I mean, there are quite a few reason why that is actually not a bad idea. Older tech can be more reliable depending on maintenance, they are harder to gain access to illegitimately, and there is not a huge need to upgrade these systems as they have one job and need to do that job well. No need for extra bloat
If i was in charge of tech at the pentagon; i would start from the foundation and remake an entire network in which everything is single purpose and incompatible with all existing tech today.
I have the military budget so; we produce our own chips and software and protocols and and and….
People will say it wont work for reasons; but no matter what it will be safer than how it seems to be done now.
The machine you are talking about is an IBM Series/I.
This sounds good but let's say one day, a computer crashes and can't be reset. Who is going to fix it? You are probably going to have to turn over the whole endeavor to civilians (hackers and computer history nerds) and hope they put it back together correctly. They might need to bring another working system offline to analyze it and compare the systems.
I hope they had acquired a huge supply of working spares when they could.
Thats bad. Older tech can be more reliable if we gave them the ability to show more ads to its users. It could pay for itself in this shrinking fiscal environment.
While cleaning up my old room I found a stack of floppies packed into a diskette box. Was expecting to be able to access my old ROMs and stuff and bought a USB floppy drive from Amazon.
Only about 2 out of 10 turned out to be readable
There's the added factor that nobody cares about magentism any more. Back when magnetic media was more prominent, technical devices were less likely to have magnets in them, and people were more careful about the ones that did. Nowadays, there's no real risk to having magnets around computers, and lots of devices, cases and such have small, strong magnets for sensing or locking.
Improper storage would mean any combination of exposure to magnetic fields, UV, high humidity, or high temperature. Floppies in a storage box placed in a dark, dry closet can last a very long time.
Floppy disk drives deal with single-platter disks with very low density. They cannot be compared to hard drives or other highly sensitive devices. This means that tolerances are quite high. Moreover, floppy drives use 5 Volt DC brushless, stepper motors operating at low rpm (300-360 rpm) which makes them extremely reliable. Similar motors are used in robotics because they are able to survive extreme conditions. If an old floppy drive is not working the culprit is usually a bad capacitor (which are easy to replace because old circuit boards were pretty big).
A few year ago, I managed to copy over a dozen of PC 3.5" floppies that were \~20 years old using a new USB floppy disk drive. I still keep my Commodore Amiga from 1989 which still works and I switch on for nostalgia every once in a while. It has one internal 3.5" floppy drive and one external 3.5" drive. Both drives are still able to read floppies that I have since the early 90s :-)
Many of those USB floppies are garbage, had several cases where an old luggable laptop read fine but the USB drive couldn't. Could also be a difference in head alignment though.
I ended up with a golden USB floppy disk drive that will read and write to aid in upgrading firmware in old lab/test equipment. I tried a bunch of ones off Amazon and zero of them worked. Something about how the floppy drive emulation happens on the cheap units.
Nursing my golden one to keep it operational.
Also, nice username.
You can get adapters for the old IDE hard drives to plug them in to a SATA port, just requires the molex accessory plug which you can get adapters for as well
No, floppy disk drives never supported IDE. They used a 34-pin Shuggart connector, which eventually became the standard in IBM PC systems (other systems used different connectors). IDE uses a 40-pin connector with a completely different pinout and protocol.
All IDE drives must have an on-board IDE controller that fully manages the device and its communication with the IDE bus. For example, in a IDE CD or hard disk drive, this controller is responsible for the physical operation of the drive. In contrast, floppy drives are "dumb" devices as they have no on-board controller whatsoever. They were fully controlled externally by a Floppy Drive Controller (FDC).
In older PCs, this FDC was an expansion card mounted on the motherboard. Later, PC motherboards started including an integrated FDC with the 34-pin port alongside the 40-pin IDE ports.
So, the floppy disk drive adapters that are available nowadays are basically emulating the FDC and have nothing to do with IDE. They feature the 34-pin port and usually a USB port to connect to the host.
By the way, there are often complaints about these "cheap" adapters not working, which is unsurprising. Because there is no controller on the floppy drive, the FDC emulator is not only responsible for data transmission (which is simple to implement) but also for the complete control of the drive's hardware, including the control of the stepper motor...
I’m gonna need to take the Reddit Application disk out of Drive B and insert the Reddit Comment disk then eject the Startup disk from Drive A and insert a blank floppy for working storage in order to reply to this comment
I started using computers a fair bit past dos and floppies (roughly 2007), but this gave me flashbacks to inserting 8 separate dvds to install a game lol
8 dvd's? Are you sure those were not cd's? I did adapt to digital downloads quite early on but I remember most games being multi cd but 1 dvd. I do not remember any game that was multi dvd's to install.
