LOL! The 5 (5.25?) or 3.5 inch floppies? Where did find the disk drives if one failed?
They have now upgraded to zip drives.
I bought one, experienced glitches and errors, and never used them again.
If it’s still using floppies in 2026, there’s likely a damn good reason. Nobody is keeping around something vulnerable to antiCMOS.b for no reason.
It is intentional. It solves a problem. And we’re going to regret this fuckery.
Failure rates and avenues that are predictable and can be operationally regulated around. That’s a form of reliability that they want in that system. That’s it. Plus it costs money to update things like that.
“a single platform that pulls that data into one view. Instead of searching for info, they [will] have immediate access to everything they need to make split-second decisions,”
So taring down “data siloes” and centralizing all to an interconnected data treasure trove… I’ve read numerous case stories from Genetec at airports, which is a provider of surveillance tech (both software and hardware), and the integration of air control systems into (relatively) modern surveillance platforms is a recurring priority. This typically allows data from various systems to be used as context, for human operators, but increasingly automated systems (generating reports and triggering alerts).
Airport operators might not even be to blame for these “operational efficiencies”, but rather the government imposing extremely stringent legislation, which must be complied with (the PATRIOT act being an example). And the following line suggests this is yet another political push:
“The greatest nation in the world deserves a state-of-the-art air traffic control system, and under President Trump, we’re delivering just that,”
This is at least as disturbing as it is reassuring.
Be more disturbed that the Minuteman III missiles, one leg of the nuclear triad, rely on the big 8 inch floppies in their launch control systems.
The replacement missiles will not enter service until the “early 2030s.”
FAA information display systems to be floppy-free at 435 sites by end of 2028.
not so fast!
Uh.
Wut.
Neat. Can I have the old ones? It’ll go well with my water modeling software from the 80s that I got from an old company trashing their old stuff.
