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5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030
"We have a technical debt that stretches back many decades."
The ATCS has multiple components, "including computers onboard the trains that are tied into propulsion and brake systems, central and local servers, and communications infrastructure, like loop cable signal wires," Michael Roccaforte, an SFMTA spokesperson, told Ars Technica. But while the floppy disk-reliant train control system is currently working, there are challenges to relying on the dated technology, which SFMTA has highlighted for years. "We have to maintain programmers who are experts in the programming languages of the '90s in order to keep running our current system, so we have a technical debt that stretches back many decades," Tumlin told San Francisco's KQED in February 2023.
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