Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire For Nerds

I find this somewhere between truly astounding and bizarre. Particularly since I hacked 3.5 inch DS/DD floppies into my Radio Shack home system some time in the early 1980s. Originally 5¼" SS/DD

And IBM Series1! Wonder how many know what ECBDIC is. Gee, did Trump really need to spend big money to upgrade the military? A smart phone would be an upgrade to all this.





Air Force Finally Retires 8-Inch Floppies From Missile Launch Control System

Five years after CBS publicized the fact that the Air Force still used eight-inch floppy disks to store data critical to operating the Air Force's intercontinental ballistic missile command, the aerial and space warfare service branch decided it was time to officially retire them. Ars Technica reports:
The system, once called the Strategic Air Command Digital Network (SACDIN), relied on IBM Series/1 computers installed by the Air Force at Minuteman II missile sites in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite the contention by the Air Force at the time of the 60 Minutes report that the archaic hardware offered a cybersecurity advantage, the service has completed an upgrade to what is now known as the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS), as Defense News reports. SAACS is an upgrade that swaps the floppy disk system for what Lt. Col. Jason Rossi, commander of the Air Force's 595th Strategic Communications Squadron, described as a "highly secure solid state digital storage solution." (sounds like a thumb drive - OP) The floppy drives were fully retired in June.

But the IBM Series/1 computers remain, in part because of their reliability and security. And it's not clear whether other upgrades to "modernize" the system have been completed. Air Force officials have acknowledged network upgrades that have enhanced the speed and capacity of SACCS' communications systems, and a Government Accountability Office report in 2016 noted that the Air Force planned to "update its data storage solutions, port expansion processors, portable terminals, and desktop terminals by the end of fiscal year 2017." But it's not clear how much of that has been completed. slashdot

I did a little work in system design for nuclear command and control maybe 15 years ago. The requirements for stability and security trump everything else and pretty much guarantee that they will be using 3-4+ generation old technology. "Interesting" folks to work for. Everything we were doing that they were interested in potentially re-using was way too modern.

Smart computer

Well, with somewhere between 80 kb and 1.2 mb capacity I guess it would be hard to hide a hack. And seeing if you want an 8" drive you're buying a museum piece. A sort of security by obscurity?

those look very familiar. i worked on sacdin in what was called an EDTCC. it was basically where all of the minuteman sites would communicate back to numbered AF's. i worked in 8th AF HQ. 8 inch floppies were an upgrade from what i worked on. ever hear of ferrite core memory? or drum memory? those systems were incredibly reliable and the logistics behind their support was superb. i could have a transistor blow in a registry board and be able to go down to a bin in the mod repair and find it to replace. the school was 32 weeks and it was very intense. i almost didn't make it at one point until things started to click. (and i quit drinking every night). as pugs said above, the requirements for reliability and security keep them from ever being bleeding edge. but when they go in, they go in right and stay right.

Got a chunk of core around here somewhere, some day I'll put it in a shadow box and hank it next to the 6" chip wafer. SAGE was famous for their hulking drum memory. Believe they even used mercury delay line memory. Ended up with a few plug in logic cards from a decommissioned SAGE. Big ol' logic boards supporting a pair of vacuum tubes. You don't tend to think of it but pretty amazing they could keep the damned things running in light of what we have now.

1 board = 1 bit

Couple things about main frames, no one ever hacked into on and as long as they have power they will run.

Banks, insurance companies, and governments still use them for a reason. There isn't an x86 based system that can't be compromised with a little work.