5 ms·

A first step to mitigate some of the risk would be to move the system to a virtualised system. This could be in each location or more centralised which would

A first step to mitigate some of the risk would be to move the system to a virtualised system. This could be in each location or more centralised which would make the maintenance of the fleet of old computers easier. Floppy can be copied to hard disks and will not have to worry about failures of mechanical parts involved in reading floppy drives. Developing a brand new system would take quit a lot of time. As all systems du if they need extreme uptime. Starting that effort now is ok but I would guess it would be take at leas a couple of years. Significant work would have to understand in detail what the current system does and does not do, and then map out what a system should do.

HPsquared 1y ago
I wonder if anyone makes a virtual floppy drive that replicates the performance characteristics. I.e. to avoid a faster virtual drive uncovering dormant race conditions. Something like a developer assuming "I have enough time to do this processing before the disc makes another rotation" etc.
- Craighead 1y ago
  [dead]
- guax 1y ago
  I think any of the "off the shelf" gotek emulators should suffice for this. They're made for people to keep playing games on old hardware. I would assume copy protection and other shenanigans would be the creme de la creme of abusing the hardware. This is to get rid of the media only. You'll still be using the original compute hardware. But it would be an interesting step. I feel that most of the desire to upgrade is cultural and not technical. People love to talk about the floppies being used while its just a small part of the equation. Cost and risk of creating a new system with the same reliability expectations is hard when the incumbent has decades of iteration. For systems that do not require more performance or energy efficiency the accounting on upgrading looks very different.
- shakna 1y ago
  Probably MartyPC [0]. It replicates most of the physical aspects of devices. > In May 2023, MartyPC became the first PC emulator capable of emulating every effect in the PC demo Area 5150. [0] https://martypc.net/ https://martypc.net/
- kube-system 1y ago
  https://www.amazon.com/Gotek-SFR1M44-U100-1-44MB-Floppy-Emulator/dp/B088ZT7J7G https://www.amazon.com/Gotek-SFR1M44-U100-1-44MB-Floppy-Emul...
DocTomoe 1y ago
We IT folks tend to quickly propose solutions to systems whose complexities we do not completely understand. That's fine when it is about serving ads or managing book orders. It's not ok when the stakes are high. Virtualization just adds another layer of complexity to an already fragile system which literally thousands of human lives depend on every day. Adding more complexity is not a neutral act here, but neglectful manslaughter waiting to happen. Aviation is a low-tech, never-touch-a-running-system, risk-averse environment for a reason. Floppies were useful because you could easily take them and take them to another, secondary, sometimes air gapped backup system. Replacing this functionality means replicating not just the data transfer, but also the safety architecture - which includes physical isolation and manual fallback paths. To recreate, the best chance would probably be something like storing the relevant info on thumb drives - but then you have whole new family of attack vectors by hostile forces (anyone still remember Stuxnet), which floppies did not have in that form? And then there's the pesky aspect of international interoperability. One country alone cannot just storm forward. We are looking at decades of upgrades and alignments here. And that process already is underway. But proposing a radical change without acknowledging the full scope of what that entails - from certification cycles to human factors to geopolitical coordination - is not progress, it’s hubris.
- jiggawatts 1y ago
  Eeeeexcept that floppies are horrifically unreliable. I remember feeding disk number 27 out of 33 only to get a "bad sector" error an hour into a software install. I'm still salty about that one. "It's not broken" is the cry of the bad manager that hasn't done the proper analysis, hasn't actually looked at the pros and cons, but has simply become complacent and comfortable with the devil they know. If they're still using physical floppies, then their process is broken now, so virtualising it will almost certainly un-break it. A simple "clarifier" for this kind of thought process that I like to use is: If you were already using the new option (virtualised legacy hardware), would you think it a good idea to convert it to using open drives with convenient dust ingress, non-existent support and supply chain, glacially slow mechanical moving parts, and hilariously antiquated crunching noises for all data access? Would you? Really? Or would you recoil in horror at the very idea? I use the same kind of logic on people who think staying on Windows Server 2012 in <current year> is a good idea. Would you downgrade Windows Server 2025 to 2012? Why not? You think it's a great platform, apparently! PS: I worked on a large scale DOS-era software virtualisation project where we moved ~20K users onto a Windows + Citrix platform. We eliminated about 6000 floppy drives and about a million(!) tapes, and the resulting system was so much faster and reliable than the original that people were trying to bribe the project manager to be put at the front of the migration queue.
hulitu 1y ago
> A first step to mitigate some of the risk would be to move the system to a virtualised system. ... running Windows 11. Flight delayed because Windows is updating.

