[pacaro]

Just that thinking about the "floppy drive in 1998" question.

I can think of a couple of things at play

The system was likely designed a long time before 1998, because of how this type of contract works

Even in 1998 USB was very new, so thumb drives weren't an option

CDs were ubiquitous, but cd writers were not

Proprietary tech was available, Zip and Jazz drives come to mind, or maybe even minidisc in that timeframe, but any would have been a poor choice in hindsight

Tape would presumably have been considered, but was already notorious for long term compatibility (in 99 I had to restore from a tape backup that was only a couple of years old and we couldn't easily find compatible hardware)

There were other proprietary optical storage media in the market, but they were expensive and aimed at the long term storage market (heaven help you if that's how your archives are stored)

If they needed a cheap, easily written, and distributable media, they didn't have a lot of good choices.

We still don't have a good choice for this if you want your system air gapped. I sure as hell wouldn't let anyone plug a USB device into a safety critical system