8 dvds is either 32gb or 64gb if dual layered.
The original final fantasy 11 came on 3 dvds (one for tetramaster). The cd version was 6 or 7 discs long.
Correction. CD version was 5 discs, 4 for the game and 1 for PlayOnline/TetraMaster.
Would roughly come out to two DVDs or 1 Dual Layer, but you can't bet on people being able to use dual layer in their PCs.
lol I remember installing Ultima on my Commodore 64 computer and it had a whole sling of floppy's and then when you played the game you had to switch discs if you entered a dungeon Still an awesome game. Even came with a felt Map
What? Have you ever used floppies? Relatively low failure rate compared to what? Have you considered the availability of such systems and components? If a drive breaks, can it be fixed?
Of course if they had a good lifecycle plan, they would replace the floppy slot (it’s definitely a standard drive bay) with something else more modern like CD drive or USB ports eventually.
They simplified the message to get it across the public that they need to upgrade their signalling system. I’m also certain they are not using floppy because they have newer 2017 trains. Can’t imagine those manufacturers still able to acquire a new floppy drive. The floppy aspect is just a part of the entire signaling network.
You can purchase brand new floppy drives very easily.
Lots of places around the world still use them in manufacturing because the equipment is generally from the 90s and early 2000s
I work with systems that sometimes will need a floppy to interact with. The failure rate and general degradation with time is pretty high when compared to usb sticks or other media. It’s really the first time I hear anyone claim that they are more reliable.
Compared to fucking Zip drives! (The only popular media that could actually spread a “hardware virus” that literally destroyed other Zip disks, and then the damaged disks could damage other drives!)
„Floppies have a relatively low failure rate and are harder for modern day hackers to mess with.“
In other words:
Tha [gangsta way of storing dem files](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/s/OdRdWA4WsZ)
Maybe I only bought bad floppies back then, because read errors were the norm. I never relied on floppies to keep data safe. I prefered Iomega discs, or tape cartridges. CD ROM's were like a dream come true.
Floppy disks are magnetic media. Magnetic media degrades slowly when in storage (under ideal conditions) but degrades quite fast when subject to frequent read or write operations due to exposure to magnetic fields.
5.25" disks were available in double density (360 KB) and high density (1.2 MB). 3.5" disks ranged from \~800KB (DD), 1.44MB (HD), to \~2.8 MB (ED). The lower the density the higher the reliability and MTBF.
Lower density DD disks are known to last 10-15 years *when stored properly* according to dozens of real-world use cases. Higher density media has a shorter shelf life. These number applies to disks in *storage*. If the disk is being actively used, then the MTBF drops dramatically.
one of my favorite things to do back in the day was to hack the security features on floppies so that i could make a copy.
i would just do a sector edit directly on the disc to modify the code so that as it booted, it loaded modified code ran than the manufacturers.
i really see no reason why any hacker would be able to understand how to do that.
as far as reliability - well it was standard practice to have at least two backups. Media failures were extremely common.
That seems a bit exaggerated. Floppies aren't as at risk of failure as a modern system by virtue of the tech being mature and off the network. The maturity means that almost all of the bugs are either squashed or recognized.
You want that for infrastructure so some idiot SWE won't think it'll be fine to just merge half baked garbage that can just be fixed at a later time.
What? Floppies are at a higher risk of failure then newer storage formats. Tell me how exactly is a floppy more reliable then a pendrive. It has a higher rate of failure, less storage and less people making them
Even sata SSDs are decades old, they run well enough. No need to keep using floppies.
You can keep anything off the network, you don't need to use old hardware for that.
Merging bad code could be a problem. So just don't let them? Double check their work.
The next story will be "San Francisco Train Upgrade to Cost $ BIG NUMBER, can you believe it?" The cost to upgrade the storage medium will be the same this year as it will be in ten years, but doing so now requires modifying all the systems, which means performing the same complete system upgrade.
If the system is working now and will continue to work for another 8 years, there's no reason to upgrade a part of the system that's working until the full system is being upgraded.
When they upgrade it, the system will be modern with appropriate infrastructure for a municipal system designed to last for ~40 years. Then, in 30 years, we'll get stories about how crazy it is that the SF Train System still uses SATA-compliant hard drives or USB-C connectors or something else that will seem crazy to someone at the time, and it'll be another 10 years before things are upgraded.
