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

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Sounds like a grift. All you need is an emulator and a disk image.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

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