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US Nuclear Missile Silos Use Safe, Secure 8" Floppy Disks
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Sean Gallagher writes that the government built facilities for the Minuteman missiles in the 1960s and 1970s and although the missiles have been upgraded numerous times to make them safer and more reliable, the bases themselves haven't changed much and there isn't a lot of incentive to upgrade them. ICBM forces commander Maj. Gen. Jack Weinstein told Leslie Stahl from "60 Minutes" that the bases have extremely tight IT and cyber security, because they're not Internet-connected and they use such old hardware and software. "A few years ago we did a complete analysis of our entire network," says Weinstein. "Cyber engineers found out that the system is extremely safe and extremely secure in the way it's developed." While on the base, missileers showed Stahl the 8-inch floppy disks, marked "Top Secret," which is used with the computer that handles what was once called the Strategic Air Command Digital Network (SACDIN), a communication system that delivers launch commands to US missile forces. Later, in an interview with Weinstein, Stahl described the disk she was shown as "gigantic," and said she had never seen one that big. Weinstein explained, "Those older systems provide us some, I will say, huge safety, when it comes to some cyber issues that we currently have in the world.""
"I've never seen a floppy that big!"
"Wait til you see it spinning."
They say 8", but their wives privately shared that they were only 6" on a good day.
"Uh... phrasing."
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Brilliant strategy...
Those older systems provide us some, I will say, huge safety, when it comes to some cyber issues that we currently have in the world.
No, they don't. Claiming obsolete hardware and software is more secure is just a thinly veiled security through obscurity claim. There are other claims here; the machines are airgapped, and I suspect that the physical site security is pretty good; but the use of old software and hardware adds nothing at all to that.
You can tell that people have no clue when they keep using the word Cyber.
Instead of "Security through obscurity", we now have "Security though obsolescence."
The silo wins the security battle through two things:
1) Physical security
2) Not being on the Internet
Yes, it's old stuff. Who cares? Nobody can touch it, and it's not on the global network. Not much else is required.
Are there any old drives around that can read these disks? What do they do if the drives fail? I am surprised this really still works, but I guess the stuff works, so they have no real inclination to upgrade it anytime soon. What old operating system do you need to read 8" floppy disks? Would DOS 6.22 work or would you need something even older?
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
I see no downside to this. There's no reason for our nuclear silos to be networked or to run modern hardware. If it works, don't fix it.
Related: anyone remember in the pilot of the Battlestar Galactica remake how they explained that the reason there was all that old tech (phones with cords, manual doors) aboard a starship made with technology hundreds of years superior to our own was that they designed it that way on purpose to prevent hacking? Kinda makes you wonder--if there's actually a cyber warfare component to the next major conflict, will the military tech that's developed afterwards end up resembling 1970s (or earlier) era hardware more so than the "futuristic" tech you see in most modern SF?
Even if you could bridge the air gap nothing on the other side uses USB or runs a modern operating system. The slower a launch command is to be verified the easier it is to stop an accidental launch.
Plus you ensure nobody can use the launch computers for anything else, even if it is reportedly the most boring job in the world being on watch down in the missile silo.
quoth ICBM forces commander Maj. Gen. Jack Weinstein
"Those older systems provide us some, I will say, huge safety, when it comes to some cyber issues that we currently have in the world.""
Note that the guy in charge of all the nuclear missiles in the United States invokes a security-though-obscurity argument to justify obsolete systems.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
IBM PC architecture never used the 8" FDD to my knowledge.
I seem to remember those 8" drives on old DEC equipment - VAX minicomps and the like.
"Cyber engineers"?
I'm sorry, but anyone that uses this phrase is highly suspect.
I don't think it affects the information in this case, but there is a reason we think that journalists are stupid when it come to tech.
Yes, there are. I have one, and a Catweasel controller that can read and write basically any format on it.
