happened, I placed the watch in my retired watch box. 🫡😔 But as it turned out that there was a way that I could actually still use it. 🤨😱
One day at work, someone asked me if old calendars could be reused. I decided to do some research and found out that definitely could as long as you used the right calendar whose dates matched. Furthermore, I discovered that you could look up online which past calendar year you could reuse for the year that you want just by asking your Smart Assistant. So, I asked Google, "What calendar can I reuse for 2023?" Googled answered me with the following info:
". . . These years have the same calendars as 2023: 1933, 1939, 1950, 1961, 1967, 1978, 1989, 1995, 2006, 2017, 2023, 2034, 2045 and 2051."
Holy crap! This was something I didn't know and never even considered.🤔 So, I set my watch for 1995 because it's nostalgic to me. Now, I get to have a retired digital watch back in action. Sure, I'll have to probably update it every year but that's something I'm willing to do. 😁
builder of websites, fixer of computers, player of old video games, watcher of anime, collector of yo-yos, comic books, action figures and cheap watches
This is an an awesome work around!
I'm not going to bother to check, but I'd assume that as long as the actual and set year agree on whether it's a leap year or not, you won't have to re-adjust until this discrepancy appears. And you can wait two months into the year for that!
I did the same to mine, but apparently, I also discovered that the year doesn't make any difference to the day and date on these anyway.
I also found my sportier "upgrade" in the shed earlier this year.
I believe it matters when there’s a leap year but I’ll to wait to see whenever that actually happens.
I'm not going to bother to check, but I'd assume that as long as the actual and set year agree on whether it's a leap year or not, you won't have to re-adjust until this discrepancy appears. And you can wait two months into the year for that!
True. But getting the right calendar year that is synced to when the next leap year is make it so I wouldn’t have to bother. 1996 is a leap year and so is 2024. With 1995 matching with 2023, I think the watch is going to be spot on for a while. The next skipped leap year is 2100 and by then I really won’t care.