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points by skissane 2 days ago | 0 comments

FAA website on EIDS: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/eids

Another article with some more details: https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-faa-is-still-using-floppy-dis...

I know they are saying IDS-4 is a "1980s" system, but it appears IDS-4 was actually developed in the early 1990s; it uses MS-DOS and 3.5 inch floppies: https://sysatl.com/systems-atlanta-inc-awarded-faa-ids4-sust...

[–] lp92 1 day ago

Remember, this is the government we're talking about. That system was likely being worked on from 1980s to 1990s before itactually went in to implementation phase in 1990s.

[–] hocusPokeUs 1 day ago

Kind of makes sense for the time given hardware was evolving so rapidly after Apple and MS brought PCs to the masses; a solution deployed in 1980 was out of date by 1981.

Workers of the day were used to paper first routines; PCs on every desk were not common until the 90s when home computers, like phones in 2026, hit a fast enough for most tasks in an office constant upgrades are not necessary.

There was a lot of ducks to align back then.

[–] Loughla 1 day ago

I feel like people under a certain age don't really understand this.

While we see improvements in hardware and software today, it's NOTHING like the late 80's and 90's. Our first home pc was out of date in less than a year (thank you for that recommendation, Tiger Direct). As a child, I couldn't run games that came out more than about 10-12 months after we upgraded our machine. It really was stunning to be a part of.

And now my home pc is about 4 years old, and replaced a machine that was 9. I plan to run this one for at least another 6 or 7 years unless something amazing happens that nobody sees coming.

[–] ahartmetz 1 day ago

If you didn't upgrade often, it could happen that you bought a new machine that was 10x as fast as the old one. It was just incredible how fast everything was after such an upgrade. A 486-66 to a Celeron-416 (common overclock at the time) in my case. The 486-66 was a year or two old for me - I had fished board and CPU out of the trash somewhere because before that I had a 486-33 bought in '94.

[–] esseph 1 day ago

Tiger Direct, wow that's a blast from the past!

[–] sumtechguy 1 day ago

I tried at least 5 different times to buy from them out of computer shopper. Never actually managed it. For me, every time, 'out of stock'.