The 8 inch standard format is very similar to the 1.2MB 5.25 inch format. Actually, it's the other way around, as when IBM built the PC AT and the high-density drives for it they apparently intentionally made the formats nearly identical. They're so close that computers that use 8 inch diskettes can typically be modified to run with 1.2MB HD 5.25 drives and media with only a new controller to drive cable and new drive power supply (8 inch drives typically take either AC mains power to run the spindle or 24VDC, and 5.25 drives take 12VDC to run the spindle). See http://nemesis.lonestar.org/co... for some tech info on how to do this with one of the first multiuser 'personal' computers, the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 16 (and descendents the 16B and the 6000). Also see http://www.dbit.com/fdadap.htm... for the 'proper' adapter board.
8 inch diskettes are famously reliable with good quality media, and the bits aren't packed so densely that an EMP event will wipe them out, as long as they're in a faraday cage with sufficient attenuation and power handling capacity.
Current production high-density PC FDC's can easily handle the 8 inch drive with the proper adapter cable, but the number of supported formats is small. More flexible is the USB interfaced Kryoflux, and the PCI Catweasel MK3 and MK4 (the Kryoflux is currently in production and available for purchase; the Catweasels have been out of production for a while and are a bit difficult to obtain last I checked; I bought my MK4 from amigakit.com, but they appear to only have the Amiga-specific MK2's in stock.
My concern here is not cybersecurity, but data integrity. Not sure what's on those ancient floppy disks, but if it is mission critical, then that's a problem. The failure rates on those would be unacceptably high.
I still have my CP/M computer, twin 8" floppies, 64k memory, 4 mhz z80 processor. Every two years or so I fire it up just for fun, and it runs just fine. Agreed it shouldnt, but it does. And Wordstar runs just about as fast as the latest Word 2013. Not that I'd want to go back to those days, but there is no doubt in my mind it will outlive any computer and server in my office.
The TRS-80 Model II was the business version of the early Radio Shack computers.
We bought one in 1979 and used it for for five years until we bought one of the first Macs in 1984.
The Model II had a word processor, database, and spreadsheet program.
http://www.trs-80.com/wordpres...
"Galactica is a reminder of a time when we were so frightened by our enemies that we literally looked backward for protection"
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
IBM PC architecture never used the 8" FDD to my knowledge.
I seem to remember those 8" drives on old DEC equipment - VAX minicomps and the like.
I worked on systems in the late 80's that used 8 inch floppies (Network 90 DCS - which I think ABB owns nowadays). These were installed in the Operator Interface Units (OIUs) for backups etc. In my case I was running a pseudo multi-tasking program written in TI-Basic that read and wrote data to the floppies by overlaying variables in the Basic address space with absolute sectors from the floppies.
Yes .. it was primitive, even for its time.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
No, no, no! We have to embrace new technology, crowdsourcing, and distributed teams! The missiles should be connected to the world via Web 2.0 technologies and their status can be the result of thumbs up or thumbs down based on targets selected by the community. Put some ads on the voting page and PROFIT!
Doesn't magnetic storage start to degrade after 40 years?
A lot of CP/M machines had them too. I have a TRS-80 Model 4p at home that has two built-in 8" drives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
What side to you want.
1. USA
2. USRR
3. United Kingdom
4. France
5. China
6. India
7. Pakistan
8. North Korea
9. Israel
Do you really think that the United States military, very specifically, the part of it that can unleash a version of hell that you have trouble even imagining, does not have the budget to get those drives manufactured, one off or any other part of the system?
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
"...Stahl described the disk she was shown as "gigantic," and said she had never seen one that big."
And she realized only when the last syllable rolled off her tongue the double meaning of her words, punctuated by the shit-eating grin the General couldn't wipe off his face as he tried to explain that nuclear cowboys wrangling silos must swing big disks to be "secure"...
Anything from the 70's and the early 80's will work.
Some VAX computers (11/780 series) used 8" floppy to read the boot loader. OSes like VAX/VMS, RSX-11, RT-11 will read/write them. I also suspect that any old IBM computer/OS will read them.
The main problem is that hardware was more proprietary in those days. You cannot just plug in any 8" drive.
File systems and formatting were different between OSes and vendors, so you need the OS that wrote it to be able to read it (or an emulator).
