Availability of PDB Services December 31, 1999, through January 3, 2000

We have taken all reasonable precautions to ensure that the software and hardware supporting PDB operations are Y2K compliant. While we do not anticipate any problems with our local facilities related to Y2K, we are concerned about the potential for disruption of network communication and the associated adverse affect this could have on the deposition process. In particular, we want to avoid the loss or corruption of any deposited data. As a result, we believe that it is prudent to shutdown PDB deposition operations during this uncertain period.

The following summarizes the availability of PDB services from December 31, 1999, through January 3, 2000.

WWW query and ftp services:

All query, ftp, and e-mail services provided by the PDB will remain on-line during this period.

Data Deposition services:

We plan to turn off the ADIT deposition server to correspond to the worldwide transition to the year 2000 at 6 am EST December 31, 1999. We will be testing the ADIT system on January 2, 2000, and if all goes well we plan to restore deposition services at 9 am EST January 3, 2000. Although ADIT and AUTODEP at the Rutgers site will not be available during this period, the deposition server system will remain on-line and will accept e-mail during this period.