San Francisco's light rail to upgrade from floppy disks
- Reference: 1712624531
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/09/san_francisco_muni_floppy_disks/
- Source link:
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's director of transportation Jeffrey Tumlin [1]told ABC that the city's automatic light-rail control system is running on outdated tech and "relies on three five-inch floppy disks" to boot up. The reporter was holding a 3.5-inch disk in the broadcast, so may have just skipped the word "point".
The system is working just fine, but we know that with each year the risk of data degradation increases
"It's a question of risk," Tumlin explained in a three-minute [2]segment about the floppy replacement project. "The system is currently working just fine, but we know that with each increasing year the risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure."
The agency noted that its system was installed in 1998, when floppies were still in common use and, er, "computers didn't have hard drives." That doesn't exactly match reality, since hard drives were already very common at the time – here's a [3]tale from 1998 about drives sold at the time, in sizes ranging from 5GB to 16.8GB. That's right: gigabytes! How would anyone ever fill one of those up?
For the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) to adopt floppies in that year would not be the first time organizations have acquired outdated tech and just kept using it rather than enduring the expense of an upgrade.
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"We were the first agency in the US to adopt this particular technology, but it was from an era that computers didn't have a hard drive, so you have to load the software from floppy disks onto the computer," SFMTA's PR Mariana Maguire argued.
[5]
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And before folks start panicking, it's worth remembering that use of floppy disks is not uncommon in embedded systems. Bear in mind that the US nuclear arsenal [7]ran off eight-inch floppies until 2019. It's the way stuff was done when these systems were built last century.
[8]Good news – America's nuke arsenal to swap eight-inch floppy disks for solid-state drives
[9]Japanese government finally bids sayonara to the 3.5" floppy disk
[10]'Last man standing in the floppy disk business' reckons his company has 4 years left
[11]What are our top picks from the vast world of retro tech? Let's find out
Upgrading San Francisco's public transit IT will be a lengthy and costly effort.
"This is effectively a multi-phase decade-long project that starts with pieces of Market Street subway and pieces on the surface," explained Tumlin. "Ultimately our goal is to have a single train control system for the entire rail system."
While Fog City's quaint [12]cable car system (also run by the SFMTA) brings in the tourists, its light railway is among the best in the US – a nation that hasn't generally built extensive public rail networks, thanks to geography and lack of political will.
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"We are hoping that a large component of this will come from state and federal grants. The rest of it will come from Muni's rapidly declining internal capital resources," warned Tumlin. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-train-system-has-been-running-on-floppy-disks-but-city-fears-catastrophic-failure-before-upgrade/14624828/
[2] https://abc7news.com/technology/sfmtas-fears-of-catastrophic-failure-before-train-system-upgrade/14624828/
[3] http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9806/12/harddrive.idg/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZhS9XaJmZXS48Gx63GWYawAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZhS9XaJmZXS48Gx63GWYawAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZhS9XaJmZXS48Gx63GWYawAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/18/us_nuclear_upgrade/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/18/us_nuclear_upgrade/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/japan_government_floppy_disks/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/20/floppy_disk_business/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/does_old_tech_never_die/
[12] https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/muni/cable-cars/cable-car-history
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZhS9XaJmZXS48Gx63GWYawAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Curious what the floppy replacement will be?
The easiest replacement might be a purely electronic device that emulates a floppy disk. I believe legacy game and vintage computing afficionados have long used these devices.
I am guessing the 1998 is a bit of a furphy (like the missing '.' from '3 5') and tech is more 1988 or 1978. Guessing IBM PC/XT vintage (probably a 8186 clone :) or an AT so hopefully an ISA bus. If its a CP/M (or MP/M) S100 system perhaps it is 3 five inch floppies. :)
I imagine the whole system could run on a small risc SBC out of flash but I imagine the replacement will be a huge cloud based monstrosity delivered years late and unaffordably over budget.
Have they been hacked?
I haven't read an El Reg article on them being hacked, maybe this isn't a bad thing after all, and they should leave well enough alone?
> each increasing year the risk of data degradation on the floppy disks increases and that at some point there will be a catastrophic failure
Um, you know you can copy the data to new floppy disks, right?
Re: Have they been hacked?
My thoughts exactly. And there's plenty of new stock still around.
Re: Have they been hacked?
As a home user in GB - reliant on whatever built down to a price floppy drives were available retail - l don't think I was able to get a working PC-compatible 3.5" drive and supply of floppies even 15 years ago. A drive, yes. Choice of floppies, yes. Drive that could reliably write and read the available floppies, no. I'm always amazed to read of people commenting about floppies on lkml, so I suppose there must be some good drives and floppies out there.
"best in the US"
> a nation that hasn't generally built extensive public rail networks, thanks to geography and lack of political will.
We DID build extensive public rail networks. We just let it all go to shit because they didn't make enough money. Now all that rail is running freight.
Really annoying, because I have no intention of being felt up by a TSA agent at an airport, so I'm left with driving 1,500 miles. How's that for being green?
Re: "best in the US"
Rail is really good for carrying freight though. Just a shame there's almost no decent passenger service.
Re: "best in the US"
Long distance passenger service was discontinued when first-class mail moved from rail to air.
US post office had contracts for transport of mail, requiring fast, regular, high-priority trains between all major centers, including trans-continental. Passengers were just gravy. When the mail contracts were lost, passenger services stopped within days.
Light rail and local-rail built-out also extensive, and was funded out of real-estate development. It was not built for 100 year life (as some heavy-rail developments were), and when it reached end-of-life, and needed re-capitalization, decisions had to be made. It's fair to say that a transport system associated both with real-estate speculation and exploitative railway barons did not have any friends at the time (my ancestor's home-town government was proud of killing the light-rail system for that reason), but the re-capitalization costs for light-rail were greater than for road busses anyway.
That's not to say that the running costs for Bus systems were less than those for Light Rail, although that argument has certainly been made. American government generally, and even more so local government, has been and continues to be notorious for choosing deferred costs over capital costs.
Don't knock 'em...
The oldest floppies I successfully (with zero errors/re-tries) read data from were 5.25" units recorded in 1981 and accessed in (coincidentally) 1998 - seventeen years of longevity. I suspect that they may even have retained their data until today, if not for the entire system having been retired and destroyed.
Flash drives on the other hand... I dug up some 4Gb devices with audit results from 2019, and nothing could be read from any of them - not even partition information.