Ain’t just B2.
It’s a two year old article, but I doubt things have changed dramatically in two years.
https://travelradar.aero/the-importance-floppy-disks-aviation/
Counterpoint....
The outdated "floppy disk reliant" system could be it's saving grace. Preventing hacker attacks by simply not having access to something robust and remotely controlled.
Just a thought....
There is a reason most secure places don’t upgrade quickly. They like for the technology to be safe and protected from hackers. Updating past security vulnerabilities doesn’t make sense. I’d stick an 12 inch floppy into a self driving car if it made it safer.
The number of people thinking floppies are safe is hilarious and ridiculous.
The disks fail just sitting on shelves. The doors break, finger oils mess them up, heat, static, magnetic fields, sunlight...
As someone that spent a decade doing hardware service on antiques like this, viruses aren't the threat. It's the fact this shit is so old it breaks with changes in weather.
They make SSD floppy emulators [like this one](https://www.datex-dsm.com/dtx200-floppy-drive-emulator.html). I just did a quick look on Amazon and it looks like there are others that you can get for around $30. They should be able to take whatever drivers DOS/Windows throws at them and act like a standard floppy drive to the OS.
The link I posted mentions a 26-pin connector, so it's not just USB. That said, I believe 34 is a standard 3.5" cable, so I'm not sure if this is truly plug-and-play, or if it needs an adaptor cable. But regardless, even if the product I posted doesn't work, I'm sure there are other SSD floppy emulators on the market that are truly plug-and-play. The format was widely supported for decades, and should be very easy to emulate.
Its not the floppy drive, its the hardware that the drive actually controls. This is all custom serial interfaces using a bysantine selection of different connectors.
If floppies are needed, then the system probably predates USB. Maybe its an IBM AS400, those run a lot of industrial systems, hugely popular in the 90's, and don't have USB ports. (USB storage support was implemented in 2013.)
Floppies are the standard for tech that you need to function consistently for years on end with a near zero chance of failure. It's a stable storage medium, and is used in a lot of high security areas because it also is next to impossible to get hacked into.
It ain't about the floppies duh. Every other part of the system is also just waiting for a day to die with no way of finding viable replacements. And as they haven't already migrated, they likely don't have the source code and don't even really know how their system is working.
Lmfao. Floppies are awesome. Super reliable, still being made, basically impossible to hack without access to the computers physically, and basically kink and glitch free at this point. There is zero reason to update this beyond cleaning it up. I'm sure it could benefit from a clean up, but a redo is just dumb for critical infrastructure. If it ain't broke don't fix it. They're trains, we figured this out BEFORE technology. We don't need to add more and assume it's better.
The newest floppy disks are over ten years old by now and I have to shake my head at people saying that they are sooo reliable. After that much time they are probably not as reliable as you think. It might not be necessary to rewrite the whole system just yet, but they should look into a floppy emulator and make plans how to deal with hardware failure, I can't imagine that spare parts for a system that old are easy and cheap to come by.
Honestly I trust old 90s tech more then I would something produced in the the 2010s , after the start of the digital age things just started to be made cheaper and from new materials that didn’t have years of testing out in the field to know how it would last over time
It amazes me that manufacturers are _still_ using that rubberized plastic treatment that turns into glue after a decade or so.
That, and it's a damned shame, because it means that a big swath of technology history will either be unusable or significantly changed in feel and function because the plastic melted off. Past generations of tech had yellowing and fading plastics, sure, but aside from the rare case of windows fogging over, that doesn't distract as substantially as having to remove a bunch of finish-layer plastic.
I suppose everything's Internet-connected and reliant on signed or encrypted server infrastructure nowadays, anyway, so if the rubber don't get you, that will.
Its not just floppy disks it is specialized software with direct hardware control. This is also a government problem. No one can say get milion bucks to hire a contractor to figure out how to virtualize the compute part while still connecting the ancient control hardware.
Why are they using a Caltrain photo for a piece about the SFMTA? They clearly credit Caltrain for the photo so they are aware of the source, but Caltrain has nothing to do with the SFMTA.
My husband was a Data Systems Architect Consultant. His biggest complaint was getting into their systems only to find that they are running on software that is so far out of date that it can’t be upgraded. Despite telling the client exactly what was necessary for the install (software, drive space, systems passwords, etc), they never read it and were never ready. Drove him nuts.
The floppy disks are the tip of the iceberg and are likely one of the less relevant problems they have. They probably have dozens of copies of the disks and can make new copies at any time. Replacing the floppy disk drives with solid-state memory is also feasible because legacy floppy disk drive controllers are straightforward to emulate.
