San Francisco to Pay $212 Million to End Reliance on 5.25-Inch Floppy Disks
Freeman writes:
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) board has agreed to spend $212 million to get its Muni Metro light rail off floppy disks.
The Muni Metro's Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) has required 51/4-inch floppy disks since 1998, when it was installed at San Francisco's Market Street subway station. The system uses three floppy disks for loading DOS software that controls the system's central servers.
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After starting initial planning in 2018, the SFMTA originally expected to move to a floppy-disk-free train control system by 2028. But with COVID-19 preventing work for 18 months, the estimated completion date was delayed.On October 15, the SFMTA moved closer to ditching floppies when its board approved a contract with Hitachi Rail for implementing a new train control system that doesn't use floppy disks, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
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Further illustrating the light rail's dated tech, the current ATCS was designed to last 20 to 25 years, meaning its expected expiration date was in 2023. The system still works fine, but the risk of floppy disk data degradation and challenges in maintaining expertise in 1990s programming languages have further encouraged the SFMTA to seek upgrades.
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The SFMTA plans to spend $700 million (including the $212 million Hitachi contract) to overhaul the light rail's control system. This includes replacing the loop cable system for sending data across the servers and trains. The cables are said to be a more pressing concern than the use of floppy disks. The aging cables are fragile, with "less bandwidth than an old AOL dial-up modem," Roccaforte previously told Ars.
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The SFMTA's website says that the current estimated completion date for the complete overhaul is "2033/2034."
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Various other organizations have also been slow to ditch the dated storage format, including Japan, which only stopped using floppy disks in governmental systems in June, and the German navy, which is still trying to figure out a replacement for 8-inch floppies.
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