10 ms·
SF’s Market Street subway runs on Reagan-era floppy disks
- andbberger 4y agojust another "state of good repair" hustle seltrac is the least of muni's problems and there's no need to update it
- twblalock 4y agoOf course there are reasons to update it. It’s going to be harder to fix when it breaks than a modern system, it’s going to be harder to find people to work on it than a modern system, and those problems will only increase over time to the point where they could cause extended transit outages.
- jeffbee 4y agoAre you saying that they leak these stories out in advance of asking for a billion dollars for CBTC?
- andbberger 4y agoyes
- netsharc 4y agoThe article embeds a tweet of a news interview where it's some guy asserting that this is the case, TBH it'd be more interesting to actually see the hardware instead of just watching some guy say this is the case... But if it ever became critical, get some Raspberry Pi's and implement this hack: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=58345 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=58345 Oh wait, there's a Pi shortage isn't there... we're doooomed!
- rwmj 4y agoOr at least some Goteks: https://www.gotekemulator.com https://www.gotekemulator.com
- muzz 4y agoThis seems like one of those things which is perfectly okay for private companies to do-- one was even mentioned in the article-- but somehow not for government
- Jtsummers 4y agoWhy the distinction, in your mind?
- baby 4y agoI would say it's not OK for anyone to do. Software, like gardens, is something you need to tend to otherwise it decays and will eventually stop working.
- xabotage 4y agoIt's clearly been working for decades. The only reason modern software needs so much attention is because 1) Internet connectivity requires constant security updates and 2) new features to sell, neither of which should apply here.
- klyrs 4y agoDoes it? It sounds like this software has been doing just fine for longer than most of us here have been alive. Interesting that your preconception has not been challenged by this obvious counterexample. The hardware is eventually going to give out, which might require a change to software, but the software itself is clearly fine and doesn't need mucking about.
- tluyben2 4y agoNot only does this decades old software from the article tell you otherwise, but it doesn’t apply to gardens either. We (and many others here) don’t tend to most of our garden and all is fine. There are piles of software on Archive.org from the 70s/80s that was not touched since it was built and it also works fine. Not everything is brittle always breaking tech. Not everyone is a feature hoarder either so why would you need changes to something that works well; without changes, things don’t just break.
- 4y ago
- perihelions 4y ago- "SFMTA is hardly unique in using them, however. As recently as 2020, British Airways was loading avionics software onto 747s via floppy disk." Topical thread here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24109565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24109565 ("Boeing 747s receive software updates over floppy disks" (2020))
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- photochemsyn 4y agoIs this really an issue? The kind of signalling system needed to safely operate trains seems well-understood and doesn't require vast amounts of data storage, and it's been pretty reliable since the 1970s apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SelTrac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SelTrac So data about the system configuration is stored on floppies instead of USB drives - so what? It might even have the benefit of nobody being able to easily corrupt the system by plugging in a USB drive loaded with some Stuxnet-type malware.
- fredoralive 4y agoAn obvious issue is that you may have issues finding replacement parts for the drive mechanisms, or even the discs themselves. Things will wear out and fail, and what was 30 years ago a commodity item is now either an expensive niche spare, or an eBay scavenger hunt.
- nemo44x 4y agoJust get an emulator. You don’t need physical devices for old tech.
- fredoralive 4y agoYes[1], although as the signalling system on a railway is safety critical, you are probably going to have to go through a fair amount of safety checks to make sure the emulator can’t somehow feed invalid data to to main unit. [1] although the original poster was worried about various USB attacks etc, and that’s kinda how the emulator would be loaded nowadays?
- nemo44x 4y agoSecurity through obscurity isn’t security.
- fredoralive 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sourcecodeplz 4y agoNo way this is real. Floppy disks used to get corrupted all the time when I exchanged them with friends. Just a little sun light and ..
- kelnos 4y ago> a city known as a global tech capital would be so reliant on a storage format that lacks the capacity to store a single hi-resolution photograph. Statements like these annoy me; having a lot of tech businesses in a city is completely unrelated to what government agencies use.
- rbanffy 4y agoBesides, a system where a failure can cause massive loss of life should not be replaced just because there is a new flashier technology available. Replacing it would require running the two systems concurrently in n+1 redundancy until everyone is happy the new system is not attempting mass murder by train collision. There will be a point where operating the current system will become more costly (due to failures and outages) than developing and validating a new one. At that point it's rational to start replacing it.
- spicyusername 4y agoI mean, maybe you've accepted that as normal, but it is a little amusing. It's not obvious, or even necessary, that there couldn't be sharing of domain knowledge between organizations so closely headquartered.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoYou call 5 1/4" disks 'old'? I remember 8"! And mag-tape! And paper tape! And front-panel toggle switches! Kids these days.
- thelazydogsback 4y agoPlug-board wiring!
- Symbiote 4y agoRailway signaling goes a lot further back than that. Steel cables connected between a mechanical signal and a lever, including fail-safes should cables break. A special baton to carry, only a train carrying a baton is allowed to move. These are still in use in some places.
- arethuza 4y agoJacquard looms are even older than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoI don't go back that far. My first computer was an Altair 8800.
- arethuza 4y agoI once met a chap who had done programming with a hand drill.... Ancient mainframe controlling a steel plant, booted from a paper tape that had decades before been replaced with a leather strap. He need to alter something in the boot process - so had to resort to a hand drill :-)
- burntalmonds 4y agoThe article called them 5-inch disks, which immediately bothered me. C'mon, you can't just round it off. We always referred to them as 5 and a quarter inch floppies.
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoIf it ain't broke and I know they make solid state floppy drive replacements for use cases like this. Sometimes older systems are perfect by design and shouldn't be replaced.
- ransom1538 4y agoFloppy disks? That is insane. They should upgrade and put it online with a nice CRUD interface. That is smarter.
- Drunk_Engineer 4y agoThe current ATCS system was installed in the late 1990's, so it is actually not that old (for a train signal system). The real issue here is the usual SF Muni incompetence when they spec'ed and installed a signal system without knowing what they were doing. Before upgrading the train system, SFMTA will first need to upgrade the in-house staff. Otherwise the same problem is going to happen again.
- jamescham 4y agoThe actual interview is kind of amazing. https://twitter.com/priyadclemens/status/1621229630765125639?s=20&t=n3Sw8wlw4hhTf4sTW3eTWQ https://twitter.com/priyadclemens/status/1621229630765125639...
- xtiansimon 4y agoI lived in San Francisco and the Bay Area, and I never knew there was a “subway” system. LOL
- timcavel 4y ago[dead]