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FAA to eliminate floppy disks used in air traffic control systems

tomshardware.com

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

#161

Post by metadat »

jklowden wrote: post #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…

Minor nit: There are classes of computers which contain redundant CPUs, PSUs, memory, etc where the components are hot swappable. Very specialized and expensive hardware which is statistically unlikely to ever need a reboot!

Source: My cousin used to sell these systems back in the 90's and 00's.

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

#162

Post by bArray »

jklowden wrote: post #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…

I think they are just trying to get across how critical this infrastructure is, it can't be powered down for several days and unscheduled maintenance is risky.

The other problem they are up against is that there are not many people around that still understand how it works or what the edge cases are.

Upgrading these large distributed systems can be painful. The NHS tried to upgrade their software, over £10 bn later and they abandoned it [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-...

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

#163

Post by stackedinserter »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #140
stackedinserter wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why don't you use floppy disks then?

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

#164

Post by procflora »

gregoriol wrote: post #160
CharlieDigital wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The thought of npm in space is making we sweaty. Let's hope it's not near anything that's life safety critical.

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

#165

Post by blitzar »

evanjrowley wrote: post #75

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?

Just vibe code a new ATC system.

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

#166

Post by Retric »

windward wrote: post #124
Retric wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the timeline before it’s a significant issue easily extends another 20 years.

The article says it will take (at least) 4 years just to roll it out. 20 years isn't much... legroom.

The point is it’s enough legroom to be reasonably cautious in the rollout rather than needing to get a big contractor to do a major and therefore expensive push.

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

#167

Post by Retric »

atoav wrote: post #101
Retric wrote: post #93

Earlier 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.

40 years would be a maybe, 20 can be guaranteed by buying existing stock.

Even 8 inch floppies + drives are still available and those got abandoned a decade before 5.25” let alone 3.5” disks.

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

#168

Post by stewarts »

metadat wrote: post #161
jklowden wrote: post #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…

Minor nit: There are classes of computers which contain redundant CPUs, PSUs, memory, etc where the components are hot swappable. Very specialized and expensive hardware which is statistically unlikely to ever need a reboot! Source: My cousin used to sell these systems back in the 90's and 00's.

IBM Mainframes have these capabilities. But yes, they're quite expensive.

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

#169

Post by swells34 »

skissane wrote: post #8
burnt-resistor wrote: post #2

For retrofit purposes, it's probably attainable to use solid state (no moving parts) floppy disk emulators that use USB thumb drives or CF/SD cards instead of error-prone, real floppy disks. Every time a floppy drive moves over a sector to read or write, it wears that area mechanically. Magnetically, bits just seem to rot from floppy disks randomly with time more likely failure mode for previously good floppies. Let…

> For retrofit purposes, it's probably attainable to use solid state (no moving parts) floppy disk emulators that use USB thumb drives or CF/SD cards instead of error-prone, real floppy disks. Yes, but if it is just a PC running Windows 95, likely simpler to get the software working under newer Windows, or if worst comes to worst, keep Windows 95 and stick it in a VM. I doubt there is any specialised hardware on the…

> I doubt there is any specialised hardware on the Windows 95 machines, the specialised hardware is likely connected to something else.

Based on my experience with older government systems, this is likely an incorrect assumption. It was extremely popular in the 90s to create custom hardware that integrated directly to windows machines. I've had to reverse engineer so many drivers to upgrade old bespoke equipment to integrate with newer OSs

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

#170

Post by throwaway2037 »

Osiris wrote: post #107
userbinator wrote: post #103

Earlier 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.

    > If you think that's 9x was stable and reliable, you may be thinking very nostalgicly.
I agree. Remember Plug'n'Play? It was so bad that we used to call it Plug'n'Pray. It frequently caused PC crashes. Modern OSes are a miracle in how stable they are with drivers.
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