This is way out of date. We need to put our missiles in The Cloud, and re-do the launch control UI so it looks pretty. Get on it right away, I expect nothing less than $10 billion spent for a non-working system. Boy though, the guy wearing the fedora will think it's the best thing in the world. It is good for him too. It'll pay off most of his student debt.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yes, drives are available used (see ebay). I'm sure there is a contractor somewhere making decent money maintaining these. These drives were "robust" and would be fairly easy to repair. If you really needed a new one, the tech is easy to replicate. I wouldn't be surprised if someone maintains a facility to supply these on an as-needed basis (at an appropriately elevated price, of course). DOS 6.22 might be too new. My DOS 3.3 Sourcebook says it supported some 8" disk formats (that paralleled 5.25" formats) but that most of the 8" formats were obsoleted with DOS 2.x. Last 8" disk I saw was I believe a 250kB capacity used on a DEC PDP in an industrial application in the late 1980's.
... a nice, old single-sided model, or one o' them newfangled double-sided ones?
I've got to see pics of that, as that would be one rare 4P (I have two in my office right now.....). The case after all only allowed two Tandon TM-50 single-sided 5.25 drives to fit.
Now, the Model II had a single internal full-height 8; the 12, the 16, the 16B, and the 6000 had two internal 'slimline' 8's.
And 8's were the most common for the various CP/M boxen. Side-by-side 8's fit quite nicely in a 19 inch rackmount chassis, such as several boxen by Altos.
Then there were the RX01 and RX02 drives for PDP 11's.
Because no serious spy could ever get ahold of 8" floppies and drives.
Yep, had old CP/M based Cromeco systems that had the 8" floppies. For a long time I had a copy of DBase II on 8" floppies to run on that Cromeco system. Lost it in an Air Force move.
IBM PC architecture never used the 8" FDD to my knowledge.
You are correct. The IBM PC-1 shipped with either one or two 5.25" 360k full-height floppy drives. It had a ~60W power supply, so if you wanted an internal HDD you had to upgrade it. The original BIOS didn't support HDDs anyway. My first PC was a PC-1 (past its prime) with an external Quantum 30MB full-height MFM disk. ST-506 cables wrapped in copper wrapped in rubber and clamped hard into the expansion slot opening, mainframe style. Those were the days. Which days? The days when even personal computer hardware was built for keeps. Then the PCjr came along and proved that an IBM PC compatible could be a cheap POS and the rest is history.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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I have a TRS-80 Model 4p at home that has two built-in 8" drives.
This guy is one of the greatest threats to the US Minuteman missile system.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I still have somewhere the code of the ancient Disk Killer virus. Back in the day, it destroyed disks and drives by lowering the head and killed a floppy drive in a matter of seconds, and if not removed quickly destroyed the drive as well. Destroyed as in "irrecoverable damage, dump in the nearest trash bin". If they are still using 8'' drives, chances are those are still vulnerable to the hardware hacks that made the hardware misbehave this way.
To think that a single boring fellow can potentially destroy the launching codes and render the US without nukes is scary as hell.
Captcha: predict
The military probably have a warehouse dedicated to this system with a thousands of new drives in the box. When one goes bad (but being mil spec'd they probably won't) they would just swap out the bad one.
Also, the old eight inch drives were built like tanks to begin with.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Got an 8" Turbo Pascal disk hanging on the wall of my office.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I have a couple of those drives and they supported the IBM 3270 format. They are Heathkit drives and this was in the documentation.
The sad yet interesting thing about this is that the entire system could probably run on a single smartphone. Which reminds me, anyone know what the rocket launcher app on the Apple "Gigantic" commercial is? Hint: It's not called "Rocketlauncher"
until an engineer finds an 8" floppy in the parking lot and plugs it in.
I was going to say this too, It's not as though they couldn't have someone run a print on demand of the board and the components aren't exactly high science. If I can get something done for myself for under $200 I'm sure the military has a fab shop that can handle this in house.
DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) sold lots of systems that used these 8" disks. Lots of PDP-8 systems and PDP-11 systems used them for system devices. DEC's first VAX computers, the 11/780, used them as load devices for loading the microcode before the system would boot from a real hard disk. I have a bunch of them in my collection, attached to PDP-11s, still working fine.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Ah taxpayers, an infinite source of funds?