HPsquared 1y ago

I wonder if anyone makes a virtual floppy drive that replicates the performance characteristics. I.e. to avoid a faster virtual drive uncovering dormant race conditions. Something like a developer assuming "I have enough time to do this processing before the disc makes another rotation" etc.

Craighead 1y ago
[dead]
guax 1y ago
I think any of the "off the shelf" gotek emulators should suffice for this. They're made for people to keep playing games on old hardware. I would assume copy protection and other shenanigans would be the creme de la creme of abusing the hardware. This is to get rid of the media only. You'll still be using the original compute hardware. But it would be an interesting step. I feel that most of the desire to upgrade is cultural and not technical. People love to talk about the floppies being used while its just a small part of the equation. Cost and risk of creating a new system with the same reliability expectations is hard when the incumbent has decades of iteration. For systems that do not require more performance or energy efficiency the accounting on upgrading looks very different.
shakna 1y ago
Probably MartyPC [0]. It replicates most of the physical aspects of devices. > In May 2023, MartyPC became the first PC emulator capable of emulating every effect in the PC demo Area 5150. [0] https://martypc.net/ https://martypc.net/
kube-system 1y ago
https://www.amazon.com/Gotek-SFR1M44-U100-1-44MB-Floppy-Emulator/dp/B088ZT7J7G https://www.amazon.com/Gotek-SFR1M44-U100-1-44MB-Floppy-Emul...

DocTomoe 1y ago

We IT folks tend to quickly propose solutions to systems whose complexities we do not completely understand. That's fine when it is about serving ads or managing book orders. It's not ok when the stakes are high. Virtualization just adds another layer of complexity to an already fragile system which literally thousands of human lives depend on every day. Adding more complexity is not a neutral act here, but neglectful manslaughter waiting to happen. Aviation is a low-tech, never-touch-a-running-system, risk-averse environment for a reason. Floppies were useful because you could easily take them and take them to another, secondary, sometimes air gapped backup system. Replacing this functionality means replicating not just the data transfer, but also the safety architecture - which includes physical isolation and manual fallback paths. To recreate, the best chance would probably be something like storing the relevant info on thumb drives - but then you have whole new family of attack vectors by hostile forces (anyone still remember Stuxnet), which floppies did not have in that form? And then there's the pesky aspect of international interoperability. One country alone cannot just storm forward. We are looking at decades of upgrades and alignments here. And that process already is underway. But proposing a radical change without acknowledging the full scope of what that entails - from certification cycles to human factors to geopolitical coordination - is not progress, it’s hubris.

jiggawatts 1y ago
Eeeeexcept that floppies are horrifically unreliable. I remember feeding disk number 27 out of 33 only to get a "bad sector" error an hour into a software install. I'm still salty about that one. "It's not broken" is the cry of the bad manager that hasn't done the proper analysis, hasn't actually looked at the pros and cons, but has simply become complacent and comfortable with the devil they know. If they're still using physical floppies, then their process is broken now, so virtualising it will almost certainly un-break it. A simple "clarifier" for this kind of thought process that I like to use is: If you were already using the new option (virtualised legacy hardware), would you think it a good idea to convert it to using open drives with convenient dust ingress, non-existent support and supply chain, glacially slow mechanical moving parts, and hilariously antiquated crunching noises for all data access? Would you? Really? Or would you recoil in horror at the very idea? I use the same kind of logic on people who think staying on Windows Server 2012 in <current year> is a good idea. Would you downgrade Windows Server 2025 to 2012? Why not? You think it's a great platform, apparently! PS: I worked on a large scale DOS-era software virtualisation project where we moved ~20K users onto a Windows + Citrix platform. We eliminated about 6000 floppy drives and about a million(!) tapes, and the resulting system was so much faster and reliable than the original that people were trying to bribe the project manager to be put at the front of the migration queue.

hulitu 1y ago

> A first step to mitigate some of the risk would be to move the system to a virtualised system. ... running Windows 11. Flight delayed because Windows is updating.