SAN FRANCISCO — The floppy-disk era is nearing an end on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
KGO-TV reports that the Muni board has approved a $212 million contract with Hitachi Rail for a train control system that will replace the more than 30-year-old system that still runs on outdated floppy-disk technology.
The Automatic Train Control system remains in place on the 3-mile, seven-station Market Street Subway. Installed in 1998, its software must be loaded with obsolete 5¼-inch flppy disks each morning. As KGO reported earlier this year, the system is past its expected lifespan, and requires finding programmers with out-of-date job skills [see “San Francisco train control project seeks to retire system …,” Trains News Wire, April 7, 2024].
The system in use on the Market Street Subway will be replaced as part of a project to update the entire Muni system with Communications-Based Train Control. That project is projected to take until 2029; the subway portion could be done in late 2027 or early 2028.
In 1998 5.25″ floppy disks were ALREADY obsolete, which makes me think they really mean 3.5″ floppy disks.
SPRR was using 5 1/4″ floppies in their IBM slow speed (TOPS terminal) system network controllers long before I hired on to their telecom dept in 1984, and continued their use to and through the UPRR 1996 takeover merger until appx early ~2007-8 when UPRR’s high speed NEC MW internet, coast-coast system finally and completely took over.
The slow speed 4.8/9.6 kbs TOPS terminal network (with the 5 1/4″ floppies) was compatible with the 600 multiplexed phone channel Lenkurt and Collins MW radio system where the data could be (de)modulated on any of the 600 analog, 4 KHZ wide multiplexed channels. Before and during the UPRR system’s highspeed internet NEC MW upgrade, I/we relied on an IBM surplus dealer in Nochagdoches, TX for 5 1/4″ floppies, as well as, (still in use), 4230/4232 printer ribbons, and other hard-to-get IBM obsolete TOPS parts.
I FINALLY was able to locate that TX surplus IBM company on an old promotional baseball cap they once sent me prior to my 2010 retirement, lol!
But I don’t know if those 5 1/4″ floppies are still available??? http://southtexasproducts.com/
Unbelievable! And San Francisco is a mere 40 miles from the tech cradle of Silicon Valley!
Punch (Hollerith) cards had the longest tenure being used in the 1890 census, and later in the railroad industry and others into the 1970’s.
Perhaps they should switch to punch cards for greater longevity,
All of this beggs the question of what kind of control system was in place before 1998? the Muni Metro dates to the 1970s. Was it mainframes running tape? Punch cards? Two Dixie cups and a string?
I wonder if they are going to a CD-R based system this go around? I’m sorry, but even in the early 1990’s the 5 1/4″ floppy was considered aging tech, and by 1998 they were archaic…
I had the same thought about the floppy being installed in 1998. Someone(s) who had no idea what was happening at the time must have made that decision.