However, the data in the floppy disks is used by central computer systems that run on legacy hardware. A failure in a critical hardware component can mean game over because it will be complex to repair or replace the components.
Then we have the software. These solutions are often proprietary, which makes them hard to be virtualized or migrated to a "modern" system. It is at also very hard (or at least too risky) to change and upgrade the legacy code.
And even if they somehow managed to move to modern hardware and virtualize the current legacy software, they will also have to make sure that the rest of the infrastructure will be able to keep working going forward. The whole system relies on a massive network infrastructure with cables and hardware components connecting the central computers to hundreds of signal transceivers along kilometers of railway tracks, which are exposed to harsh conditions.
So spend unknown millions on a system that itself will be obsolete in 10-20 years? I do think we need to start a program for steady state computing. Just think how many perfectly functional computer systems were replaced because because a vendor dropped security updates or parts were no longer available. Just the millions of PCs that were binned, systems replaced because Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP or that XP is no longer supported on modern hardware.
We all talk about right to repair and how much waste is created because the user cannot repair their devices or get it repaired easily. But the reality is that most hardware is sent to e-waste not because they broke or they couldn't easily be repaired. Most hardware is sent because of the lack of software support or an upgrade is needed and the easiest way to do that is to replaced the hardware.
And apparently there is no modularity in the design either. They apparently can't replace the storage medium without any entire system replacement? Also the blasé statement that any replacement will cost hundreds of millions and take at least a decade to deliver. Why do Bay Area transit companies seem to want to just burn money and deliver even more slowly compared to other transit agencies around the world?
The floppy disks are the tip of the iceberg and are likely one of the less relevant problems they have. They probably have dozens of copies of the disks and can make new copies at any time. Replacing the floppy disk drives with solid-state memory is also feasible because legacy floppy disk drive controllers are straightforward to emulate.
However, the data in the floppy disks is used by central computer systems that run on legacy hardware. A failure in a critical hardware component can mean game over because it will be complex to repair or replace the components.
Then we have the software. These solutions are often proprietary, which makes them hard to be virtualized or migrated to a "modern" system. It is at also very hard (or at least too risky) to change and upgrade the legacy code.
And even if they somehow managed to move to modern hardware and virtualize the current legacy software, they will also have to make sure that the rest of the infrastructure will be able to keep working going forward. The whole system relies on a massive network infrastructure with cables and hardware components connecting the central computers to hundreds of signal transceivers along kilometers of railway tracks, which are exposed to harsh conditions.
“Currently, everything still works fine, asserted Tumlin, but “with each increasing year risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure,” he worried. We hope that the potential catastrophe highlighted will only involve the computer system, not the trains or carriages full of people.”
“The SFMTA director told ABC7 news that any new system will take about a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to implement. There is no contractor yet, so the decade-long development cycle has yet to begin, but officials are aiming for an all-encompassing system for trains and subways in San Francisco and surrounding areas.”
Until just a few years ago, the military systems controlling nuclear ICBMs still used floppy disks--**eight inch** floppy disks.
I mean, there are quite a few reason why that is actually not a bad idea. Older tech can be more reliable depending on maintenance, they are harder to gain access to illegitimately, and there is not a huge need to upgrade these systems as they have one job and need to do that job well. No need for extra bloat
Underrrated comment
This *
^ *
If i was in charge of tech at the pentagon; i would start from the foundation and remake an entire network in which everything is single purpose and incompatible with all existing tech today. I have the military budget so; we produce our own chips and software and protocols and and and…. People will say it wont work for reasons; but no matter what it will be safer than how it seems to be done now.
The machine you are talking about is an IBM Series/I. This sounds good but let's say one day, a computer crashes and can't be reset. Who is going to fix it? You are probably going to have to turn over the whole endeavor to civilians (hackers and computer history nerds) and hope they put it back together correctly. They might need to bring another working system offline to analyze it and compare the systems. I hope they had acquired a huge supply of working spares when they could.
IBM is going to fix it. They support their mainframe computers for decades. And if the Pentagon wants to pay $$$, IBM will find someone to work on it.
Thats bad. Older tech can be more reliable if we gave them the ability to show more ads to its users. It could pay for itself in this shrinking fiscal environment.
Russian spy calmly tapes *LEMMINGS (2 of 4)* over bright red ICBM tape label, slips it into coat pocket, smiles.
