San Francisco transit officials have approved a $212 million overhaul of the aging train control system — which for decades has operated on data stored on disks.
The board of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees the city’s Muni Metro light rail network, approved a new contract with Hitachi Rail to upgrade the existing train control system, which was first installed at the subway station. on the Railroad in 1998.
The software that runs the Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) is stored on disks that are loaded every morning, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Three floppy disks are used to load the DOS software that controls the system’s central servers, according to Ars Technica.
DOS, which stands for Disk Operating System, was used to power IBM personal computers during the 1980s and 90s. But the growing popularity of Windows and other graphical user interfaces led to its demise.
“When a train enters the subway, its on-board computer connects to the train control system to run the train in automatic mode, where the trains drive themselves while operators watch over,” Michael Roccaforte, an SFMTA spokesman, told Ars Technica in April .
“When they exit the subway, they disconnect from ATCS and go back to manual operation on the road.”
Roccaforte said the initial plan was to move away from floppy disks starting in 2018. The entire process was expected to take a decade.
But the coronavirus pandemic pushed back the original initial goal to 2030.
The Hitachi system, which will eventually replace the floppy drive mechanism, is said to be five generations ahead, according to Muni Transit Director Julie Kirschbaum.
Kirschbaum told the Chronicle that the new system is the best train control technology on the market.
For those who owned personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s, the 5-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disk was once among the most popular formats for memory storage and data exchange.
But the advent of the CD-ROM, USB drives, and the improved capabilities of the hard drive marked the beginning of the end for floppy disks.
The last major manufacturer of floppy disks was Sony, which stopped making them in 2011.
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