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Until 2 years ago, the US armed forces were using 8-inch floppy disks in nuclear silos. Not 3 1/2", not 5 1/4"... 8 inches. https://www.cnet.com/news/us-milit
by 29athrowaway 6y ago
Until 2 years ago, the US armed forces were using 8-inch floppy disks in nuclear silos.
Not 3 1/2", not 5 1/4"... 8 inches.
https://www.cnet.com/news/us-military-retires-floppy-disks-used-by-nuclear-weapons-system/ https://www.cnet.com/news/us-military-retires-floppy-disks-u...
- p_l 6y agoThe difference was that those 8" floppies were part of a well-tested system that was delivered when they were pretty current mature tech. Lockheed-Martin happily sold what I described as fresh development in 2012. EDIT: And unlike the system with 8" floppies, it never worked and resulted in 5 years of extra sunk costs til the whole critical system got yeeted and things were started from scratch.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoThe problem is that those 8" floppies are not manufactured anymore. And floppies are not meant to be durable and reliable in the long term.
- p_l 6y agoThat's why they finally migrated away from them. But you can be certain that they had stocks of floppies and possibly floppy emulators for dealing with that issue while it was in operation, plus setting up a small scale production for 8" floppies is less problematic than many would assume. In comparison, the new and wonderful system from Lockheed that I mentioned? It pretty sure never ran in "production environment" properly, and I shudder to think how much it and its knock-on effects cost.