Mylar punch tape rules. No static or emf issues.
You have to admit, the old hardware makes it hard for some random officer to violate the air gap by plugging in his USB-using cellphone.
A problem easily solved by using a proprietary/non-standard connector. You can use USB without using a standard connector. Electrically it doesn't matter at all.
We used then in the computers in the 90s. Old military supplies and maintenance system. Once the systems got replaced with more modern equipment, the old stuff was probably sold off to the companies that keep this stuff for these situations.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
They are not reading data from long ago. They are storing current data on old technology.
the Hung Whe Lo Corporation?
You find it surprising to find that a fictional world is built to accommodate the plot set in it? Seriously, fiction is a very, very, bad way to evaluate things for the real world.
Disclaimer: While I don't play a nuclear weapons technician on TV, I was one in real life. (Fire Control Technician (Ballistic Missiles) Second Class (Submarines), USN Submarine Service 1981-1991.) I've worked with weapons system components (both installed and spare) that were years and decades old, and have studied the issues as a civilian as well.
Actually, there's a number of downsides, most of which should be obvious with a few minutes serious thought:
Etc..., etc...
The USAF claiming that older tech makes them more 'safe' is just making lemons into lemonade. (And the situation is mostly a product of how far the missiles are from being a priority.) Mostly, I evaluate the claims as a way to deflect attention from the number of serious incidents they've had recently and from their significant personnel problems.
Fuck beta
You damn fucking right when it comes to maintaining absolute control over things that can vaporize the planet. Until they are gone, we spend whatever it takes.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Brand new in box on ebay for $195
You really want to trust national security to stuff we find on ebay?
What's the pronunciation?
"Sucked in" ?
4wdloop
Combine ADA, Floppy Disks, and Mainframes with the usual SCI 'air gap' and that sucker isn't going to be breached anytime soon.
Or, the go to guy when one of them breaks at the silo for a replacement.
Someone please tell me I'm reading that wrong. The fas.org website has a network map labeled "Topographic" with a link to a .ppt file containing nothing but a larger copy of the same image. Did this guy write their website?!?
The last machine that I recall using 8" disks was an NEC PC 8086. Running DOS 2.1, it was shaped like a microwave oven. That was in the mid 1980s. The diskette held about a megabyte, and there was no HDD.
The DDN network is likely an X25 WAN with bisync lines (RS422 or V35), a.k.a. ARPAnet. Bisync was notorious for going down due to 2-bit errors, making data look like control characters. I had a script that could reset a line, and you couldn't tell if the signal had gone down. That meant it was possible to tap into it. Diskettes could carry malware, and as several have mentioned, machines that booted from them were victims of some of the first PC viruses. Theirs probably boot from socketed EPROMs, which are easy to swap. All this was architected before network security was an issue. Fortunately, most terrorists are too young to know about these antiquities. However, if the Air Force believes it is invulnerable because it is ancient, then we are doomed.
I have an IBM 5120 that still works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5120
Has 2 8" floppy drives, but was not built around an Intel 808x processor, so it's not what we think of as "IBM PC architecture".
Do you really think that the United States military, very specifically, the part of it that can unleash a version of hell that you have trouble even imagining, does not have the budget to get those drives manufactured, one off or any other part of the system?
Just because they theoretically can doesn't make it a good idea. Are you seriously going to claim that this is the only means by which to secure these systems? That nothing else more modern could possibly do the job with equal or better security? Color me dubious.
I'm fine with ain't-broke-don't-fix-it but if the choice is between building a stupidly expensive small run of some obsolete tech or swapping the old tech out for new, I'd vote for the later every time unless there is a very specific technical reason not to do so.
had to look it up on Wikipedia. ok, I'm showing my age. lol didn't know that floppy drives can store only 1 MB of data. I guess people didn't have flash USB 3.0 drives with 32 GB of storage back in the 1960s.
There was a reason the Bush White house was low-tech.
