71–80 of 197 posts
Presumably (hopefully) the existing system is airgapped in some way or otherwise restricted to communication with other ATC systems, so DOSBox-X running Win95/98[1] could act as a drop-in replacement for the software side...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's no secret then what's the reason because I don't know?
I think most takes on this are overly reductive. The whole situation is sad really. The root cause, to the extent that one exists, is that no one is accountable for successful execution in a very literal and systemic way. Some parts of the government I've worked in are worse than others, but it is endemic. This leads to a textbook case of Pournelle's Iron Law. There are no negative consequences for a handful of peopl…
Not even the secretary of transportation? Wouldn't this have been a really great way for the previous one to show he can get things done? Or does the position lack the requisite authority?
What I don’t understand in such reports is why there is no mention at all how this is done in other countries. Do they all still use floppy disks? Did they do an upgrade? How did it go? Surely this would be valuable information.
https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/lly7po/do_you_use_em...
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's the actual problem with floppy disks? Is the system not performing the task it was designed for?
I watched this happen with floppy media. When floppy disks were common in the 80's you had great quality disks from top tier Japanese manufacturers at low cost. Media failure was rare and you could rely on a disk day after day for years. Then, as demand for floppies dropped, and these manufacturers fobbed off legacy products to low cost manufacturers, floppy media became terrible.
By the mid to late 90's, floppy media bought retail was very unreliable. For a brief time I was salvaging stacks of disks that came with commercial software because the software vendors were still able to secure good media, while the retail blanks you found in stores was just this side of e-waste. I used them with expensive instruments that had integral (high quality) floppy drives, long after PCs stopped using them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Floppies aren’t manufactured anymore
Does that matter? Manufacturing them ain't hard and current supplies are big enough to sustain the small demand. What matters is that I can buy floppies and will be able to for a very long time if not indefinitely.
What I don’t understand in such reports is why there is no mention at all how this is done in other countries. Do they all still use floppy disks? Did they do an upgrade? How did it go? Surely this would be valuable information.
Install and updates are via a registry based system, and it supports Windows, Linux, macOS - because its mostly written in Ada and R, as of 2012. (Most are running on top of Linux, as far as I'm aware).
No floppy disks, no underrunning DOS, etc.
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.
> In May 2023, MartyPC became the first PC emulator capable of emulating every effect in the PC demo Area 5150.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some european countries are in the process of switching over to iCAS made by indra. A press release for that included a picture https://www.dfs.de/homepage/de/medien/presse/2023/30-03-2023... There is also some work by the germans on moving the TID part to a web-based approach.
I cannot see much. :( Looks like Euroscope.