151–160 of 252 posts
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.
(they probably are…)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do I have to do this research instead of the "journalist"? Ratchet the snark back. The journalist was referring to the train control system not home computers in someone's basement. And, yes, twenty five years ago SelTrac was cutting edge. Moving block systems were basically unheard of back then.
The only snark here is yours. What are you talking about with "computers in someone's basement?" He pointed out glaring factual errors in the story, which should not have made it through any kind of editorial review. For example: 25 years ago pretty much every computer had a hard drive. And the disk depicted in the article is obviously a 3.5", not a "five-inch floppy."
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…
I think there are a bunch of things causing this problem. Off the top of my head, some factors: - chronic underfunding - we all know how problems build up when maintenance is deferred - waterfall planning - Mary Poppendieck has a nice talk on how much trouble this causes: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/tyranny-of-plan/ - political point-scoring - blame-oriented cultures discourage experimentation and incremental…
One option is ranked choice voting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Transit employees are not the same people as, nor have the same motivations as the politicians who manage transport agencies. Of course the employees work hard. It’s the vocation they’ve chosen. I’m always amazed by the diligence of TFL and rail employees in the U.K., for instance. No, the guiding principle for the folks at the top is “so, how can I make money for myself out of this before I fail upwards?”. I’d wager…
> No, the guiding principle for the folks at the top is “so, how can I make money for myself out of this before I fail upwards?”. Who are "the folks at the top"? Transit agency executives in California make less than software engineers (though if you put in your time, you get a nice pension to make up for it) - how are these people getting rich? If you mean the politicians, sure, I've already said they're half the pr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, you’re suggesting replacing trains because the computers inside them are old?
I think they're just saying parts should be periodically replaced across the board on that timeframe, and using the fact that the trains are being swapped out as an example. The Breda trains are still running some percentage of the fleet however. I rode in one today.
> This system was designed to last 20 to 25 years. SFMTA's director Jeffrey Tumlin said upgrading the system will take another decade and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the problem, not that they're using a floppy. This isn't web dev where you get to rewrite everything every 6 mos. Systems have to have decades long life cycles BUT THEY EVENTUALLY NEED TO BE REPLACED and that's not happening quickly eno…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire system has reached the end of it's design life and the floppy is just the shocking bite to get people to click through. Really this is the regular replacement of an old system with a newer control system that will make the trains run better and more reliably.
Why will a new system make the trains run better? It could also make it run worse, if they don’t cover all the current cases. I’ve ridden Muni in SF for years, drivers control most of the decision making. There’s a handful of single track tunnels/sensors/necessary software-based coordination, but as another commenter pointed out, the doors cause more issues than signal problems.
I’ve ridden Muni in SF for years, drivers control most of the decision making.
the doors cause more issues than signal problems.
Historically the cab signaling system would glitch in wet or damp weather. Transponders for the switches had a near 100% failure rate. Trains chewed up the inductive loops, forcing emergency braking. That was common enough that they had to dial back the emergency deceleration. Twenty years on they've mostly worked out the kinks but it hasn't always been that way.
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.
This was my thought. Floppy emulators are a dime a dozen thanks to the retrocomputing community. Emulators for the custom boards full of discrete logic, opaque ROM chips, PLAs, and so on from long dead companies are going to be a much bigger challenge. If they had good schematics for all of the parts it might be possible to keep the the system running for a long time with a couple of smart EEs who are comfortable wit…
The computers in question are, I believe, just thin clients.
The key words in the sentence are: "it's working just fine".
Data degradation of floppy discs is easy: just copy them to fresh ones, and verify that you have a good copy. The images should be safely backed up so they can be regenerated. (Plus there are emulators; a topic covered elsewhere under this submission.)
I mean, are they really using the same 30 year old floppy discs over and over again until they degrade?
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.
It may feel emotionally like this at every layer, but the layers that are not floppy discs are completely different from floppy discs.
Other than electrolytics caps (easy replacement items), old electronics is reliable.
Moving parts need service; that's life.
> needs replacement
Not believable without detailed justification.
In the present article, someone is literally quoted as everything working just fine.