The sources I could find say that they didn't replace the computers accessing the data. They are still IBM Series/1 [1] machines. So whatever is being used, there has to be some kind of floppy (or tape, etc) emulator in front of it.
It's likely the floppy drive in question was an IBM 23FD "Minnow"[2]. The capacity and timeframe matches up.
If I saw a James Bond film where someone broke into someone's house to steal a framed decommissioned 8-inch floppy off the wall in order to obtain valuable nuclear secrets, I would call it far fetched.
What's funny is that the floppy discs they used weren't the 3,5" hard ones people remember from the 90's (the save button icon) but the old 5,25" ones that were actually floppy. That was some ancient shit.
I learned to edit on a Grass Valley that used the 8" floppies. It was the only real world experience I had with them. The only thing the system wrote to the disc was text based EDLs, and it still took forever. Get a cup of coffee slow. Best of my knowledge, there was never an upgrade for this, and it was still in use when I left in the early 2000s. This was at a time when NLEs were still considered offline quality only, and this system was used to do the final online edit from the tape sources.
My first experience seeing an 8" floppy was a professor holding one up so I assumed it was a novelty educational oversized thing. They were ancient back then and it's been awhile since I was in school.
And just to point out, the logical capacity of those disks increased with each physical reduction. Nearly doubling each time. (The best 8" disks had about 1/2 of the capacity of the worst 5 1/4" one, and the best 5 1/4" disk had about 1/2 of the capacity of the worst 3 1/2" one.)
I guess even if IBM didn't put it on the PC, everybody would migrate into 5 1/4" disks on almost the same timeline. Those changes were very compelling back then.
The standard 8" floppy by 1980 was 2MB, 5.25" never beat that, and 3.5" only beat that technically, 'ED' 2.88MB, LS120 and SuperDisk were all very rarely used in reality.
Even before then, 5.25" was popular among personal computer makers, such as Apple, Radio Shack, Commodore, Atari, and Osborne. (Though the TRS-80 Model II used 8".)
Apple, Commodore, Osborne and others were using 5.25" disks at around or before the IBM PC came into play. IBM used 5.25" drives in the PC because they were inexpensive, reliable commodity hardware, much like the rest of the IMB PC.
This might be controversial, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with non-networked computer systems using old tech. I think a lot of tech nerds see the tech as the sole capability of a system, ie 2x the clock speed is 2x the capability, but that's just not how real world systems work. The biggest issues seem to be getting replacement components as systems age or new systems are purchased (like with the scaling of FGM-148s for Ukraine).
Nothing lasts forever. Things need to be fixed and patched continuously, (especially since floppy disks aren't exactly known for their durability) and at some point it's just not cost-effective or even reliable to maintain the old tech anymore. Eventually, a non-networked system will have to be upgraded with newer hardware.
It obviously shouldn't require floppy disks to run. Those disks are unreliable.
If it only requires floppy disks for system updates or something, that's arguably acceptable for a commercial aircraft in the maintenance hangar but not for a nuclear weapons system.
Just because one part of a system is really old does not mean that system is not a good system.
If floppy disks worked for the strategic arms boys, good for them.
I have seen a school tear out PCs in 24GB of RAM and 500GB SSDs (this was in 2016) because they also had PS/2 ports. (These were Dell Precision T3500 workstations.) They decided PS/2 ports were obsolete. They replaced the PCs with new PCs with processors that had slower benchmark scores than the old PCs and that only had 8 to 16 GB of RAM. At least they did not have the obsolete and unused PS/2 ports!
This same fallacy led General Motors to stop making the beloved full-size, rear-wheel-drive, V8 powered Caprice and the equally beloved S10 pickup. A few people poked fun at beloved and profitable products, so they had to go. This is the same fallacy, but I am not describing it correctly.
Getting rid of something functional, that may be the best product ever made for that specific application, because it has a feature or two that people make fun of, is absurd.
The great Chevrolet Caprice was criticized as a gas guzzler, but it got better mileage than the SUVs that replaced it. It was the most comfortable car in the road, which was a great boon for people with back problems who had to drive long distances. It was faster and more stable at high speeds than any tiny import sports car.
I wish we taught cost-benefit-analysis in elementary school. I wish people could see the way to judge a product line is whether it meets a need and therefore turns a profit.
I am tempted to publicly lament that it is illegal to hang MBAs and attorneys.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadNo one's gonna hack floppy disks.
https://archive.li/2022.03.08-114925/https://www.nytimes.com...
Sounds like flash drives. Perhaps even USB.
Or a CD
It's likely the floppy drive in question was an IBM 23FD "Minnow"[2]. The capacity and timeframe matches up.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Series/1
[2] https://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=885
> Damn I'm good at modernization
If I saw a James Bond film where someone broke into someone's house to steal a framed decommissioned 8-inch floppy off the wall in order to obtain valuable nuclear secrets, I would call it far fetched.
I guess even if IBM didn't put it on the PC, everybody would migrate into 5 1/4" disks on almost the same timeline. Those changes were very compelling back then.
> The Defense Department has transitioned away from a 1970s-era nuclear command and control system that relied on eight-inch floppy disks.
Source: friend who is a curator of a computer museum who has old IBM midrange like System 36 and other floppy drives that he uses all the time.
>biggest issues seem to be getting replacement components as systems age
Well, there is one inherently wrong thing about old tech right there :)
If it only requires floppy disks for system updates or something, that's arguably acceptable for a commercial aircraft in the maintenance hangar but not for a nuclear weapons system.
Just because one part of a system is really old does not mean that system is not a good system.
If floppy disks worked for the strategic arms boys, good for them.
I have seen a school tear out PCs in 24GB of RAM and 500GB SSDs (this was in 2016) because they also had PS/2 ports. (These were Dell Precision T3500 workstations.) They decided PS/2 ports were obsolete. They replaced the PCs with new PCs with processors that had slower benchmark scores than the old PCs and that only had 8 to 16 GB of RAM. At least they did not have the obsolete and unused PS/2 ports!
This same fallacy led General Motors to stop making the beloved full-size, rear-wheel-drive, V8 powered Caprice and the equally beloved S10 pickup. A few people poked fun at beloved and profitable products, so they had to go. This is the same fallacy, but I am not describing it correctly.
Getting rid of something functional, that may be the best product ever made for that specific application, because it has a feature or two that people make fun of, is absurd.
The great Chevrolet Caprice was criticized as a gas guzzler, but it got better mileage than the SUVs that replaced it. It was the most comfortable car in the road, which was a great boon for people with back problems who had to drive long distances. It was faster and more stable at high speeds than any tiny import sports car.
I wish we taught cost-benefit-analysis in elementary school. I wish people could see the way to judge a product line is whether it meets a need and therefore turns a profit.
I am tempted to publicly lament that it is illegal to hang MBAs and attorneys.