Technology

59572 readers

4521 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

342

San Francisco to pay $212 million to end reliance on 5.25-inch floppy disks (arstechnica.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/technology

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Zyrxil 25 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yeah if that's all that needed replacing. The entire system is ancient, not just the disks, like:

Much more critical than the dated use of floppy disks is the system's loop cable, which transmits data between the central servers and the trains and, according to Roccaforte, "has less bandwidth than an old AOL dial-up modem."

The SFMTA's website adds:

The loop cable is fragile and easily disturbed. This makes subway maintenance more difficult. This also means the system cannot be extended outside the subway, along surface rail, where currently we don’t have automatic train control.

[–] reddig33 6 points 4 weeks ago

The loop cable and other non-floppy improvements are priced out separately according to the article.