San Francisco's light rail to drop 3.5-inch floppy disks

[Redaktion]

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is still using a control system that's essential for the operation of the light rail, which requires floppy disks. Introduced in 1998, it was supposed to operate for up to 25 years. Due to the increasing risk of failure, it should be replaced soon, but that could take around a decade.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/San-Francisco-s-light-rail-to-drop-3-5-inch-floppy-disks.824913.0.html

[JLThom]

well this would be comical if this wasn't a major transportation system carrying 100k's of riders each day. don't understand why the entire control system wasn't copied to 1-2 DVD's (or single TB jump drive) years ago - at least. i guess it depends on specifically (what) needs to be updated on daily/weekly basis.

[Codrut Nistor]

That's what I had in mind as well. Maybe just switch the floppies with some SSDs or just use some server storage. HOWEVER, we have no idea about the other hardware that's being used for this system alongside the floppies. I guess they should redesign the entire infrastructure. Would be very interesting to be able to talk to someone actually involved in this system and find out more about its hardware.