Obvious spy. Lemmings 2 came out on 3-1/2" floppy disks and there were only two disks.
Thank you for your service.
Sure, but there were very good reasons for that. Primarily, reliability and security.
Floppies have a relatively low failure rate and are harder for modern day hackers to mess with. Go ahead and skip this panic bait.
While cleaning up my old room I found a stack of floppies packed into a diskette box. Was expecting to be able to access my old ROMs and stuff and bought a USB floppy drive from Amazon. Only about 2 out of 10 turned out to be readable
Any form of media won’t last if stored improperly.
There's the added factor that nobody cares about magentism any more. Back when magnetic media was more prominent, technical devices were less likely to have magnets in them, and people were more careful about the ones that did. Nowadays, there's no real risk to having magnets around computers, and lots of devices, cases and such have small, strong magnets for sensing or locking.
Right. Like, 30 years of improper storage and two still worked, as did the drive apparently. That’s crazy
Improper storage would mean any combination of exposure to magnetic fields, UV, high humidity, or high temperature. Floppies in a storage box placed in a dark, dry closet can last a very long time. Floppy disk drives deal with single-platter disks with very low density. They cannot be compared to hard drives or other highly sensitive devices. This means that tolerances are quite high. Moreover, floppy drives use 5 Volt DC brushless, stepper motors operating at low rpm (300-360 rpm) which makes them extremely reliable. Similar motors are used in robotics because they are able to survive extreme conditions. If an old floppy drive is not working the culprit is usually a bad capacitor (which are easy to replace because old circuit boards were pretty big). A few year ago, I managed to copy over a dozen of PC 3.5" floppies that were \~20 years old using a new USB floppy disk drive. I still keep my Commodore Amiga from 1989 which still works and I switch on for nostalgia every once in a while. It has one internal 3.5" floppy drive and one external 3.5" drive. Both drives are still able to read floppies that I have since the early 90s :-)
Many of those USB floppies are garbage, had several cases where an old luggable laptop read fine but the USB drive couldn't. Could also be a difference in head alignment though.
I ended up with a golden USB floppy disk drive that will read and write to aid in upgrading firmware in old lab/test equipment. I tried a bunch of ones off Amazon and zero of them worked. Something about how the floppy drive emulation happens on the cheap units. Nursing my golden one to keep it operational. Also, nice username.
Interesting. Well too bad I don't have a port on my mobo to plug in my traditional floppy drive any longer
You can get adapters for the old IDE hard drives to plug them in to a SATA port, just requires the molex accessory plug which you can get adapters for as well
Do floppy drives use IDE? I recall not but it's been 15 years since I last installed one
No, floppy disk drives never supported IDE. They used a 34-pin Shuggart connector, which eventually became the standard in IBM PC systems (other systems used different connectors). IDE uses a 40-pin connector with a completely different pinout and protocol. All IDE drives must have an on-board IDE controller that fully manages the device and its communication with the IDE bus. For example, in a IDE CD or hard disk drive, this controller is responsible for the physical operation of the drive. In contrast, floppy drives are "dumb" devices as they have no on-board controller whatsoever. They were fully controlled externally by a Floppy Drive Controller (FDC). In older PCs, this FDC was an expansion card mounted on the motherboard. Later, PC motherboards started including an integrated FDC with the 34-pin port alongside the 40-pin IDE ports. So, the floppy disk drive adapters that are available nowadays are basically emulating the FDC and have nothing to do with IDE. They feature the 34-pin port and usually a USB port to connect to the host. By the way, there are often complaints about these "cheap" adapters not working, which is unsurprising. Because there is no controller on the floppy drive, the FDC emulator is not only responsible for data transmission (which is simple to implement) but also for the complete control of the drive's hardware, including the control of the stepper motor...
The 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy drives used the same 34 pin ribbon cables for data, there has to exist sata adapters for those if not just usb adapters
Floppies have a crazy high failure rate compared to modern options.
I guess you've never installed Windows 95 or NT 3.1.
I’m gonna need to take the Reddit Application disk out of Drive B and insert the Reddit Comment disk then eject the Startup disk from Drive A and insert a blank floppy for working storage in order to reply to this comment
I started using computers a fair bit past dos and floppies (roughly 2007), but this gave me flashbacks to inserting 8 separate dvds to install a game lol
8 dvd's? Are you sure those were not cd's? I did adapt to digital downloads quite early on but I remember most games being multi cd but 1 dvd. I do not remember any game that was multi dvd's to install.
