"US nuclear force 'still uses floppy disks"

"The US nuclear weapons force still uses a 1970s-era computer system and floppy disks, a government report has revealed."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36385839


So...How long until they switch to 3.5"?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g

Probably should talk to NASA - here.

I can't believe that story skipped RIGHT OVER 5 1/4" disks! Not even a mention!

There's a Timex commericial in here somewhere.

IBM still uses 8" floppy drives in a lot of their equipment, for logging purposes. They are actually extremely tough, and can operate in continuous duty for years. In a challenging situation, other alternatives such as semiconductor jump-drives might not be nearly so reliable. :-/

If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

I worked my way from 8 inch disks to ED 3.5 inch (3.2 MB). I also had these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Microdrive
and I used to demonstrate the robustness of the cartridges by putting one on the floor and standing on it!

Cracked reported this a year ago.

http://www.cracked.com/personal-expe...missileer.html

Part of the issue here is that Congress for the last 35 years has starved the government of money for anything other than war and weaponry.

I know about some of those systems. We used to call the floppies Bernoulli after they switched from the Winchester drives.

I now work where some of the equipment is near 30 years old. Stupid stuff cost a BUNCH when new. Just keeps running because it was made so darn well. They talked about replacing it but why replace it when you only have a failure every 4 years?

The issue is not that the stuff is not working, it is a concept that is lost in the world today. At one time you'd make something to last. Now you are lucky if it lasts a week. You don't fix anything, you just throw it away and buy a new one.

No, a "Bernoulli' drive was not "an 8-inch floppy." In the latter technology, the read/write head directly contacts the disk surface. However, the plastic is so thick, and durable, and slippery, that the mechanism can actually continue to do this for many years(!).

"Bernoulli" technology ... ahh ... "didn't last long."

The totally-weird thing about "8-inch floppy disks" (and, really, "5-and-a-quarter"), is that they are still(!) quite reliable.

Lt. Col. Henderson's viewpoint is ... uhh(!) ... entirely correct.

My local rag carried a story about that today. I reckon it was a wire story and probably the same one referred to in the first post.

I gathered from it that one of the biggest issues is that replacement hardware parts are becoming more and more difficult to obtain when those failures do occur.

Honest to Pete, if I had to buy a vacuum tube (valve in the UK) today, I don't know where I would begin to look.

"The technology world may seem to be locked in an endless cycle of renewal - but not when it comes to the floppy disk. "

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36389711

Part of me was shocked when I read that article and part of me wasn't.

So I suppose there are vendors who are only in business to create those disc readers, correct?

I wonder what the Chinese, Russians and Israelis use for targeting their nuclear weapons? Pen, paper and slide rulers?


In other news, I tried to post this article to www.techexams.net and it kept getting deleted...

... slide rules, not "rulers" ...

Believe it or not, I have a friend who's a research mechanical engineer, and he uses ... slide rules. (In addition to computers, of course.) And he had an interesting explanation as to why. Basically, he said that he could "feel" the solution as he worked the rule in his hands. He's working with physical things, he's very "tactile" by nature (always touching things ...), and a slide rule quickly gives him an approximate solution that is often good enough. The rule is a thing, and it embodies calculations in mechanical scales and sliders. He's happy when he's fiddling with things, and he has quite a nice collection of them ... all in use.