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2019-10-21 Science & Technology
Buh bye, 8
[c4isrnet] OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. ‐ In 2014, "60 Minutes" made famous the 8-inch floppy disks used by one antiquated Air Force computer system that, in a crisis, could receive an order from the president to launch nuclear missiles from silos across the United States.

But no more. At long last, that system, the Strategic Automated Command and Control System or SACCS, has dumped the floppy disk, moving to a "highly-secure solid state digital storage solution" this past June, said Lt. Col. Jason Rossi, commander of the Air Force’s 595th Strategic Communications Squadron.
Posted by M. Murcek 2019-10-21 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11155 views ]  Top

#1 Last time I used a 8 inch floppy was 1985 and they were already obsolete and almost impossible to find.
Posted by 3dc 2019-10-21 00:46||   2019-10-21 00:46|| Front Page Top

#2 First time I saw one used was on a Xerox computer.
Posted by Alaska Paul 2019-10-21 01:00||   2019-10-21 01:00|| Front Page Top

#3 I still have a few packed away somewhere. They look huge by today’s standards.
Posted by CrazyFool 2019-10-21 01:20||   2019-10-21 01:20|| Front Page Top

#4 Boot disk on a VAX-11/785
Posted by SteveS 2019-10-21 01:21||   2019-10-21 01:21|| Front Page Top

#5 "highly-secure solid state digital storage solution"

AKA thumb drive.
Posted by Seeking Cure For Ignorance 2019-10-21 01:44||   2019-10-21 01:44|| Front Page Top

#6 CD-ROM disk. No rewrite, can only burn once and discard after use. Anything that can be erased and rewritten should not be used.
Posted by magpie 2019-10-21 04:15||   2019-10-21 04:15|| Front Page Top

#7 Ima just had a Lotus Symphony flashback....
Posted by Raj 2019-10-21 07:47||   2019-10-21 07:47|| Front Page Top

#8 Ah, the Vax. Eminently configurable but didn't scale up worth a damn.
Posted by Mercutio 2019-10-21 08:47||   2019-10-21 08:47|| Front Page Top

#9 I remember our office Tandy and Wang workstations had these for word processing storage. The Tandy drive was a vertical integrated unit.

Speaking of VAX, I have a 80mb Dysan drive hanging on my office wall from a system we decommissioned in the mid-80's. It is a conversation starter.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2019-10-21 09:06||   2019-10-21 09:06|| Front Page Top

#10 I'm amazed that SACCS was still using this technology.
Posted by JohnQC 2019-10-21 09:55||   2019-10-21 09:55|| Front Page Top

#11 Mullah, if you had an RP06 hanging on your wall I'd be impressed. Used to be a DEC-head and could boot a PDP with the toggle switches but that was 40 years ago......my how time flies.
Posted by AlanC 2019-10-21 11:08||   2019-10-21 11:08|| Front Page Top

#12 magpie, when I worked for Sun Micro we worked with the NSA. We sold big UNIX servers and when a board that costs as much as a ferrari went bad we wanted it back. NSA said no, until finally we set it up where they could write 0 and 1 in their chosen pattern over every rom chip on the board and confirm the pattern was indeed there (I assume a number of times). Once we provided that they were comfortable in returning the boards. So you can erase things sufficiently enough to destroy any underlying data.
Posted by rjschwarz 2019-10-21 13:47||   2019-10-21 13:47|| Front Page Top

#13 Logo says Dysan SMD/80 702168 Silver.

It's just the Disc Pack, 5 Platters. RP06 would be a tad large to hang.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2019-10-21 13:54||   2019-10-21 13:54|| Front Page Top

#14 could boot a PDP with the toggle switches

Toggle switches and blinken lights... I need to go lie down.
Posted by SteveS 2019-10-21 14:05||   2019-10-21 14:05|| Front Page Top

#15 I still have a pack of FORTRAN cards.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-21 14:11||   2019-10-21 14:11|| Front Page Top

#16 G(r)om - do you mean those punch card thingies? I remember having to run a box of them over to the geek building every week (Kingsbury Hall at UNH - Durham) as part of my work-study job at the Controller's office updating their fixed assets. Woe to the person who dropped those cards and got the order of them mixed up...
Posted by Raj 2019-10-21 14:16||   2019-10-21 14:16|| Front Page Top

#17 Yep. I took a FORTRAN course in 82.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-21 14:18||   2019-10-21 14:18|| Front Page Top

#18 Same here in 1980
Posted by Frank G 2019-10-21 14:31||   2019-10-21 14:31|| Front Page Top

#19 Woe to the person who dropped those cards and got the order of them mixed up...

That's why it was smart to take a black marker and run a diagonal line across the top of the stack. You can regain a semblance of order pretty quickly just using the black line as an index. Not perfect but fast and easy insurance.
Posted by Anguting B. Hayes5633 2019-10-21 14:33||   2019-10-21 14:33|| Front Page Top

#20 I remember using the marker (or a pencil) that way.
Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-21 14:36||   2019-10-21 14:36|| Front Page Top

#21 Wrote my dissertation as one giant 'REM' on our lab PDP-11.
Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-21 14:38||   2019-10-21 14:38|| Front Page Top

#22 Sure hope those thumb drives are EMP protected.
Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-21 14:38||   2019-10-21 14:38|| Front Page Top

#23 Have CP/M on 8" floppies. Used to boot an Interdata 70 from a card reader after entering to the boot routine via front panel switches. OS was called BOSS and the drive 'directory' was a physical piece of paper with names and sector numbers written on it.
Posted by CrazyFool 2019-10-21 15:12||   2019-10-21 15:12|| Front Page Top

#24 Did the same thing here, ABH5633. 128-column and later 80-column.

Didn't help when they were improperly carried through a rain storm in a leaky bag, though.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2019-10-21 16:35||   2019-10-21 16:35|| Front Page Top

#25 Y'all are making me feel old. Learned Fortran in 75 in college... Keypunch cards... Infinite do loops...causing everyone to stay late 'cause I locked up the printer because 1 card was out of sequence. That was a long time ago.
Posted by BrerRabbit 2019-10-21 17:09||   2019-10-21 17:09|| Front Page Top

#26 My dad's master's thesis was on punch cards. A cloud model. Said the computer guys hated him because his program was really too big for their computer. My brother and I turned dead cards into paper airplanes.
Posted by Silentbrick 2019-10-21 19:21||   2019-10-21 19:21|| Front Page Top

#27 Fortran '67; punch cards. Would have failed the course, but "the computer lost my registration"...heheheh
Posted by Mercutio 2019-10-21 19:30||   2019-10-21 19:30|| Front Page Top

#28 Fortran IV & Cobol. 1971-74.

Forgotten most of it (new info pushes out old, etc.). Could have made a mint in Fall of 1999.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2019-10-21 20:32||   2019-10-21 20:32|| Front Page Top

#29 Mullah Richard - still have the text books from those courses.
Hacked my first computer in 1974. An IBM-360 that was a node in the early ARPA net.


Hacked because the I/O clerk intentionally dropped my FORTRAN deck of 2000 cards to draw Miss November in splines and curves.
Posted by 3dc 2019-10-21 21:45||   2019-10-21 21:45|| Front Page Top

#30 Wrote my first FORTRAN code in 1964. IBM 1620.
Posted by KBK 2019-10-21 22:27||   2019-10-21 22:27|| Front Page Top

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