News Floppy disk-reliant San Francisco train control system spurs concerns of 'catastrophic failure' — and it won't be replaced for at least another decade

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At this point I don't understand why they don't emulate the whole system, let alone the drive. But that would be me sitting down and making it work. Transit agencies tend to outsource complex work to the lowest bidder, so it might be that they just don't have the expertise. Or this whole media cycle is a ploy to get the funding.
 
Dealt with a lot of this in my early career migrating an entire company from Windows XP to Windows 7, and a lot of the programs they were running were old 16bit/32bit Windows 3.11 to Win 98 era software with external RS232 and RS485, express cards, you name it. And my own personal diving into motor control drive software needing RS232.

Brainbox branded hardware was generally what worked well in nearly all scenarios.

https://www.brainboxes.com/products/usb-to-serial
 
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jahcriado said:
I know the author pointed out that by 1998 the Norm for most systems was CD, but you must remember all things public and government related typically run a decade behind technologically. Sometimes even further. There is a good chance that whoever the contractor was who designed and installed that system either could only do that type of system, or was under contract to provide that type of system. In 1998, a floppy based system was still pretty relevant, and was tested and known to be resilient. Same thing if you look at technology used by NASA in a lot of their missions. It's usually a few generations older, and has been hardened against issues they know they'll face. What is sad is that the hardware they apparently installed in 1998 has no way of using other hardware for data storage and updates. That is poor foresight.
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If you think that is obsolete, look at the U.S. nuclear missile fleet control systems. They are still using 8” floppy disks from the 60’s with no way to update systems due to using a unique top secret code language that no one alive knows how to use. However, the advantage to all of this is that computer security is top notch!
 
The Historical Fidelity said:
If you think that is obsolete, look at the U.S. nuclear missile fleet control systems. They are still using 8” floppy disks from the 60’s with no way to update systems due to using a unique top secret code language that no one alive knows how to use. However, the advantage to all of this is that computer security is top notch!
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They finally took care of it.

arstechnica.com

Air Force finally retires 8-inch floppies from missile launch control system

“Solid state storage” replaces IBM Series/1’s floppy drive.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
 
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Problem solved. 3.5" USB to floppy emulator. I think the big problem is if their system is truly "custom" their disc drives aren't working to the spec of generic disc drives found in PCs. Still even getting a custom emulator made would be wildly cheaper than a full system replacement. If the current system does exactly what it needs to do other than the disc problem than there is no need to throw it out.


https://www.amazon.com/GoTEK-SFR1M4...ds=floppy+disk+emulator&qid=1712600063&sr=8-3
 
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Apparently there is also a problem with new floppy disks (5.25) or diskettes (3.5) not being made anymore.
Sony was the last company that made 3.5 inch versions and they ceased the production as long ago as in 2011, 13 years ago.
There are still large stocks of old 3.5 inch diskettes that will last until at least 2026 but the question is how reliable these will be because these stocks of old diskettes are at least 13 years old.
And we know that old diskettes become unreliable even just lying in a box.
I think it is really time for old legacy system to upgrade to newer storage technologies now!

On a sidenote, the 5.25 inch floppies weren't mainly an "80:s thing". it came out in the mid 70:s and by the mid 80:s the became replaced more and more with the new 3.5 inch diskettes.
The first 3.5 inch diskettes came out in 1981.
In 1982 HP made a 3.5 inch disk drive for the PC:
The classic Macintosh supported it in 1984. The Amiga and Atari ST in 1985.
 
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in_the_loop said:
On a sidenote, the 5.25 inch floppies weren't mainly an "80:s thing". it came out in the mid 70:s and by the mid 80:s the became replaced more and more with the new 3.5 inch diskettes.
The first 3.5 inch diskettes came out in 1981.
In 1982 HP made a 3.5 inch disk drive for the PC:
The classic Macintosh supported it in 1984. The Amiga and Atari ST in 1985.
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Here in Italy MSX, Amiga and other 16 bit machines used 3.5" from about mid '80 but PC's both 8086, 286 and also some '386s continues to use largely 5.25" till 1990. With newer PCs machines from 90 they gradually changed.
 
