Gen Zmay not see it , but there was once a time when personal computer users swear heavily on floppy disc memory board for everything from data retentivity to gambling . The macrocosm has moved on to satisfying State Department and cloud storehouse — unless you ’re in the German Navy , in which case , you ’re keep open a part of your fleet operational thanks to 8 - inch floppies .
According toTom ’s Hardware , the Navy is only now nearing replenishment solutions for the floppy disks that facilitate manage its Brandenburg - social class F123 frigates ( warships ) that supervise submarine activity . cite a German operable memo , the site reports that the floppies are used in basic ship functions , include movement and business leader genesis . The alternative is undecipherable , though it might call for an copycat that would supersede the disk drives .
The F123s were first put into service in the 1990s . Even then , 8 - inch floppies were passé . Those disk initially had 80 kilobytes of storage outer space , and wereintroducedin 1971 as an alternative to the lick visiting card used in large mainframe computing gadget . Later versions offered 1.2 MiB of data . But the format itself was rather cumbrous and was speedily usurp by the 5.25 - column inch mini - floppy in 1976 and the 3.5 - column inch reading that persisted well into the nineties and beyond .
While this seems to point the German military is antique , it ’s not rare for industriousness to cling to go steady technology . fit in toWIRED , floppy disk are still in used in aesculapian , molding , and air travel field . The Boeing 747 - 200 , a load plane that debuted in 1987 , uses floppy to update its flight management system ; the U.S. military was using 8 - inch disks in its nuclear program in2019 .
Why ? Upgrading can be expensive and troubled . And if the magnetic disc are still commercially useable , it can sometimes make short sensation for operators to switch . That applies to other out-of-date tech , too . In Hamada , Japan , at least one bankinsiststhat byplay data be delivered via floppy . If you desire to complain about it , the bank prefers you send them a fax .