Security was not the primary reason - that was at best a second order effect. Mostly it was bureaucratic inertia, particularly on the part of the old-farts that tend to inhabit positions of power. People are slow to change, particularly older people.
The owners of the company I run are both in their 70s and they have the sort of computer skills you might expect for someone that age - i.e. poor. They're not opposed to new tech but they've been doing things a certain way for a long time and have a hard time even understanding the potential of new tech sometimes, much less operate it. They prefer a paper catalog to an online one, even when the online one is faster once you learn it.
Here is a thought, get rid of a lot of them? they are pretty big on the list of things the world needs less of.
Are you trying to say Cromemco?
PC stuff, no, however the IBM datamasters and such had them built in. I think since those were 'almost' a pc that line gets a bit blurry.
I would assume that there's a storage unit somewhere with a few hundred spare drives in it. I doubt the US Armed Forces would need to look for replacement hardware on ebay...
There are quite a few 8" floppy drives that old-timers have kept around. I've got like 3-4 dual floppy cabinets (they weigh over 20 pounds), but they've been stored at 95% humidity in the cellar for at least 30 years and would probably require some internal cleaning and spiffing up to work again. The seek mechanism is a stepping motor with a big honking aluminum screw which will last longer than western civilization. The read/write heads are gigantic and built like a tank; you can clean them with cotton swabs and alcohol.
I guess the TRS-80 Model II + fully populated expansion chassis I had (4x 8" drives!) would have been a nice source of spare parts.
I feel so much safer now knowing that they use 8" floppies in addition to the 00000000 launch codes! http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/01/047207/dial-00000000-to-blow-up-the-world
ZING!
I seem to recall from my BIOS writing days with CP/M, that the 8" drives had twice the data rate of the 5" drives. They also spun faster, 360 RPM vs 300 RPM. The 8" IBM format was soft sectored 26 sectors of 128 bytes, and the 5" used 16 sectors of 128 bytes or something like that. too many numbers to remember.
At any rate, the four 8" floppies that I still have in my meager collection are all different, for different CPUs, OSes, languages, different sector formats, etc. The closest I came to inter-system compatibility was to write a CP/M floppy reading program for the PDP-11.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
While nobody want to see those missiles fly they have to be able to. Am not so sure that if the order came they won't realize that 95% of them are all just junk. It like when the old Soviet Union fell and everybody realized that all their scary hardware was junk.
The IMSAI 8080 had 8" drives
http://www.computerhistory.org...
"Secure system" - yeah, right....
http://www.imsai.net/images/wa...
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
You don't have the schematics and architecture for this system floating around on servers at some DoD defense contractor. You don't have 1,000 people floating around who have intimate knowledge of the system and how it was designed. You're not leveraging packages/code/compilers/etc that have a support community around them. The lack of people who know about how this system works is key.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
You guys are funny.
As if he showed you something that meant anything.
The system is classified. You saw nothing. Nothing except what they decided they would show you for the purposes of making a TV show.
Does anyone one know the lifespan of these disks and the readers.
are ridiculous. Is there anyone stupid enough to believe their lie that “she had never seen one that big.” It's just an 8” floppy. There's nothing special about it. The Republicans are trying to lie and claim that it is out of date and we need to give them money to replace it. Their kind is disgusting. They always cheat and lie to steal more money from the people.
No common knowledge of location
Fail. Took two seconds with Google to find a site listing the GPS coordinates of every single Minuteman silo. It's a fascinating read for any defense geeks, I've stumbled across it before.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Heck, if they're stored on floppies, put some big honking magnets near the exits and they'll likely not survive the trip out.
You sound like a colossal faggot.
Sorry to disappoint you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It’s just a damn floppy. Trying to lie and claim it is out of date so you can justify stealing more money from the American people is disgusting. Shugart didn’t even release an 8” floppy until 1973. She was born in 1941 so she has been caught in a lie. All of her kind are liars. She, like everything and everyone name Shugart, is a piece of shit. The Shugart family has stolen more than a hundred million dollars from us for their garbage 8” drives. These Republicans are thieves and liars.
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I'm curious if at this point buying an 8" floppy disk (or any other significantly old technology that only nuclear missle silos use) would get you put on some terrorist watch list.
