re: Windows 95 and floppy disks are still crucial for modern US air traffic control

It’s not uncommon

LSU ran their student information system on a platform built in 1994

My industrial company has several computers with obsolete OS due to the importance and scarcity of the equipment it operates.

Old time IT pro here, Win 95 was nowhere near a stable as Win 2000, or even XP. But there are a lot of old Windows machines serving key roles in industry. I had a chemical call me a few years back, they had a 286 running key operations and the motherboard failed. They had ISA boards built to perform the tasks and they only worked on a 286 MB, those boards cost over $200K to engineer.

I went on ebay and ordered as many 286 MB's as I could find, I figured I could find one that worked. As they came in, we would fire them up and try to get a clean boot. On the 5th one we succeeded. Rebuilt the system, loaded 5.25" disks with Win 95 and got them back in operation.

Then I back engineered the process that was on the ISA cards and wrote software in DOS to perform the same functions. Then they were able to use modern, faster, more reliable systems that could be backed up.

Some type of similar system will have to be used when they upgrade.