Wednesday, October 23

Geek

Daily News Stuff 23 October 2024

Floppy Edition

Top Story

  • The San Francisco MTA is spending $212 million to move its train control system off floppy disks.  (GovTech)

    The system was installed in 1998, which is rather late to be using floppy disks that were (assuming it uses 3.5" disks) introduced in 1982.  But Compact Flash, the only real alternative at the time that is still supported today, was only introduced in 1994 and was likely not readily available when the project started.

    And given that it's been working for 26 years so far, we can't really blame the designers for being short-sighted.


Tech News



Disclaimer: Chicken wings are trash.  The only reason to eat them is if some bastard stole the rest of the chicken.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:37 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 469 words, total size 4 kb.

1

Posted by: Rick T at Thursday, October 24 2024 11:43 AM (xeXUW)

2 Maybe using floppy disks was OK at the time, but not doing anything in the meantime to update the application is typical.
I just looked, and you can still buy both disks and readers... Why? I have no idea.

Posted by: Zendo Deb at Friday, October 25 2024 12:06 AM (oAfAk)

3 Fancy poultry parts sold here! Breasts and thighs and hearts! Backs are cheap and wings are nearly free!

Posted by: normal at Friday, October 25 2024 12:21 AM (LADmw)

4 Given that programmers for non-commercial sectors are not exactly fast, good, or cheap (Looking at you, Lockheed Martin - a year's worth of production of F-35s parked in storage due to software issues.), it makes sense they had stuck with something that might be old but still works.

I think Pixy posted a link to an article about the Bundsmarine moving away from using the really old, really LARGE floppies.

...And I am one of those who missed the old days of floppies.  I am still bitter my old 486 got canned when it still had the 5.25"/3.5" combo floppy drive in it and before I could remove it.

Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, October 25 2024 10:07 AM (ZLF73)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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