Yes I have used a lot of Cromemco systems with 8 inch floppies. A friend of mine had a Cromemco system that used an 8 inch floppy drive that had automatic ejection. One day it would not eject, so he took it to his backyard and shot it. Those were expensive drives.
...they maybe even have 1940's phones as intercoms, just like the Galactica.
I seem to recall from my BIOS writing days with CP/M, that the 8" drives had twice the data rate of the 5" drives. They also spun faster, 360 RPM vs 300 RPM. The 8" IBM format was soft sectored 26 sectors of 128 bytes, and the 5" used 16 sectors of 128 bytes or something like that. too many numbers to remember.
Right, for the 360K double-density 5.25.
Like the 8 inch System/34 format, the 5.25 high-density drive in the PC AT also ran at 360 RPM instead of 300, and had double the data rate of the double-density 5.25 inch drives, yielding exactly the same number of sectors per track, with the only difference being that the 8 inch has 77 tracks and the 5.25 HD drive has 80.
Treating it as a maxim rather than as a caution.
may be.
doesn't always take a fancy terminal or micro computer to hack into other computers.
Most of the TEMPEST computers we programmed in the military for SECRET and above back then used 8 inch CP/M floppies.
Our slowest peripherals were the line printers attached.
If it ain't broke don't (*KABOOM!!!*) "fix" it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This is sort of like ATMs but eve more so. They do one thing. Just make a device that does one thing without really an OS. Why the hell are ATMs running XP? So why aren't missile control and security and launch controls just gauges, switches, cameras, sensors, and buttons? You need a missile guidance computer and communication encryption to the missile but a lot of the simpler systems can be electrical circuits or ultra simple chips about the same grade as an LED glowstick uses to flash its lights. If you want to know the temperature of a missile storage facility, transmit it through a digital thermometer to a few LED displays after hitting an interpretation chip. If you want to turn up the temperature, use a rheostat or equally simple digital point to point system. Why the hell does it have to be a full blown computer to do something so stupid? That makes even a floppy disk system look overcomplicated and needless.
we just through our last ones out, last year. They hadn't been used to retrieve data in +20yrs.
I'd be surprised if there weren't plenty of them around in different companies in bone piles.
We still keep reel to reel tape readers around (just in case)
I doubt we'll ever need to use them anymore.
after 20+yrs without being used we will officially abandon the platform.
The reel-reel were still used here, as of the late 90's.
heck I got windows drivers nowadays even for them.
Also,, we'll keep a supply (1 working) of past things we still have media for, travans, dat's, 8mm, dlt's etc, now I think we currently use LTO 6.
It is still in use, still supported and stuff is still developed for it. For it's purpose/market it is not obsolete. These are niche devices which incorporate computers but it's not fair to call them obsolete because the computer component doesn't compare well with the latest in the industry of computer tech.
That would make your car obsolete before you even can buy it since they put OLD slow computer hardware into the car.
The software doesn't require bloated shit; it does it's simple tasks within limited RAM and storage so there is no need for more complex faster hardware. There is another similar area-- watches and calculators. they haven't changed since the they went digital and there is no need for them to - they just got cheaper and used less power. but as computers... they are pathetically out of date. (I'm ignoring the high end calculators and smart watches which are rare niche items.)
You forgot that Bush 1 removed all the HDs from the office computers as a security precaution. I'm sure he had plenty to hide... Whomever was in charge of IT used that as a chance / excuse to upgrade the computers rather than replace HDs and reinstall all the software. It was also not a small number of computers and they didn't have time to waste waiting for computers.... but the young staffers were used to newer software... some of which didn't run on the older computers anyway.
ahhh, ye olde Tandon drives where double density floppies could be used as high (1.2M) density.
Lots of COBOL and 9-track tapes. they havent had one these Target-size breaches yet.
Do they still work?
So long story short if it is possible your the guy who can do it :)
The model 4 and 4P had 5.25 drives. Everything from the model 3 on had 5.25 drives.
Some of the data storage units we had would put the 8" floppy to shame.
