Defense Department still using 8-inch floppy disks. Really?

[astro]

@Siam_Sam

Damn, I wish I’d known about this. We’ve been clearing out stuff in preparation for our Big Move, and some of what got tossed was old floppy disks from the '90s. Bet I could have sold them to the military for $1000 each.

Ebay would have spoiled your plans tons of 8" disks are still available on ebay for a few bucks each.

I do wonder if the performance of the media might degrade over time.

[aceplace57]

8 in floppy is just as reliable as any other size. Just less storage. If a tiny text file is needed to launch a middle. Then the older floppy is fine.

I never owned any 8 in floppy drives. But my Dept head (20 years ago) had a word processing workstation from the 1970s. He liked using it and knew all the formatting codes. it saved files on the big floppies. He had a lot of old documents that he could only open on that workstation

[carnivorousplant]

@Skywatcher

In the Nineties, I worked for a membership organization which relied on a mainframe from the Seventies and accessed by dumb terminals that may have been even older. These things were not encased in plastic but wood!

One would expect metal.

[cochrane]

Damn. I had a PC 20 years ago that used 5.25 inch floppies. I didn’t realize they came even larger than that.

[Loach]

@AK84

:eek:
"Moscow. We wanted to rain down on Moscow not Munchen.

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.
Launch missiles.

[mixdenny]

@Little_Nemo

So I went down to storage and dug up an old computer, which I had registered as being located in my unofficial office. I then removed its registration sticker. I then “fixed” it by “replacing” some parts - I threw out the old computer and brought in the new computer (nobody said I couldn’t replace 100% of the parts), I attached the old registration sticker to the new computer and as far as the index was concerned this new computer was now the old computer, even though the only part from the old computer that was still present was the sticker itself. But any auditor who checked would see that this old computer was registered to be in my office.

OH. My. God. I am retired from NASA and we got in those situations every now and then. I think what you really needed, believe it or not, was a “Request to Cannibalize” form. Within which you needed to justify the cannibalization by showing the devalued asset was better off being reused rather than surplussed. Various iterations of the form are still around, just search for it.

Dennis

[Little_Pig]

I understand the argument of keeping old software systems around, but obsolete hardware? I mean, 8-inch floppy drives went out of style when the Ford Pinto was still being produced. So where do you get an 8-inch floppy disk in 2016? Who makes 'em?

[carnivorousplant]

@Little_Pig

So where do you get an 8-inch floppy disk in 2016? Who makes 'em?

The above example is Ebay.

[Little_Pig]

@carnivorousplant

The above example is Ebay.

The Feds buy their floppy disks on EBay? I think not.

[Claverhouse]

From that dodgy little man with the thick accent with an oversized raincoat who keeps nipping in and out of the Russian Embassy to use the toilets. He can supply at half cost price,

[gotpasswords]

I didn’t see anything that says the government is actually still buying 8" floppies, just that there are still some extant systems that use them. I have no idea if the government’s procurement folks went to 3M/Imation or Dysan years ago and bought a warehouse full, or if the things are simply reliable enough that they keep working with careful handling and don’t need frequent replacement.

[Jophiel]

A friend of mine was hired by one of the nation’s big insurance companies right out of college (actually, before he even graduated) because my friend studied legacy programming languages and they needed someone who could run their big ancient mainframes. Twenty years later and he still has the same job.

[Crafter_Man]

It is very very very very expensive, and very very very very time consuming, to upgrade a DoD system. To upgrade this old floppy system, we’re not talking $100K. We’re not talking $1M. We’re talking well over $50M, and that could be low by an order of magnitude. Heck, just writing the new TOs would probably cost over $10M. And then there’s new TPS that need to be written, new depot maintenance equipment, training, calibration equipment, spare parts, software security analysis, etc. etc. etc.

If repair parts are readily available for the existing system, and the system is reliable, then there’s no reason for the DoD program office to spend money on it. They have more pressing issues to spend money on.

[Miller]

@Little_Pig

I understand the argument of keeping old software systems around, but obsolete hardware? I mean, 8-inch floppy drives went out of style when the Ford Pinto was still being produced. So where do you get an 8-inch floppy disk in 2016? Who makes 'em?

I know a guy who used to work for a major auto part retail chain. The company maintains a warehouse somewhere that’s just stuffed to the rafters with identical models of the same dot-matrix printer. When that style of printer was being discontinued, the company bought up all the available stock, and warehoused it. Twenty years later, when one of the in-store printers breaks down, they haul a new one out of storage and ship it to the store. They’ve apparently still got enough stocked up to last until halfway to the next century.

I imagine there’s a similar government warehouse somewhere filled with 8" floppies.

[Princhester]

@gotpasswords

I didn’t see anything that says the government is actually still buying 8" floppies, just that there are still some extant systems that use them. I have no idea if the government’s procurement folks went to 3M/Imation or Dysan years ago and bought a warehouse full, or if the things are simply reliable enough that they keep working with careful handling and don’t need frequent replacement.

IIRC floppy and reliability weren’t words used in the same sentence too often. I would also wonder if old unused ones stored for decades in a warehouse would still be in good condition. I suspect they are still made fresh.

[Senegoid]

@Gatopescado

I got yer 8 inches right here! It ain’t too floppy, though.

You need to off-load all the data first.

[Count_Blucher]

Hamsters Ate My Post

But if it had been stored on a floppy, pulled out of the PC, stored in a hardened bunker surrounded by an armored column and a brigade of Special Forces… all overseen by satellite [del]weapons[/del] recon, that probably never would have happened.

[Senegoid]

@Little_Nemo

A true story about computers and government regulations.

< . . . >

So I went down to storage and dug up an old computer, which I had registered as being located in my unofficial office. I then removed its registration sticker. I then “fixed” it by “replacing” some parts - I threw out the old computer and brought in the new computer (nobody said I couldn’t replace 100% of the parts), I attached the old registration sticker to the new computer and as far as the index was concerned this new computer was now the old computer, even though the only part from the old computer that was still present was the sticker itself. . . .

Proof that the Thesian Computer is still the same mochine it always was!

[Chronos]

It may not be broke now, but it will be eventually. And if it’s so ingrained into your company that it would shut you down for a week to upgrade them, how long is it going to shut you down for when you one day have to do it from scratch, unscheduled, and with most of your old records irretrievably lost?

Quoth Crafter_Man:

It is very very very very expensive, and very very very very time consuming, to upgrade a DoD system. To upgrade this old floppy system, we’re not talking $100K. We’re not talking $1M. We’re talking well over $50M, and that could be low by an order of magnitude. Heck, just writing the new TOs would probably cost over $10M. And then there’s new TPS that need to be written, new depot maintenance equipment, training, calibration equipment, spare parts, software security analysis, etc. etc. etc.

And that’s exactly why they absolutely need to upgrade them. The cost is only that high because they’ve been refusing to upgrade them for generations, and it’s only going to get higher. The first rule of holes is to stop digging.

[Senegoid]

From that snipped that beowulff quoted:

. . . Their attendance was highlighted by Evi Nemeth during the initial conference orientation session where she pointed out the enduring value of their work. As part of her explanation, she was emphasizing the longevity of their ideas and said: “Unix has been around for 30 years. Do you know of any software that has been used for 30 years?”

At that point, the rhetorical question drew an unexpected answer from the crowd with an attendee quipping: “uhh, lady, I work for the Air Force…”

That would have been Grace Hopper, I presume.

Oh, wait. She was Navy. All the same.