USAFRet said:
If you were to build a system today, would it be capable of being seamlessly upgraded to whatever hardware is in use in 2050?
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Those floppies should have been replaced many years ago as a matter of due diligence. The thing is, floppies were phased out many years ago because they were/are a terrible storage medium. I remember the days when all computer gaming was floppy based, and at first the copy-protection schemes for the floppies were so bad, and so unreliable, that before floppies were replaced by CDs/HDDs the gaming companies actually gave up on floppy-disk copy protection schemes because almost everyone had problems with the floppies failing to work because of physical degradation caused by the grinding heads in floppy drives, and so many disks having to be replaced. And, as others have mentioned, floppies degrade magnetically over time even if rarely used. I would imagine that this utility spends a huge amount of time making copies of older floppies continuously as a maintenance matter to keep them refreshed, but even so they will have problems and likely already have.

Many years ago, when the C= Amiga introduced, they introduced 880k 3.5" floppies, for the most formatted storage space of all of them at the time, IIRC. I'll never forget reading an article written in a PC Gaming mag at the time in which the author commented that he couldn't even conceive of any game requiring more storage space than 880k...😉 Said it blew his mind...😉 All of the FATs (floppy allocation tables) sucked in those days, though, regardless of the floppy drive in question.
 
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in_the_loop said:
Apparently there is also a problem with new floppy disks (5.25) or diskettes (3.5) not being made anymore.
Sony was the last company that made 3.5 inch versions and they ceased the production as long ago as in 2011, 13 years ago.
There are still large stocks of old 3.5 inch diskettes that will last until at least 2026 but the question is how reliable these will be because these stocks of old diskettes are at least 13 years old.
And we know that old diskettes become unreliable even just lying in a box.
I think it is really time for old legacy system to upgrade to newer storage technologies now!
Click to expand...
Where I work we have a backroom full of spare 286s and floppy disks/drives. Legacy programs are *fun*.

It comes down to yearly budgets; even if the long-term cost of upgrading to modern equipment is cheaper, it's cheaper to fit "making the old stuff work" into your yearly budget. As a result, major upgrades only get done, sadly, once things break.
 
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waltc3 said:
Those floppies should have been replaced many years ago as a matter of due diligence. The thing is, floppies were phased out many years ago because they were/are a terrible storage medium. I remember the days when all computer gaming was floppy based, and at first the copy-protection schemes for the floppies were so bad, and so unreliable, that before floppies were replaced by CDs/HDDs the gaming companies actually gave up on floppy-disk copy protection schemes because almost everyone had problems with the floppies failing to work because of physical degradation caused by the grinding heads in floppy drives, and so many disks having to be replaced. And, as others have mentioned, floppies degrade magnetically over time even if rarely used. I would imagine that this utility spends a huge amount of time making copies of older floppies continuously as a maintenance matter to keep them refreshed, but even so they will have problems and likely already have.
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As others have said: You can't get rid of the floppies without replacing the *entire* HW ecosystem, which turns into a multi-year project that would easily cost a few hundred million.

Or, you can budget a few hundred thousand a year for support.

Which one is easier to fit into your yearly budget?

Again: We're not talking about a floppy drive in a PC here, we're talking about a totally bespoke HW infrastructure with multiple different systems (probably made by multiple different companies that more then likely no longer exist) that all have to interact with eachother. All in a system that is *known working*. Replacing and re-verifying all that is not a cheap job, and could damn well bankrupt the company managing it all if things go badly,
 
NinoPino said:
Here in Italy MSX, Amiga and other 16 bit machines used 3.5" from about mid '80 but PC's both 8086, 286 and also some '386s continues to use largely 5.25" till 1990. With newer PCs machines from 90 they gradually changed.
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Two things happened during the mid to late 80:s when it came to PC:S. Portables (laptops) with 3.5 inch disk stations were introduced in the mid 80:s and the PS/2-systems were also introduced. The PS/2-system not only introduced the mouse standard (PS/2-mouse was popular right up until USB-mouses became popular) but all of these systems came with 3.5 inch disk stations and from that on it was almost mandatory.
I think most computers here in Sweden had 3.5 inch disks by the late 80:s, mainly due to the Amiga and Atari being so popular. And the Mac too. But also due to many new desktop PC and laptop owners using the new 3.5 inch standard!
I myself made the Switch to 3.5 inch in 1986 when I bought an Atari 520 ST.
 
