Years of budgetary neglect have lead to this situation and it’s going to cost a huge amount of money to effectively fix it.
FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
131–140 of 197 posts
Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
#132A first step to mitigate some of the risk would be to move the system to a virtualised system. This could be in each location or more centralised which would make the maintenance of the fleet of old computers easier. Floppy can be copied to hard disks and will not have to worry about failures of mechanical parts involved in reading floppy drives. Developing a brand new system would take quit a lot of time. As all sys…
We IT folks tend to quickly propose solutions to systems whose complexities we do not completely understand. That's fine when it is about serving ads or managing book orders. It's not ok when the stakes are high. Virtualization just adds another layer of complexity to an already fragile system which literally thousands of human lives depend on every day. Adding more complexity is not a neutral act here, but neglectfu…
It is true, it introduces new risks.
and would have to be tested well and attempt to be certified.
I am not saying its something you "just do overnight".
Still it removes more risks than it introdcues. (IF it tests out ok)
Though they have a stack of replacement PCs ready to go and lots of floppy drives and floppy disks to quikly replace whatever may break.
Writing new code from scratch, introduces a lot more risks. but also offers a promise of something much better.
Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but the timeline before it’s a significant issue easily extends another 20 years.
Maybe. The problem is that you don't want to have to deal with that maybe in some applications.
Why hasn’t someone come along to manufacture and sell floppy’s to these industries for $15 each? Or even $50?
Seems the market has demand, at least in the mid-term.
Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
#134As of the early 2000s, ATC was still using vacuum tubes. In fact, the FAA was the single biggest buyer of vacuum tubes in the world at the time, almost all of them sourced from former Soviet bloc countries. I think they've all been replaced by now, but I can't say that with 100% certainty.
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Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the machine is that old, couldn't an emulator be used to migrate to modern hardware?
If it uses any analog hardware it makes emulation much harder.
If it uses any digital hardware directly accessed by software (something that Win9x still allowed, see DOS games w/ ISA sound cards), it makes virtualization impossible.
Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe. The problem is that you don't want to have to deal with that maybe in some applications.
Why hasn’t someone come along to manufacture and sell floppy’s to these industries for $15 each? Or even $50? Seems the market has demand, at least in the mid-term.
Because it wouldn't be profitable? How many do you think they could sell to a dying market, and what would those manufacturing costs be? What experts could you tap who know this space? they are all gone
Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
corrupt itself and need to be manually reinstalled In my experience that's normally the fault of third-party software, and otherwise quite easy to determine and avoid/fix. Now OSes with more protections just hide those bugs, causing most software to regress to a barely-working state. I ran 98SE as a daily driver from late 1999 until 2010, and it was reinstalled at most 3 times, not even coinciding with hardware upgra…
Or of just a power outage or driver causing a loss of write back cache. 95 and 98 and ME crashed on a regular basis. I specifically remember upgrading from ME to XP and being so happy with the massively improved stability of the NT kernel over the 9x kernels. If you think that's 9x was stable and reliable, you may be thinking very nostalgicly.
Win9x was stable and reliable. It was the drivers that were not. WHQL wasn't invented yet.
I'm sure ATC systems were properly tested, including the drivers. Don't compare that with cheap consumer PCs that we had.
Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
#138If it works, then don't change it. I would trust a floppy-powered Windows 95 system over the horror show that passes for common operating systems in 2025. What will they think of next? Adding AI to the ATC system?
I'm not even sure if it's irony or sincere backward thinking of the same type that locked us with leaded fuel in post-war design lycomings.
Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
#139What's the actual problem with floppy disks? Is the system not performing the task it was designed for?
What's the actual problem with anything old? Why do you ever buy and use new things?
Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems
#140What's the actual problem with floppy disks? Is the system not performing the task it was designed for?
What's the actual problem with anything old? Why do you ever buy and use new things?
Nothing if it still does the job. I buy new things when they can't do their job anymore or I have a new problem to solve. My desktop and car are over 12 years old.