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5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030 (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (8 children)

"The system is currently working just fine, but we know that with each increasing year, risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure," Tumlin told ABC7.

Have they literally been using the same set of disks for decades? Surely they can just ... make fresh copies on new disks? As far as I know, they're still being made for specialized industries just like this.

Certainly, they should upgrade their system - this just doesn't feel like the most important reason to do so.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

There are many replacements for disk drives available where you can just use memory cards instead, and the old system won't notice the difference. It's odd that they used 5.25" floppies in 1998 in the first place, and odd that they don't take this simple step to make the system more reliable and maintainable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

They are obviously of the “If-It-Ain’t-Broke-Don’t-Fix-It” people. A once dominant group, they also age slowly, have the longest memories and loquaciously share them.

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