Air Force Replaces 8-inch Floppy Disk Drives

[WA2SQQ]

Say it ain't so ... You can’t make this up.
The U.S. Air Force has finally replaced its ancient 8-inch floppy disk drives. The 8-inch floppy disk drive was invented by IBM in the late 1980s as a replacement for punch cards. They were used to help send out emergency action messages to U.S. nuclear forces worldwide.

So, should I keep my 1.44 floppies?

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a29539578/air-force-floppy-disks/

[WD8KDG]

Hate to post replies to some threads. Over all, the US has become a third world country.

WD8KDG,

[KA3EKH]

There are some advantages to having a system that works and is easy to maintain. The military has no problems with supporting contractors to produce special media for new disks and you did not have to worry about them being tampered with. Thirty years or more run for a militarized system is not uncommon. Try that with the desktop junk that’s being built today, not to mention the way fat overblown operating systems.

[KK4YY]

If it ain't broke...

[W7TFO]

Well, gee.  Our old POTS line is partially on open wire.  Buried cable is where any problems happen.

73DG

[Tom WA3KLR]

I remember the 8" floppies in use in 1980 at my new job.  The 8" floppy was invented by IBM in the late 1960's per Wikipedia.

[W6TOM]

   Worked for a small Silicon Valley computer company from 1979 to 1986 and never saw a 8 inch floppy, then I went to work for the local utility in their communications department. We had a number of Rolm phone switches, the oldest of which was a Rolm 8000 which used a 8 inch floppy to store the operating system for that switch. Those were still in use in 2015 when I retired but were being replaced with Cisco Internet/Phone systems.

     In the case of the military I would think reliability and repair-ability would be more important than latest technology.

[w8khk]

I remember the 8" floppies in use in 1980 at my new job.  The 8" floppy was invented by IBM in the late 1960's per Wikipedia.

Yes, late 1960s for inclusion in the IBM mainframe hardware, and the original application for the 8 inch floppy drive was to load the microcode into the control storage of the IBM-370 computer.  The earlier IBM-360 microcode was read-only memory in the form of ribbons or tapes, with holes cut to make either a zero or one bit.  The microcode is used to decode and execute each machine instruction in the operating system and user's application program.  Using a floppy enabled the IBM-370 to quickly update microcode when updates were necessary,  It also allowed an alternate microcode set to emulate earlier IBM computer instruction sets while customers migrated to native 370 code.  Much later, it became a general-purpose mass storage device.

When I first operated a 370, I thought, how neat it would be to have that device in a home computer.  In the late 70's, I built an 8080 machine from scratch.  The two 8 inch floppy drives set me back over $500 each, not including the controller hardware, power supply, enclosure, etc. 

[K9PNP]

We had a few vacuum tube computers [bunches of 12AT7's] and some discreet component computers in the late 60's.    They worked well for what they were designed to do.  Don't remember what the AN/TSQ-51 system used [another thing I thought I would never forget.]  They are part of the reason the system was built in semi-trailers.

Just remember:  The fancier/more complex you make something, usually it is much easier to break.  When you are sitting at a low DEFCON number, breakage is the last thing you want.

[Opcom]

There is much to be said for low density storage. 40 year old 5" FDs are still readable today and the drives still work.

[KB2WIG]

The tape machine on Voyager 2 has been running for 41 years.... snot to bad


klc

[KA0HCP]

We were still using core memory computers shipboard and in our patrol planes when I left navy active duty in 1993.

[w9jsw]

My first job at IBM  in 1979 was writing microcode for the 3880 storage control unit. We built the code load and used an IBM 1130 system to write the code onto the media. The 8 inch drive had a code name. The media also had a code name. If I recall correctly the media was called Figaro and the drives were called Igar drives.

Dr. Google confirms my recollection - https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/L2006.4.3

John