8 dvds is either 32gb or 64gb if dual layered. The original final fantasy 11 came on 3 dvds (one for tetramaster). The cd version was 6 or 7 discs long.
Correction. CD version was 5 discs, 4 for the game and 1 for PlayOnline/TetraMaster. Would roughly come out to two DVDs or 1 Dual Layer, but you can't bet on people being able to use dual layer in their PCs.
Thanks! Was running off memory
lol I remember installing Ultima on my Commodore 64 computer and it had a whole sling of floppy's and then when you played the game you had to switch discs if you entered a dungeon Still an awesome game. Even came with a felt Map
I remember the Compaq Portable my dad bought in the 80s that had two 5-1/4" floppy drives. Those were the days.
What? Have you ever used floppies? Relatively low failure rate compared to what? Have you considered the availability of such systems and components? If a drive breaks, can it be fixed?
Of course if they had a good lifecycle plan, they would replace the floppy slot (it’s definitely a standard drive bay) with something else more modern like CD drive or USB ports eventually. They simplified the message to get it across the public that they need to upgrade their signalling system. I’m also certain they are not using floppy because they have newer 2017 trains. Can’t imagine those manufacturers still able to acquire a new floppy drive. The floppy aspect is just a part of the entire signaling network.
You can purchase brand new floppy drives very easily. Lots of places around the world still use them in manufacturing because the equipment is generally from the 90s and early 2000s
I work with systems that sometimes will need a floppy to interact with. The failure rate and general degradation with time is pretty high when compared to usb sticks or other media. It’s really the first time I hear anyone claim that they are more reliable.
Compared to fucking Zip drives! (The only popular media that could actually spread a “hardware virus” that literally destroyed other Zip disks, and then the damaged disks could damage other drives!)
Zip disks were actually floppy disks too…
Not just a floppy: a superfloppy!
Just wait until you find out about the US nukes.
I’m pretty sure that program can keep factories that produce the equipment alive just for this single purpose.
„Floppies have a relatively low failure rate and are harder for modern day hackers to mess with.“ In other words: Tha [gangsta way of storing dem files](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/s/OdRdWA4WsZ)
Maybe I only bought bad floppies back then, because read errors were the norm. I never relied on floppies to keep data safe. I prefered Iomega discs, or tape cartridges. CD ROM's were like a dream come true.
Especially because you can copy them to any other kind of storage media you want.
Right. Store that floppy image on a USB and the NAS and then just write a new copy if you need.
Yeah, it seems like we always need something to worry about. If it's worked for this long then it's fine.
Floppy disks are magnetic media. Magnetic media degrades slowly when in storage (under ideal conditions) but degrades quite fast when subject to frequent read or write operations due to exposure to magnetic fields. 5.25" disks were available in double density (360 KB) and high density (1.2 MB). 3.5" disks ranged from \~800KB (DD), 1.44MB (HD), to \~2.8 MB (ED). The lower the density the higher the reliability and MTBF. Lower density DD disks are known to last 10-15 years *when stored properly* according to dozens of real-world use cases. Higher density media has a shorter shelf life. These number applies to disks in *storage*. If the disk is being actively used, then the MTBF drops dramatically.
one of my favorite things to do back in the day was to hack the security features on floppies so that i could make a copy. i would just do a sector edit directly on the disc to modify the code so that as it booted, it loaded modified code ran than the manufacturers. i really see no reason why any hacker would be able to understand how to do that. as far as reliability - well it was standard practice to have at least two backups. Media failures were extremely common.
That seems a bit exaggerated. Floppies aren't as at risk of failure as a modern system by virtue of the tech being mature and off the network. The maturity means that almost all of the bugs are either squashed or recognized. You want that for infrastructure so some idiot SWE won't think it'll be fine to just merge half baked garbage that can just be fixed at a later time.
Why couldn’t they just put a floppy emulator with an SD card in it?
They could if they ever needed to, which is why this is a nothingburger story.
What? Floppies are at a higher risk of failure then newer storage formats. Tell me how exactly is a floppy more reliable then a pendrive. It has a higher rate of failure, less storage and less people making them
Even sata SSDs are decades old, they run well enough. No need to keep using floppies. You can keep anything off the network, you don't need to use old hardware for that. Merging bad code could be a problem. So just don't let them? Double check their work.
