5 ms·

I have this feeling that they meant 1988 instead of 1998....but I could be wrong? Edit: Even the news article hints at 5 inch floppy disks...which makes 1998 m

I have this feeling that they meant 1988 instead of 1998....but I could be wrong? Edit: Even the news article hints at 5 inch floppy disks...which makes 1998 make absolutely no sense to me at least. https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-train-system-has-been-running-on-floppy-disks-but-city-fears-catastrophic-failure-before-upgrade/14624828/#:~:text=SFMTA%27s%20train%20control%20system%20relies%20every%20morning%20on%205%20inch%20floppy%20disks https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-train-system-has-been-run....

deathanatos 2y ago
I'm not sure moving it back a whole decade saves them? My family's first PC in 1987 had a hard disk. The Wikipedia quote they provide lines up with that, and provides a more authoritative point of when it was introduced. And yeah, the "5 inch floppy" quote paired with a photo of a diskette. God only knows what actual hardware the system uses. But point being … the journalist doesn't seem to have found out.
- gsk22 2y ago
  There's a big difference when choosing technologies for a home computer versus a safety-critical system that will run for decades. Seems reasonable they would've chosen a proven, if slightly outdated, tech over a newer one that had less data to back up its long-term reliability. And of course we can get into the discussion of cost: floppies are way cheaper than hard drives, especially for the presumably-small amounts of data that are needed for such a control system. A 500MB hard drive was probably overkill. I am of course speculating, but I don't know why we should assume that the engineers working on the project originally made a silly decision. They almost certainly weighed the available options to deliver the project within the defined constraints of the system.
  - JoyousAbandon 2y ago
    Hard drives weren't new in 1998. I don't even know where you'd have gotten a computer that lacked one by then; and most would also have had a CD-ROM drive.
    - prewett 2y ago
      The Mac SE had a 20 MB hard disk in 1987! And there was no way Windows 95--which everyone had by 1998--was fitting on a floppy of any size.
- DerekL 2y ago
  Many computers in the late 1980's came with hard disks, but the cheapest ones did not.
- compuguy 2y ago
  Yeah, on further reflection, I recall my parents having a 286 with a hard drive. Still don't get why they couldn't find a 5.25" floppy. Then again both types of floppy drives are still quite obsolete....

deathanatos 2y ago

I'm not sure moving it back a whole decade saves them? My family's first PC in 1987 had a hard disk. The Wikipedia quote they provide lines up with that, and provides a more authoritative point of when it was introduced. And yeah, the "5 inch floppy" quote paired with a photo of a diskette. God only knows what actual hardware the system uses. But point being … the journalist doesn't seem to have found out.

gsk22 2y ago
There's a big difference when choosing technologies for a home computer versus a safety-critical system that will run for decades. Seems reasonable they would've chosen a proven, if slightly outdated, tech over a newer one that had less data to back up its long-term reliability. And of course we can get into the discussion of cost: floppies are way cheaper than hard drives, especially for the presumably-small amounts of data that are needed for such a control system. A 500MB hard drive was probably overkill. I am of course speculating, but I don't know why we should assume that the engineers working on the project originally made a silly decision. They almost certainly weighed the available options to deliver the project within the defined constraints of the system.
- JoyousAbandon 2y ago
  Hard drives weren't new in 1998. I don't even know where you'd have gotten a computer that lacked one by then; and most would also have had a CD-ROM drive.
  - prewett 2y ago
    The Mac SE had a 20 MB hard disk in 1987! And there was no way Windows 95--which everyone had by 1998--was fitting on a floppy of any size.
DerekL 2y ago
Many computers in the late 1980's came with hard disks, but the cheapest ones did not.
compuguy 2y ago
Yeah, on further reflection, I recall my parents having a 286 with a hard drive. Still don't get why they couldn't find a 5.25" floppy. Then again both types of floppy drives are still quite obsolete....