Skip to main content

The subway in San Francisco still runs on 5 1/4-inch floppies. "Our train control system in the Market Street subway is loaded off of five-and-a-quarter inch floppy drives." https://sfstandard.com/transportation/sfs-market-street-subway-runs-on-reagan-era-floppy-disks/

SF’s Market Street Subway Is Running on Reagan-Era Technology

Floppy disks: Do you find public transit in this city frustrating? It might be SFMTA’s use of a storage format that can’t even hold a JPEG.
Peter-Astrid Kane (The San Francisco Standard)
in reply to kottke.org

E.J. Kalafarski
E.J. Kalafarski
• •
Well that's alarming, they should really be on 3 1/2-inch floppy technology by now.
in reply to kottke.org

Michael Gisiger :mastodon:
Michael Gisiger :mastodon:
• •
Honestly, I'm only half amazed. Average lifespan of railroad infrastructure is 50 yrs., optimum lifespan can be well over 100 yrs. We're not talking about mobile phones that have to be replaced every 2-3 yrs. because they became obsolete here. There's a reason, why there's a whole industry around keeping legacy hardware alive.

https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter3/transportation-and-economic-development/transport-assets-lifespan/

The lifespan of Main Transport Assets | The Geography of Transport Systems

Jean-Paul Rodrigue (The Geography of Transport Systems)
in reply to kottke.org

Fish Id Wardrobe
Fish Id Wardrobe
• •
Why? I mean, you would think it would be easy to throw in a floppy emulator and run off memory sticks.
in reply to kottke.org

antipode77
antipode77
• •
OK. What are they going to do when ...

. One of those floppies refuses to load with a disc error ?
. Do they have backup copies ?
. What if their server goes down, any replacement available ?
. How are they going to acquire replacement floppies ? Don't think you can buy them except maybe on ebay as 'antiques'.
. Any moves to modernise ?

Or do they wait till the day the entire MTA is stopped ?

Nice SciFi disaster film idea : The day the MTA stopped.

#Resilience
#resilience
in reply to kottke.org

Lizard
Lizard
• •
My last few jobs have shown just how hard it is to write replacements for actively used systems. Public or private, there are resource costs, and more demand for resources than there are resources available. Always. Even in some Star Trek utopia, the time and focus of skilled humans is still scarce.

To re-develop a complex system, you need a team to redesign, and a team to keep the old system running. The time for the resdesign means it WILL be out of date by the time it's done. Furthermore, the "maintenance" team will be adding features/changing rules, so the replacement design is a moving target, constantly needing to be changed before it's done.

It's not impossible. It IS done regularly. To do it, you need resource-allocators to commit a LOT of resources, with the attendant opportunity costs: What ELSE could we do w/those resources instead of rewriting something that "works well enough"? (Until it *doesn't* work anymore. Then the finger pointing begins.)
in reply to kottke.org

Mori
Mori
• •
Gee- taking “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” literally
in reply to kottke.org

Andy King
Andy King
• •
🫢 Don't want to load up Oregon Trail by accident!

Lo, thar be cookies on this site to keep track of your login. By clicking 'okay', you are CONSENTING to this.

⇧