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5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030 (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] dejected_warp_core 19 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

This is interesting. The longevity of this legacy tech may be secure if they use the right channels.

SoCal happens to have a very active retro-computing scene right now, much of which is in the bay area. If they can breathe life into an Apollo Guidance Computer, bog-standard floppy drives will be a piece of cake.

On the other hand, the same scene has modern emulation for just about every (popular) legacy media format imaginable. Upgrading the drives to use SD cards and USB thumbdrives is something they could buy off the shelf today: Apple II, C64, Tandy, misc. So there's no reason to suffer through hardware failures when more reliable tech is available.

There are even commercial options out there. Example: https://www.shopfloorautomations.com/hardware/floppy-connect/

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_hardware_emulator

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

That video series on restoring the Apollo computer is excellent - very smart people solving obscure challenges and taking the time to explain each step as they go. One of the best things on YouTube, and fascinating if you're the right kind of nerd.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

breathe life into an Apollo Guidance Computer

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.