Boeing 747s still get critical updates via floppy disks • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing 747s still get critical updates via floppy disks

#11

Post by 3v1n0 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 11:08 AM UTC

bierjunge wrote: post #10

jraph wrote: post #8

Haven't floppy disks stopped being manufactured? How is this handled?

A lot of organizations bought everything they could get a few years ago (especially airlines and U.S. military were buying like crazy and paying incredible prices). Now they have basically tons of floppy's stuffed in some warehouses around the world and it should last for a decade or even longer. This should be enough time to get a different medium chosen and certified.

Mhm sure, but they don't lose memory abilities over time? How this could be considered ok when used for security related things?

Re: Boeing 747s still get critical updates via floppy disks

#12

Post by fzzzy » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 11:31 AM UTC

3v1n0 wrote: post #11

bierjunge wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of organizations bought everything they could get a few years ago (especially airlines and U.S. military were buying like crazy and paying incredible prices). Now they have basically tons of floppy's stuffed in some warehouses around the world and it should last for a decade or even longer. This should be enough time to get a different medium chosen and certified.

Mhm sure, but they don't lose memory abilities over time? How this could be considered ok when used for security related things?

I have floppies from 1983 that still work fine.

Re: Boeing 747s still get critical updates via floppy disks

#13

Post by zaarn » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 11:41 AM UTC

3v1n0 wrote: post #11

bierjunge wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of organizations bought everything they could get a few years ago (especially airlines and U.S. military were buying like crazy and paying incredible prices). Now they have basically tons of floppy's stuffed in some warehouses around the world and it should last for a decade or even longer. This should be enough time to get a different medium chosen and certified.

Mhm sure, but they don't lose memory abilities over time? How this could be considered ok when used for security related things?

They loose data over time. If you reformat them, they are fine accepting new data.

Re: Boeing 747s still get critical updates via floppy disks

#14

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

steelbrain wrote: post #2

I am confused, is this piece making fun of Floppy disks or just documenting a fact? If it's the former, I'd discourage the criticism because Floppy disks are working, and there's no good reason to redo the whole thing and potentially create a lot of bugs, that you'll then spend a wormhole amount of money fixing. Change for the sake of change is a bad idea. Especially for equipment that has to be ultra-reliable.

> Floppy disks are working

But are they? How many hours have very expensive machines been grounded because the disk drive got misaligned and said "Disk Read error in drive A:. Abort, Retry, Fail?"