:D
They were called DTD's and were the size of a medium Igloo cooler. Kinda cool in that the case was see through and you could watch the platter mechanism and read / write heads do their thing while it was operating. They weighed ~40 pounds or so and were hot-swappable. They were kept in two person control safes ( yes, two combos, no one ever had both combos ) and were loaded into the system as needed depending on mission and where in the world we were at the time.
To transport them, they were placed into a larger DOD approved case ( like a big Pelican case, just DOD approved ) locked, then sealed in with tamper seals. Big enough to require two persons to carry which was convenient since they were two-person control items.
Unlikely it is still the same today, but this was only back as far as the mid-90's.
New tech is great, but you can't toss one of those things in your bag, throw it over your shoulder and walk off with it
Are they certain the disk drives will be able to read the disks in the future? My old 2.5" floppy drive couldn't always ready every disk it once could. Gotta test and calibrate regularly for something this important.
Consider for a moment that Stuxnet was released on a system that was not Internet connected. While it does provide a measure of protection you still need to worry about users doing things they shouldn't, vendors who have been compromised, or even administrators who might inadvertently do something stupid. All 8" floppy means is that it's unlikely workers will be using the same disks at home that they use at work potentially bringing something in by accident. It's not the ultimate solution.
that to mount a "man in the middle" attack, you need a horse and a lance.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
DOS 1.1. supported two to four Shugart-type 8" drives.
Now we knows why those Chinese virus couldn't be found in those missle silos - it couldn't fit in those 8" 256K floppy !!!
Heck, the modern virii is larger than 256K
I used to have an unopened box of Memorex 8-inch floppy disks, still shrink-wrapped and everything, but I lost it in a move. :( We had a typesetter, and it took the 8-inch floppies. I'm the kind of unabashed nerd who revels in possessing those kinds of 'artifacts'.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I don't know the 8", but all my old 3.5" failed when I tried to read them a few years later. I don't think it was the drives, the disks began failing one by one, and I had multiple drives that gave fairly consistent results. I hope they remember to make copies of the floppies every year or so.
There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
Stop thinking like a goddamn civilian, civilian.
This is the fucking air force. These people burn $100k jet fuel on an hour of flight time just to say they went Mach 2, bill Congress, and get fucking reimbursed. The fact that your pissant little bitch-group could not get replacement parts for an 8-in floppy has no relevance to determining whether these assholes can. They simply wrote into the contract "And you floppy-supplying bitches will supply spares for $X," back in 1967. Then they put $X in the budget. It's still in the budget, with a little bump for inflation. If they need their fucking spare parts and Floppy-Supplying-Bitches-Inc cannot deliver somebody's going to Federal fucking prison for defrauding the Federal fucking Government, and some other guy is gonna get rich with a short-order contract.
And let's look at your proposal:
You're proposing the Air Force rip up that contract from 1967, replace with a new (and much more expensive contract). But the contract will still involve interfacing modern computers with 1960s tech because the whole fucking point of this missile silo is to tell a 1966-designed missile fucking commie city to level. You don't do that with USB. You don't want to upgrade the missile itself because if you do that you're making your missiles better, which means the Russians will think "Why the fuck would they make their missiles better if they didn't want to vaporize my sister?" In the Biz, we call that a bad thing. This also applies to many of the systems that relate to the missile, because if we are spending 2 million modernizing each silo, that's $900 million, and nobody except you is gonna believe we're spending $900 million on nuclear missiles and not improving the damn things.
So you're still gonna need some version of Floppy-Supplying-Bitches-Inc., you're gonna risk pissing off the Russians (and it's not like they're in a pacifist mood), and given that it's a government IT project odds are it doesn;t work at all until at least version 2.
8" floppies were used by almost all serious micro- and mini-computers of the pre-PC era, so operating systems were all over the map - I've personally used 8" floppies on CP/M machines, various PDPs and VAXes (the former usually running RSX-11 and the latter running VMS, of course), the IBM Series/1 minicomputer, the TI 990, and the staggeringly powerful 68000-based 2D/3D CAD system running Unix Version 7 and later, BSD.
