For garden variety daily computing tasks, the floppy disk has long been a thing of the past. Slowly, limited in storage and easily damaged, few crave the format to return, even if there is some lingering nostalgia for the discs. However, as it turns out, there is still hardware required on floppies – namely the Boeing 747-400, as The Register reports.
The news comes from the work of Pen Test Partners, who recently inspected a 747 that retired as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The floppy disks are used to load navigation databases that need to be updated regularly every 28 days. Engineers responsible for loading updates must perform the process manually on the ground.
In some areas, attempts have been made to replace the discs with more modern technology. As Aviation Today covered in 2014, legacy aircraft often require updates with up to eight disks, leading to slow updates that can cause flight delays. As everyone familiar with the reliability of floppy media knows, it only takes one bad drive to destroy everything. While retrofits are possible, it is more likely that airlines will simply stay with the technology until the legacy aircraft are retired. Certification of new hardware for flight is a major cost that is difficult to justify if the current system is still working.
Floppies continue to hold on to relevance, even if for most of us it’s just like the save icon. We have also seen floppies used as an even more efficient method of data entry. It turns out that you can even pass an entire podcast on one!