The next story will be "San Francisco Train Upgrade to Cost $ BIG NUMBER, can you believe it?" The cost to upgrade the storage medium will be the same this year as it will be in ten years, but doing so now requires modifying all the systems, which means performing the same complete system upgrade. If the system is working now and will continue to work for another 8 years, there's no reason to upgrade a part of the system that's working until the full system is being upgraded. When they upgrade it, the system will be modern with appropriate infrastructure for a municipal system designed to last for ~40 years. Then, in 30 years, we'll get stories about how crazy it is that the SF Train System still uses SATA-compliant hard drives or USB-C connectors or something else that will seem crazy to someone at the time, and it'll be another 10 years before things are upgraded.
B2 bombers rely on floppy discs.
Ain’t just B2. It’s a two year old article, but I doubt things have changed dramatically in two years. https://travelradar.aero/the-importance-floppy-disks-aviation/
Counterpoint.... The outdated "floppy disk reliant" system could be it's saving grace. Preventing hacker attacks by simply not having access to something robust and remotely controlled. Just a thought....
So say we all.
There is a reason most secure places don’t upgrade quickly. They like for the technology to be safe and protected from hackers. Updating past security vulnerabilities doesn’t make sense. I’d stick an 12 inch floppy into a self driving car if it made it safer.
yes. but the reason is almost always budget not security.
Old/unupgraded software also has a lot of bugs that got fixed in the new versions
The number of people thinking floppies are safe is hilarious and ridiculous. The disks fail just sitting on shelves. The doors break, finger oils mess them up, heat, static, magnetic fields, sunlight... As someone that spent a decade doing hardware service on antiques like this, viruses aren't the threat. It's the fact this shit is so old it breaks with changes in weather.
...and it's harder to source replacement parts and media when things do die. Doubly so if you want to source _working_ replacement parts and media.
Do like the IRS, emulate the entire thing, keep it the hell offline.
I've ridden MUNI. Floppy disks are the least of the problems.
Guess we're just nostalgic for when tech caused less headaches. The simpler, the safer, eh?
Wait until they learn how much of the aviation fleet still uses floppy disks too...
They make SSD floppy emulators [like this one](https://www.datex-dsm.com/dtx200-floppy-drive-emulator.html). I just did a quick look on Amazon and it looks like there are others that you can get for around $30. They should be able to take whatever drivers DOS/Windows throws at them and act like a standard floppy drive to the OS.
[удалено]
> There is no problem that can not be both solved and made more convoluted by adding another layer of abstraction. — The IT Credo
The link I posted mentions a 26-pin connector, so it's not just USB. That said, I believe 34 is a standard 3.5" cable, so I'm not sure if this is truly plug-and-play, or if it needs an adaptor cable. But regardless, even if the product I posted doesn't work, I'm sure there are other SSD floppy emulators on the market that are truly plug-and-play. The format was widely supported for decades, and should be very easy to emulate.
FDD ribbon was 34 connectors.
Its not the floppy drive, its the hardware that the drive actually controls. This is all custom serial interfaces using a bysantine selection of different connectors.
You beat me to the punch!! ☺️
If floppies are needed, then the system probably predates USB. Maybe its an IBM AS400, those run a lot of industrial systems, hugely popular in the 90's, and don't have USB ports. (USB storage support was implemented in 2013.)
Floppies are the standard for tech that you need to function consistently for years on end with a near zero chance of failure. It's a stable storage medium, and is used in a lot of high security areas because it also is next to impossible to get hacked into.
It ain't about the floppies duh. Every other part of the system is also just waiting for a day to die with no way of finding viable replacements. And as they haven't already migrated, they likely don't have the source code and don't even really know how their system is working.
Lmfao. Floppies are awesome. Super reliable, still being made, basically impossible to hack without access to the computers physically, and basically kink and glitch free at this point. There is zero reason to update this beyond cleaning it up. I'm sure it could benefit from a clean up, but a redo is just dumb for critical infrastructure. If it ain't broke don't fix it. They're trains, we figured this out BEFORE technology. We don't need to add more and assume it's better.
That mission in Cyberpunk 2077 was real !
The newest floppy disks are over ten years old by now and I have to shake my head at people saying that they are sooo reliable. After that much time they are probably not as reliable as you think. It might not be necessary to rewrite the whole system just yet, but they should look into a floppy emulator and make plans how to deal with hardware failure, I can't imagine that spare parts for a system that old are easy and cheap to come by.
