On 4/28/2014 3:10 PM, Mark J. Blair wrote: The mission that these are used in require a medium that can be destroyed quickly and effectively if need be. A fire and or small bits of ground media ensure that. i don't think they quite trust media such as flash parts yet because they can be swapped and altered, and are not that easy to destroy at least to ensure destruction. I know the military also had a requirement which was that media could be verified as not physically altered, and they went nuts for worm technology. In the end suppliers never developed to supply the devices or the media. They were using 8" floppies which were considered to be going out of date in 1981 or so. I am not sure if they do it anymore but at one time they used special tapes for targeting information which were recorded with heat and could not be altered. I had a large supply from a Nike/Ajax site in Kansas City which were recorded that way. At the time in the late 60's this media was very desirable because of recycling into audio use, but there was no way to erase the tapes for such use. The tapes were used for similar components of the command authority chain as the 8" floppies are. jim

On 4/28/2014 6:02 PM, Eric Smith wrote: If they are recorded with the heat method the alteration can be detected. I think that may be what is used, not just off the shelf. I didn't see the 60 minutes report, but I believe they do targeting info differently And I dont know if they are using the ones reported in such missions. A USB dongle has no means to record an unalterable key or stamp on it which could be a key to the rest of the data, and that might fill the bill with modern hardware. Similar to how cell phone boot firmware and other SOC locks work. there are also the distributed verification orders to the field crews that have to jibe with what is on the media, but they want multiple ways of verification to unlock the weapons, etc. jim

On 4/28/14, Steven M Jones <classiccmp at crash.com> wrote: I called their listed phone number about a year ago or so looking for 5.25" floppies, and was told they had a large stock remaining. As to whether it's new or old, I don't know.

Here's an interesting question: Will an EMP kill a floppy? Since it takes a very strong field to erase one, I'm inclined to think "no". --Chuck

On 4/29/2014 5:45 AM, Jerome H. Fine wrote: I had a lot of the Nike Ajax tapes which were all the 10" diameter 1/2" 7 track tapes. We also had Magnasee. We had all sorts of magnetics up to alnico magnets available and could not make a dent in the recorded patterns on the tapes. Other digital media, such as 1/4" recording tapes and 1/2" 9 track tapes at 800 BPI from our mainframe were made completely "blank' or the same flat pattern with Magnasee as the authority with all the erasure methods we tried. I found out about the thermal recording method from an engineer who worked @ Panasonic in Irvine at their facility for loading pre-recorded cassette tapes (audio). Had I known they were using the thermal method I would have like to have tried erasing a pre-recorded cassette, but did not know about that. I don't know how the magical EMP field would have a different effect at a distance, but don't know about that. I know we were doing a lot of research at the time for a government lab which was related to radiation and electronic effects, specifically to make systems resistant to EMP effects and radiation exposure effects, so I wonder if EMP would be that much of an issue. certainly in most consumer electronics it might be. But as an electric field, not a magnetic one. Jim jim