Fewer than 20 Boeing 747-200s stay in service worldwide, and solely in cargo or army configurations. The US Air Pressure operates six, two of them as Air Pressure One. It’s unclear whether or not they nonetheless use floppy disks, too, however the US army employed the even-older 8-inch floppy disks in its nuclear arsenal till 2019.
A number of different forms of industrial plane additionally use floppy disks, together with newer variants of the 747 and the 767, older Airbus A320s, and a few enterprise jets resembling Gulfstreams constructed till the Nineties. It’s attainable to improve from floppy disks to USB sticks, SD playing cards, and even wi-fi switch, however doing so may value 1000’s of {dollars}—and imply making a change to one thing that, whereas archaic, is thought to work.
“There are another unusual evolutionary lifeless ends we discover ourselves tied to as a result of every little thing has to bow to the gods of reliability in aviation,” says Brian Ford of ACI Jet, an plane upkeep firm primarily based in California. “We nonetheless use PCMCIA playing cards and Zip disks, that are more durable and more durable to search out as nicely. We now have for much longer design cycles that all the time really feel like [they’re] getting additional behind client gadgets, however we’re catching up.”
Following the rodeo incident, Necaise determined to lastly improve, however to not a completely new machine—simply to a floppy-to-USB emulator. These gadgets value round $275 every, substitute the floppy drive with a easy USB port, and are custom-made by a handful of firms.
“Embroidery and CNC [computer-operated industrial tools for cutting materials such as metal or wood] are normally our largest consumers,” says Joshua Paschal of PLR Electronics, a Texas-based firm that sells emulators.
PLR created a couple of base fashions that may be configured to work on practically 600 machines. Their listing consists of looms, stage lighting consoles, circuit board printers, oscilloscopes, digital printers, electrocardiographs, vector sign analyzers, injection molding machines, tube and pipe benders, dicing saws, wire cutters, plasma cutters, metallic presses, sounds samplers, musical devices resembling pianos and keyboards, and laptop floppy drives from the likes of Sony, Panasonic, and NEC—in addition to dozens of embroidery and CNC machines.
Most of those value 1000’s of {dollars}, and a few aren’t even that outdated, so house owners will wish to preserve them round for so long as attainable: “Plenty of this tools was by no means upgraded to USB even when USB was predominant,” says Paschal. “They’re nonetheless caught with floppy drives, particularly embroidery machines. That left an enormous alternative out there to improve these individuals.”
Folks come to PLR for upgrades not simply because they will’t discover disks, however as a result of they will’t pay money for alternative drives. “Even after we began promoting these gadgets 12 years in the past, floppy drives have been getting onerous to search out, so I can’t think about now,” Paschal says. Gross sales are dropping, however Paschal says the corporate nonetheless sells between 2,000 and three,000 models a 12 months.
The floppy disk could by no means really die out. “There are individuals on the earth who’re nonetheless busy discovering and fixing up and sustaining phonograph gamers from 1910, so it’s actually onerous for me to consider that the floppy disk is simply going to completely disappear,” says Lori Emerson, a professor on the College of Colorado Boulder and the founding father of the Media Archaeology Lab.