The US nuclear forces’ messaging system finally got rid of its floppy disks

Post by gugagore » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #81

PietdeVries wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the downside: you will only have a few technicians that really understand how things work, hiring new ones is next to impossible as teenagers have never seen neither the hardware nor the software that is running on it. It scales terrible to new locations. I recall a few years ago NASA was looking for 286-processors for the Space Shuttle. I cannot imagine your spacecraft is getting safer because of outdated hardwa…

Older technology is probably much simpler though. It might actually be possible to train someone, or for that someone to learn from a manual.

Post by gamblor956 » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #27

While SACC’s hardware is decades old, its software is constantly refreshed by young Air Force programmers Well that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Post by madengr » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #90

einr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Floppies are more reliable. I have plenty of C64 and Apple II floppies that work fine. 5,25" floppies (especially lower density variants like the ones you mention) are quite reliable indeed, but the most recently common 1.44 MB 3,5" floppy is terrible .

Nope, when I was using 1.44MB floppies, they were extremely reliable. However, after most people had moved on, when I did use more recently-manufactured ones, they were indeed terrible. My theory is that, when Zip disks and CD-Rs took over and people stopped using 1.44MB floppies, the manufacturing of them changed, and both the disks and the drives became much crappier than they used to be. The drive manufacturing mo…

Post by zentiggr » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

jki275 wrote: post #82

PietdeVries wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the downside: you will only have a few technicians that really understand how things work, hiring new ones is next to impossible as teenagers have never seen neither the hardware nor the software that is running on it. It scales terrible to new locations. I recall a few years ago NASA was looking for 286-processors for the Space Shuttle. I cannot imagine your spacecraft is getting safer because of outdated hardwa…

We teach them every detail of everything they need to know in their technical school when they come into the military. Old equipment is actually interesting to work on -- difficult, but interesting. It's also very valuable for understanding modern hardware at a deep level that isn't often taught anymore. How many people do you know who have actually replaced and aligned the heads on a UYH-3 or run end to end tests on…

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

madengr wrote: post #63

robdachshund wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but tape lasts much much longer. I know people have issues with floppies, but I wonder if that is more to do with dirty floppy drives that need to be cleaned, and the fact that it's harder to use tape for digital storage vs analog as you have to read encoded signals and convert to digital values vs having a few small dropouts on a cassette recording or a vhs. Floppies are really just tape in a disc form…

One of my bucket list projects is to use an SDR to forward error correct and modulate raw data into something that is compatible with NTSC VHS recorders. I wonder what the capacity of VHS tape is, given the restrictions of the NTSC modulation? I believe, back in the 80’s, someone made a ISA card for PC backup to VHS.