BTW, some of the older ones required "hard-sectored" floppies that had (10, IIRC) small holes punched around the inner side of the disk to assist in synchronization. The NorthStar CP/M machines were famous for that - I have a box of them in the garage with a *very* basic BASIC CAD program, but wouldn't have the foggiest idea where to get anything to read them, a fate that is soon to befall my QIC24 tapes, Zip disks, and both 5.25" and 3.5" Mac, PC, and Unix floppies, including some from the weird and wonderful (if doggy-slow) Intel-powered Sun 386i.
Hey, at least I still have players for vinyl and 8-track...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
While I am satisfied US did not merge its ICBM control network with the Internet of Things, I hope the other nuclear powers did the same.
damned. The guy has got a point. Security via obsolescence and still using typewriters with fabric ribbons I suppose. Nevertheless, the whole shtick makes perfect sense.
I have 1 unopened (still shrinkwrapped) box of 10 8 inch floppies, 1 opened box (9 left I think), and a cleaning kit. They are all the same brand and, as far as I can tell, intended for the Amstrad CPC (they say CPC word processor on the box)
Are they worth anything?
What, you are a small one?
What, you are a small one?
Oh no, I'm not a small anything. I just don't swing your way.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've got a Terak 8510 in my office that appeared from an old language project, pretty cool machine doesn't seem to boot and I don't have time to diagnose it unfortunately. Runs UNIX 6 apparently.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
All storage systems degrade in time ( even flash memory and optical disk fail over time) but the 8 inch magnet floppy disk storage system which use loosely packed magnetic domain with very strong recording heads should last much longer than the 5 inch and 3 inch magnetic floppy disk. Unlike magnetic tape - magnet disk won't have much surface deformation (stretching or shrinking) and should hold out well if they are not exposed to too much pollutants. Unlike magnetic hard drives floppy drives are not under mechanical stress unless they are being used . the key to keeping the disk usable is an air conditioned clean environment...
8" disks are perfect for backing up field... so were 5.25' as well as !SCSI! The fact that you don't know this means we threw GODI away. And godi laughed in true neutral bias
...those probably cost 1,000 each when they were new...and probably cost 1,000 each to replace them because they're now a specialty item.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Security by obscurity. Good luck finding a PC with an 8" floppy drive that still works these days.
A couple of years ago I came across an 8" floppy drive and 8" head cleaning floppies that were still sealed and moist with cleaner fluid in the basement storage of a large gas/electric utility I was doing work at. Hadn't seen those since the TRS-80 Model II days.
My first computer was an Apple ][ with two 8" floppies and a Z80 CP/M co-processor. The computer never booted AppleDOS (or whatever it was called) while I owned it. It was 100% CP/M.
Karma: Bad
I am sure the DoD has a contract for someone to manufacture 8" disks - probably at $10,000 each.
I used to work for DEC in the 80's, 8" floppy disks were on the range of DEC machines back then in the early 80's.
Let me see if I can remember this correctly.
There was some internal marketing videos (put on I believe from the EDU division, but I am not sure), that were funny parodies.
The one that pertains, is the video about the new detergent named "Digibits". Now Digibits was a brand new whiz bang detergent for cleaning 8" floppy's (and later 5-1/4"). The demo consisted of 3 tanks of water in clear acrylic tanks, with 2 well known brands of detergent, and the new and improved "Digibits" detergent. The 8" floppy's outer shell were then slit by a scissors, and the internal contents (the actual disk) was taken out, leaving just the 3 disks.
Attention was paid to both tanks #1 and #2, and the "salesman" was dunking each disk in turn into both of the tanks, commenting on the "fine" job they were doing, and so forth. This went on for a minute or two. THEN we got to tank #3, the salesman was dunking into the new "Digibits" with very fine comments about how it was cleaning, and the way the residue didn't stay on as the other two "name brands" etc, etc.
Finally he looked up at the #3 floppy, and turned it over and over into the light and declared "Yes, the new and improved Digibits really out cleaned the other brands, why it even cleaned it right down to the boot block!!!!")
Anyway, this is how I remember the parady video. I wish I had that video it was hilarious!