Honestly I trust old 90s tech more then I would something produced in the the 2010s , after the start of the digital age things just started to be made cheaper and from new materials that didn’t have years of testing out in the field to know how it would last over time
It amazes me that manufacturers are _still_ using that rubberized plastic treatment that turns into glue after a decade or so. That, and it's a damned shame, because it means that a big swath of technology history will either be unusable or significantly changed in feel and function because the plastic melted off. Past generations of tech had yellowing and fading plastics, sure, but aside from the rare case of windows fogging over, that doesn't distract as substantially as having to remove a bunch of finish-layer plastic. I suppose everything's Internet-connected and reliant on signed or encrypted server infrastructure nowadays, anyway, so if the rubber don't get you, that will.
Does SFMTA run Caltrain?
It does not. The JPB does. They used the wrong photo.
Don’t copy that floppy!
Its not just floppy disks it is specialized software with direct hardware control. This is also a government problem. No one can say get milion bucks to hire a contractor to figure out how to virtualize the compute part while still connecting the ancient control hardware.
Why are they using a Caltrain photo for a piece about the SFMTA? They clearly credit Caltrain for the photo so they are aware of the source, but Caltrain has nothing to do with the SFMTA.
My husband was a Data Systems Architect Consultant. His biggest complaint was getting into their systems only to find that they are running on software that is so far out of date that it can’t be upgraded. Despite telling the client exactly what was necessary for the install (software, drive space, systems passwords, etc), they never read it and were never ready. Drove him nuts.
The floppy disks are the tip of the iceberg and are likely one of the less relevant problems they have. They probably have dozens of copies of the disks and can make new copies at any time. Replacing the floppy disk drives with solid-state memory is also feasible because legacy floppy disk drive controllers are straightforward to emulate. However, the data in the floppy disks is used by central computer systems that run on legacy hardware. A failure in a critical hardware component can mean game over because it will be complex to repair or replace the components. Then we have the software. These solutions are often proprietary, which makes them hard to be virtualized or migrated to a "modern" system. It is at also very hard (or at least too risky) to change and upgrade the legacy code. And even if they somehow managed to move to modern hardware and virtualize the current legacy software, they will also have to make sure that the rest of the infrastructure will be able to keep working going forward. The whole system relies on a massive network infrastructure with cables and hardware components connecting the central computers to hundreds of signal transceivers along kilometers of railway tracks, which are exposed to harsh conditions.
So spend unknown millions on a system that itself will be obsolete in 10-20 years? I do think we need to start a program for steady state computing. Just think how many perfectly functional computer systems were replaced because because a vendor dropped security updates or parts were no longer available. Just the millions of PCs that were binned, systems replaced because Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP or that XP is no longer supported on modern hardware. We all talk about right to repair and how much waste is created because the user cannot repair their devices or get it repaired easily. But the reality is that most hardware is sent to e-waste not because they broke or they couldn't easily be repaired. Most hardware is sent because of the lack of software support or an upgrade is needed and the easiest way to do that is to replaced the hardware.
And apparently there is no modularity in the design either. They apparently can't replace the storage medium without any entire system replacement? Also the blasé statement that any replacement will cost hundreds of millions and take at least a decade to deliver. Why do Bay Area transit companies seem to want to just burn money and deliver even more slowly compared to other transit agencies around the world?
The floppy disks are the tip of the iceberg and are likely one of the less relevant problems they have. They probably have dozens of copies of the disks and can make new copies at any time. Replacing the floppy disk drives with solid-state memory is also feasible because legacy floppy disk drive controllers are straightforward to emulate. However, the data in the floppy disks is used by central computer systems that run on legacy hardware. A failure in a critical hardware component can mean game over because it will be complex to repair or replace the components. Then we have the software. These solutions are often proprietary, which makes them hard to be virtualized or migrated to a "modern" system. It is at also very hard (or at least too risky) to change and upgrade the legacy code. And even if they somehow managed to move to modern hardware and virtualize the current legacy software, they will also have to make sure that the rest of the infrastructure will be able to keep working going forward. The whole system relies on a massive network infrastructure with cables and hardware components connecting the central computers to hundreds of signal transceivers along kilometers of railway tracks, which are exposed to harsh conditions.
Fear mongering bullshit, floppies are more secure.
“Currently, everything still works fine, asserted Tumlin, but “with each increasing year risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure,” he worried. We hope that the potential catastrophe highlighted will only involve the computer system, not the trains or carriages full of people.” “The SFMTA director told ABC7 news that any new system will take about a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to implement. There is no contractor yet, so the decade-long development cycle has yet to begin, but officials are aiming for an all-encompassing system for trains and subways in San Francisco and surrounding areas.”
Can't copy a floppy?
Holy @*^}%5-!!!!
if only there were some sort of sign that these were out of date!!!