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FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

tomshardware.com

151–160 of 197 posts

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For anyone considering doing development in this space, sign up for a 20 hour instrument flying ground school, preferably one taught by a retired old fart rather than a 25 year old “instructor” with no actual experience. That's a bit overkill in the world of DOGE. They'll just use some AI to design a system by a bunch of 20-somethings that have no experience whatsoever. Then, they'll come here and brag about it.

Nobody even mentioned DOGE

The reason this story is in the news currently is because the current FAA administrator specifically turned the FAA's floppy disks into a story about why DOGE should be involved at the FAA.

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many lives would you have extinguished I’ve worked on life & death Citrix modernisation projects several times: the local equivalent of the 911 emergency phone call centre and then computers on wheels used for during paediatric surgeries. A help line for suicidal children too. People conflate the usecase with the technology, assuming that “important thing” must have some mystical properties that requires legacy…

Are you aware the hardware in an F-22 has to be hardened against an EMP?

At the risk of replying to someone with "troll" in their username...

Yes, but the entire point is that other fighter planes have identical requirements but don't have comically out-dated avionics.

Don't guess. Don't make up stories. Don't carry water for incompetent people that are protecting their own backsides.

Compare. Look at what other, more competent people have done, and use that as your benchmark.

That's always the key with these things. You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to have secret knowledge. Other people do. Just look at what they've achieved (or haven't), and compare against that.

When people come up with excuses, you don't have to believe them, even if they're experts in an esoteric, specialist field such as "nuclear-war-resistant stealth fighter design". Even if they're some sort of "authority", so are other people that designed their own stealth fighters.

This is a very useful life skill. Use it!

As a random example, there's countless arguments from "experts" such as economists, politicians, and industry thought leaders about how unaffordable universal government-funded health-care would be in the United States. Meanwhile, dozens of similar countries have done it for decades! Just look at the success of other countries and then dismiss the excuses you hear back at home out of hand because now you know: they're just excuses, not reasons.

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#153

A 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…

I wonder if anyone makes a virtual floppy drive that replicates the performance characteristics. I.e. to avoid a faster virtual drive uncovering dormant race conditions. Something like a developer assuming "I have enough time to do this processing before the disc makes another rotation" etc.

https://www.amazon.com/Gotek-SFR1M44-U100-1-44MB-Floppy-Emul...

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#154
> some systems can never be shut down

Tomshardware could do better reporting. There is no such thing as a computer that can’t fail, or a component that can’t be replaced. Does our reporter think the entire system was installed 25 years ago, and not one component has been replaced since? More likely it’s the ship of Theseus, and not one component is original.

I’ve replaced whole systems without interruption. You build in compatibility, then replace every computer one by one, and phase out use of the compatibility. It’s not rocket surgery.

Technical sites could be superior to the reporting in the general media on technical issues. It doesn’t have to be be stenography.

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#155
post #94

If 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?

Operating systems have gotten a whole lot more reliable since Windows 95. The way I remember it, Windows 98 would regularly corrupt itself and need to be manually reinstalled. I'd done it so many times that I could pretty much recite the license key from memory. Modern Linux is rock solid. Even Windows 10 is very stable. They might be 'bloated', but modern OS's are way, way more stable.

Operating systems were always more reliable than Windows95 from the day it was introduced. Protected memory and process privilege were not exactly unknown when DEC was selling VMS. Or for that matter when Microsoft was selling Windows NT. That the FAA cheaped out then, choosing an inferior system with no technical merit, is prelude to the current problem.

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. For example, if there is custom hardware used for communications with other systems, such as radar for example, there might be specific timing and latency requirements that could be difficult to meet under emulation. The most recent Dolphin Emulator post referenced a bug they had where memory cards were written to too quickly under the emulator (and even on actual hardware if you had memory cards tha…

A long time ago, ..., so add a huge IIRC for the details. Anyway, a long time ago, in a physic lab class, we had a custom spectrometer device that was controlled using the printer port. (Probably a light, a detector, a diffraction grid and a steppers motor, and perhaps some weird card as an interface to the computer.) It was controlled by a custom Pascal program in the DOS command line. It was connected to a Win 95 c…

I had similar many years ago in a custom paint shop. We had an expensive colorimeter that interfaced over serial with a program that ran in DOS.

When the pysical computer gave out, I replaced it with a reasonably new one but instead of using a modern OS I installed MS-DOS in order to get it up and running as reliably and quickly as possible.

If I were doing the same today, I'd likely get a new computer and install FreeDOS.

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#157
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is that? Doesn't virtualization virtualize the hardware? I'm not sure why virtualization is impossible there, as QEMU can run plenty of old DOS games.

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#158
post #137
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Windows 95 allowed programs to disable system interrupts. No protection on cli instruction. Careful with those rose-colored glasses.

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#159

If 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?

What, you don't want a Next.js React and Node.js app with 3000 dependencies commanding your flights?

Re: FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

#160

If 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?

What, you don't want a Next.js React and Node.js app with 3000 dependencies commanding your flights?

Isn't it what they use on the Space X Dragon controls?
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