Transportation secretary Sean Duffy sounds alarm on antiquated FAA system that still uses 'floppy discs'

UK Daily Mail ^ | 02/20/2025 | Rachel Bowman

[blackdog]

Remember when checkrides were IMC, Unusual attitude, partial panel, and you had to find your position on the chart and report arrival at an intersection. Then there was the VFR dead reckoning with no nav-aids. My Loran was more accurate than my subsequent GPS. Granted the Loran had dead spots in some areas, but they are known and brief.

[SkyDancer]

I found one in our garage and asked my dad what it was. He told me. I asked “Are you kidding?”

[XRdsRev]

The program isn’t the problem. The money to upgrade the entire air traffic control system is the problem. Nobody wants to spend the money and they have not wanted to spend the money for decades. Congress has only appropriated enough for piecemeal fixes and upgrades over the years. It is no secret that if we spent the money needed to upgrade the entire system, people’s heads around here would explode.

[rdcbn1]

That's the way it was done back in the day, incredible as it may seem

Heck, the original Macintosh didn't even have a hard drive - 512k of system memory and you had swap operating system discs with program discs to run the computer.

I remember our PhD on their knees bowing to the mighty giant Fujitsu hard drive we were installing - no more un backed up lost data

Were never going to fill that one up - it's got 760 megabytes of data storage 😂

Those were the days - and we actually got more done back then than we do these days.

Well, at least until crystal quest showed up and went viral .

Work pretty much stopped.

World wide .

One of the first and still probably one of the most addictive computer games ever made. Pure digital crack cocaine - try it at your own risk. You have been warned

[stylecouncilor]

WHAT

[linMcHlp]

The original Apple Macintosh 128K, 512K, 512ke (and later Plus, and SE, models) desktop computer, used (or modified and used) essentials of the 1983 Sony Series 35 Model 10 word processor:

http://archive.retro.co.za/mirrors/68000/www.vintagemacworld.com/sony35.html

Image: http://archive.retro.co.za/mirrors/68000/www.vintagemacworld.com/sony35/front_case_th.jpg

I still have the Sony Series 35 Model 10 brochure. In person, the machine resembled the Mac SE.

[NetAddicted]

Duffy can discuss with ElonMusk and BigBalls how to update FAA computer systems. Now is thevtime.

[BiteYourSelf]

Vacuum tubes are much more resistant to EMPs than chips are.🤔

[MayflowerMadam]

“The world was a better place with sneakernet.”

I have a 64gb flash drive with a “Sneakerner” label on it. It’s very useful.

[MayflowerMadam]

Pneumatic tubes?

[mabarker1]

You might be in the know. Are we talking about 3.5", 5.25" or 8" ? (the latter 2 being actual Floppy Disk that can really be folded in half.) For the FAA System ?

At the Auto Parts Store I worked at back in the 80's the first Computer we had for Inventory tracking, Reordering, Accounting and Invoicing was about the size of a phone booth and had a Fixed 18" diameter 10 MB HDD and also a Lift Out 18" diameter 10MB HDD that fit right above the fixed HDD. For Backup of the Data we used 10 of the 8" Floppy Disk. A set for Even Days and a different set Odd Days. The system had 1 Master CRT/Keyboard, 3 Remote CRT/Keyboard for Invoicing, 1 Dot Matrix Single width 8" Invoice Printer and 1 Dot Matrix Double width 24" Printer for Reports and Order Printing. The Hardware was a NOVA System by Data General and the Operating System was for that machine only and the Parts Store Program written in Assembly Language just for our Parts Store by a company that I can't remember the name of but they were for the most part a PIA group that promised us many things that they never did make happen.

The 8" Dual Floppy Drives are the black section in the center of the cabinet. The removable 10 MB HDD is the white on the right side of the picture. Also in the first picture above. The fixed 10 MB is directly below the white removable showing.
And the rear view of the CPU Cabinet.

I can't believe I found this !!!
This is almost exactly what we had !!!
What a late night Flashback for Me...

Almost forgot about this !!!

[Redcitizen]

“ The jet managed to touch down just before 10am, with one passenger taking to X saying: ‘Brake issues so we were braced for emergency brakes potentially worse. Spirits are high now!”

Definitely braking news. I’m glad every one survived.

[Chode]

*

[Cold_Red_Steel]

Vacuum tube operating systems.

---

Hey! They work great in my Vox Amplifier!

[madison10]

Pocketing it?

[skr]

That does seem likely. Or kicking it back to their favorite legislators.