BDC’s not Auth’ing Users After PDC Fails

Environment: PDC is NT 4.0 / BDC’s are Win 2000
– PDC has not yet been upgraded to 2000 due to political reasons
Issue:
.When the PDC has gone down the entire network is unable to Authenticate via 2000 Login
.There are several BDC’s in the Domain
.I am curious of a reason for this failure OR if it’s doing this since there are no global Catalogs avail. on any of the BDC’s.
.since the site has not fully implemented a 2000 AD enviroment is this an issue that will cease at the time the PDC isupgraded and AD is avail fully
OR is issue fixable in it’s current state?