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SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

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Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#131

Post by fdr »

iancmceachern wrote: post #63

I emailed them. I live I'm SF. This is the sake, solved, problem we have in the machine tool world (milling machines, lathes, etc). Similar to old keyboards, you can just buy and use a floppy emulator. They emailed me back, they said that the floppy thing makes a good headline but is really just the tip of the iceberg. It's really the whole system that's like this at every layer, it needs replacing they say.

A once a generation refresh seems okay in my book. The Breda trains that came in 1996 were being phased out about twenty years into their tenure, most generally seem to think that is about reasonable a time to do something like that. I don’t see software related regimes as inherently that different.

Since I experienced 5.25 inch floppy disk era...and even the occasional bernoulli disk...we could simply say: the system had its run, replacement is reasonable. A lot of stuff had changed since then, and not just in storage media.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#132

Post by xxpor »

rangestransform wrote: post #51
nerdjon wrote: post #10

Well... I feel slightly better about Boston constantly pushing back being able to use our phones as tickets after seeing the timeline for the transition and how just that they are still doing this. What is it about public transit in the US that it is so... bad? Inadequate funding seems to be the easy one, but the MBTA (Boston) doesn't even handle the funds it has well. Yeah it needs more funding but there is also jus…

other countries don't treat public transit as a jobs program other cities (in the east, with the best public transit) don't let unions grab the entire city by the balls government employees in other cities aren't as hellbent on extracting their pound of flesh from the taxpayer

NYC is grabbed by the balls plenty. They still don't have OPTO for example.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#133

Post by paradox460 »

gojomo wrote: post #116
paradox460 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sirens don't even need to be that complicated. A motor, a noise generator wheel (basically just a big spinning squirrelcage fan), and a horn. You could toggle them on/off with a simple relay/contactor.

These "sirens" actually need to be able to play spoken announcements - something they did easily since about 2005, before the fumbled 2019-2024 shutdown/upgrade. More history, through January 2022, via JWZ's blog: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/01/the-reason-the-tuesday-noon...

Now that you mention it, I do remember hearing the spoken message every Tuesday.

Still, a big loudspeaker is even simpler than a classical motorized siren. No moving parts!

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#134

Post by prewett »

JoyousAbandon wrote: post #125
gsk22 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference when choosing technologies for a home computer versus a safety-critical system that will run for decades. Seems reasonable they would've chosen a proven, if slightly outdated, tech over a newer one that had less data to back up its long-term reliability. And of course we can get into the discussion of cost: floppies are way cheaper than hard drives, especially for the presumably-small amounts…

Hard drives weren't new in 1998. I don't even know where you'd have gotten a computer that lacked one by then; and most would also have had a CD-ROM drive.

The Mac SE had a 20 MB hard disk in 1987! And there was no way Windows 95--which everyone had by 1998--was fitting on a floppy of any size.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#135

Post by jcgrillo »

JoyousAbandon wrote: post #122
jcgrillo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a hard drive be better? If the floppy fails just grab another off the shelf and try it (surely they have more than one copy). Downtime measured in seconds. The other good thing about the floppy is it can't hold very much code. So the system has a tight upper bound on how bloated and complex it can get. Simpler systems are more maintainable. These things seem like great assets for maintaining critical infras…

He never said it was better. He's pointing out glaring factual errors in the story.

Where is the factual error? This passage is the one we're taking about right?

> Turns out that in 1998, SFMTA had the latest cutting edge technology when they installed their automatic train control system.

> "We were the first agency in the U.S. to adopt this particular technology but it was from an era that computers didn't have a hard drive so you have to load the software from floppy disks on to the computer,"

The fact of when hard drives became commonplace in personal computers (EDIT: or when 3.5" floppies were introduced) has no bearing whatsoever on whether this transit control system was cutting edge in 1998. This statement is not, at least not obviously, factually incorrect. So if you're going to claim that, show your work.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#137

Post by yonran »

therealmarv wrote: post #15

Upgrade to 3.5 inch ones!

They do use 3.5 inch disks; this is a misstatement: “SFMTA's train control system relies every morning on 5 inch floppy disks.” The SFMTA Board presentation justifying the >$600M upgrade shows a photo of the real 3.5 inch floppy disks in use that were written in 2021. https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#138

Post by asveikau »

strangattractor wrote: post #87
Workaccount2 wrote: post #80

My company provides new compute modules for another major global city's infrastructure that still relies on Intel CPU's from the early 80's. That is, we are building them brand new boards populated with chips that are over 40 years old. They haven't shown any interest in updating the system. It works, they can get service, and get "new" replacements for things that go bad. What they might not know though is that ther…

LOL:) this story seems to resurface every couple of years. My favorite part of the article: "Jeffrey Tumlin: "It's a question of risk. The system is currently working just fine but we know that with each increasing year risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure." This seems to imply they have been using the exact same disk for the past 20 years…

You make a good point. However, even with the disks backed up to a better storage medium, detecting data loss on the floppy and getting a replacement written and deployed to the correct location might take a while. During that time the system may face unacceptable transit delays.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#139

Post by asveikau »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #127
culopatin wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you hiring young engineers who want to learn the old stuff?

Where are you going to find a young engineer who wants to build a dead-end career? I'm sure that if you pay them enough, someone will show up, but most people would rather build skills that will continue to be useful rather than skills that will be useless once an inevitable, sorely needed refresh happens.

I think you overestimate how much working on obsolete tech is a dead end career. Skills are still transferable. Someone who can sling 8086 assembly can figure out your dumb web app.

Re: SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'

#140

Post by jtbayly »

fdr wrote: post #131
iancmceachern wrote: post #63

I emailed them. I live I'm SF. This is the sake, solved, problem we have in the machine tool world (milling machines, lathes, etc). Similar to old keyboards, you can just buy and use a floppy emulator. They emailed me back, they said that the floppy thing makes a good headline but is really just the tip of the iceberg. It's really the whole system that's like this at every layer, it needs replacing they say.

A once a generation refresh seems okay in my book. The Breda trains that came in 1996 were being phased out about twenty years into their tenure, most generally seem to think that is about reasonable a time to do something like that. I don’t see software related regimes as inherently that different. Since I experienced 5.25 inch floppy disk era...and even the occasional bernoulli disk...we could simply say: the syste…

Wait, you’re suggesting replacing trains because the computers inside them are old?
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