DavidMV said:
You can probably fix this without touching the main system or its code. Use a floppy emulator that takes a USB flash drive, something like what retro gamers use. I'm sure something more robust and well tested could be made within a modest budget. Obviously security issues will have to be investigated too. But, it isn't as hard as they make it sound.
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I was about to comment something like this.
I find the excuses of the "bosses" hilarious when a temporal fix can be easily achieved.
I guess it is all about wasting money in meetings to make the most worst cost decisions.
 
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gamerk316 said:
Where I work we have a backroom full of spare 286s and floppy disks/drives. Legacy programs are *fun*.

It comes down to yearly budgets; even if the long-term cost of upgrading to modern equipment is cheaper, it's cheaper to fit "making the old stuff work" into your yearly budget. As a result, major upgrades only get done, sadly, once things break.
Click to expand...
I have an unopened 10-pack 3.5 inch diskettes box still left.
Up until maybe around 2010 you still could flash the bios in the motherboard from the A: drive.
Kept it around just in case.
And I also got a vintage rack sampler (Ensoniq EPS 16 Plus from the early 90:s) in around 2005 from a friend that has a 3.5 inch disc drive.
Problem is it didn't have any disks (can't remember where he got it from).
The oldschool samplers became more or less useless when everything was handled in the box (The DAW of a PC) with vast amounts of possibilities and much, much better screen and workflow.
Although I kept it since the old samplers had a sound of their own coloring things in a good way.
But looking around it seemed the best option, besides getting an OS disk for the sampler would be to buy just a converter/Docker for the drive that makes it a USB-pin reader that emulates the floppy. And you often can buy that in combination with a filled USB-stick with tons of sounds already loaded in to it.
Writing an image to a normal 3.5 inch disk drive would be an option if I had any working PC with a disk drive in it, but I hadn't and didn't think it was worth the pain of putting together a PC just for that purpose.

But, I guess, not all old samplers (or whatever machines) will get that retrofit treatment where they get much faster, larger and basically better storage options. And they will some time in the future become useless when there are no more working diskettes left that you can copy to.
 
Engineers and managers are not necessarily on the same page.

Sorry, I had meant to quote tamlero wrt to above comment, mea culpa.
 
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in_the_loop said:
Two things happened during the mid to late 80:s when it came to PC:S. Portables (laptops) with 3.5 inch disk stations were introduced in the mid 80:s and the PS/2-systems were also introduced. The PS/2-system not only introduced the mouse standard (PS/2-mouse was popular right up until USB-mouses became popular) but all of these systems came with 3.5 inch disk stations and from that on it was almost mandatory.
I think most computers here in Sweden had 3.5 inch disks by the late 80:s, mainly due to the Amiga and Atari being so popular. And the Mac too. But also due to many new desktop PC and laptop owners using the new 3.5 inch standard!
I myself made the Switch to 3.5 inch in 1986 when I bought an Atari 520 ST.
Click to expand...
Me too with MSX2 in '86 but I insist that for the end of '80 most PCs sold here was not PS2 compatible, had the old keyboard connector, 5.25" floppy and serial mouse (when present because used only in few games and DOS text app).
PS2 computers was expensive, so PS2 connectors was not common till mid '90.
For example from 1990 to 1994 in my school there was no PC with mouse or Windows and all with 5.25" floppies.
Suppose there was a big difference in IT culture or in budget from a country to another.
 
Wasn't the PS2 mouse connector just a shrunk version of the full size DIN connector previously being used for mouse connection?
 
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