The windows BSOD is acceptable because you can customise the colour and the font. There are many websites which show you how.
The Garmin GNS480 (or apollo CNX80) is running an embedded version of Windows (I think it is windows NT embedded). Nobody that I heard of has complained about the stability of this device.
The apollo MFD MX20 runs the same windows and is suffering from the “blue screen” illness when you enable too many options to be visualised at the same time. The current Garmin MFD GMX200 has basically the same software (with better graphics) and an enhanced hardware platform and is also pretty stable.
Does someone knows what is the OS that Garmin G1000 is using?
There is a big difference between a nav display and the attitude indicator.
I remember during a visit to an ATC unit being surprised to see Windows being used for the radar view the controllers were using. Can’t remember if it was Swannick or Heathrow, but it was somewhere significant, not just some little A/G operator with an ADS-B receiver. There is no doubt Windows is used in some critical systems.
At DFS, everything is based on IBM AIX, that’s IBM’s proprietary Unix. A good system back when they started the project but today one would go for something more mainstream. Nothing wrong with Windows, just need enough redundancy but that holds true for every system. Availability of engineers is an important factor today and rules out non mainstream environments for most projects.
Windows should be fine if it’s not connected to any external network and only runs your dedicated application on specific hardware. I’m sure that’s what happens in the Airbus example. No external connections, no software other than Airbus’s and the hardware is fixed. That way there are few unknowns in the whole thing.
At DFS, everything is based on IBM AIX, that’s IBM’s proprietary Unix. A good system back when they started the project but today one would go for something more mainstream.
Strong protest from a (jobless) Unix specialist!
AIX is gaining momentum these days, indeed I wish I could offer stronger knowledge of it. It is vastly superior to Windows in terms of stability (though Windows has improved a lot, in that respect, over the last decade) and to Linux in terms of scalability. Superb virtualisation, good tools for security and centralised monitoring, maintenance and administration. And of course, lots of redundancy built in. Of the three proprietary Unix variants, AIX seems to have the strongest cards today – Solaris has been subject to some very unfortunate marketing and technological decisions, and HP-UX suffers from its “conservative” reputation, and from its association to the PA-RISC – people must move away from that, and when they do, they do so radically, either to Windows or to Linux.
For running web servers, and the (usually load-balanced) application servers behind them, nothing beats some flavour of Linux on ESx or a similar virtualisation platform. For hosting the large databases at the bottom of such systems, I would recommend AIX over anything else, today. With a possible exception for DB2, another IBM product, which can run on a large variation of hardware, from PC’s to a mainframe.
Availability of engineers is no problem at all! There were plenty of engineers available in Warsaw and Sofia, to take over my job at 40% of my cost.
But should anyone know of an opportunity for a seasoned Unix sysadmin with strong language skills and very prepared to travel and/or relocate, do let me know!
(sorry for going off-topic)
And a bit more on-topic: my home-brew GPS is of course based on a Linux (Ubuntu, for this time), running on a netbook, and has never suffered from system crashes. The GPS receiver daemon tends to hang, once in ten flights or so, but that is surely due to poor programming on my side, and will of course be entirely dealt with in release 2.0, which is due for release real soon now…
Airbus does not use Windows. Most of the onboard computers (there are a lot for all the systems / subsystems) have 386/486 CPUs. I don’t know whether they are made by Intel or AMD but I guess it’s more probable they are by SGS-THOMSON , Alcatel or some other Franco-European company. Software is written by Airbus. If a screen (PFD, ND or MCDU) goes blank it shows black not blue. Systems that fail can often easily be restored by a C/B reset, i.e. computer restart. Vital system computers are at least double … redundant … fail safe.
Airbus does not use Windows
Indeed there is a multitude of LRU’s which can be from Honeywell, Collins, Sundstrand etc….each LRU has a component manual. E.g the EIS components EFIS and ECAM systems use all different LRU’s…If it was run by Windows a blue screen would appear before take off
