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An 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, an

An 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 ago
Just get an emulator. You don’t need physical devices for old tech.
- fredoralive 4y ago
  Yes[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 ago
    Security through obscurity isn’t security.
    - fredoralive 4y ago
      The issue isn’t security through obscurity, the protocols and physical layer between the signalling system and disc drive are going to be documented. The issues are more making sure that the emulator is an accurate emulation, and can’t somehow feed false data. The “DOS” on the signalling system might be a somewhat eccentric system written in the 70s, and might trigger edge cases in an emulator designed for generic CP/M or MS-DOS systems. It might not be (and probably isn’t), but when the worst case is a train crash, you have to be cautious.
      - nemo44x 4y ago
        Yeah I hear ya, examine it and proceed with caution. I’m just saying it’s probably an extremely simple system and physical, outdated media isn’t a blocker. So many of these old systems are unbelievably simple by todays standards in terms of the hardware we have to allow layer after layer of abstraction. Back in the day the complexity was squeezing it into limited spaces.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  It might even have the benefit of nobody being able to easily corrupt the system by plugging in a USB drive Just get an emulator. Context matters.

nemo44x 4y ago

Just get an emulator. You don’t need physical devices for old tech.

fredoralive 4y ago
Yes[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 ago
  Security through obscurity isn’t security.
  - fredoralive 4y ago
    The issue isn’t security through obscurity, the protocols and physical layer between the signalling system and disc drive are going to be documented. The issues are more making sure that the emulator is an accurate emulation, and can’t somehow feed false data. The “DOS” on the signalling system might be a somewhat eccentric system written in the 70s, and might trigger edge cases in an emulator designed for generic CP/M or MS-DOS systems. It might not be (and probably isn’t), but when the worst case is a train crash, you have to be cautious.
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      Yeah I hear ya, examine it and proceed with caution. I’m just saying it’s probably an extremely simple system and physical, outdated media isn’t a blocker. So many of these old systems are unbelievably simple by todays standards in terms of the hardware we have to allow layer after layer of abstraction. Back in the day the complexity was squeezing it into limited spaces.
anigbrowl 4y ago
It might even have the benefit of nobody being able to easily corrupt the system by plugging in a USB drive Just get an emulator. Context matters.