Glass panels: what OS?

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:44:49 -0700, C J Campbell wrote:

It has never failed. I have, however, seen the OS crash on Garmin handheld
GPS units. Frequently. To be honest, I would prefer the more stable Windows
OS.

A worthwhile question, which is only going to help to obfuscate the
issue, but what makes you so sure it is the OS which crashed and not the
application? For the end-user, granted, there isn't much of a
distinction. Just the same, technically speaking, there is a huge
difference.


Cheers!

I have, however, seen the OS crash on Garmin handheld
GPS units. Frequently.

I have a Garmin V mounted in my car. By now I can program anything in
there without looking and use it to drive to my nextdoor neighbor
(LA Story reference there ). anyway, yes, they do lock up but
not too frequently. In some regards they are more complicated.....it
calculates routes automatically while the Garmin aviation units only
have to calculate direct routing for the most part.

To be honest, I would prefer the more stable Windows OS.

I don't.

All operating systems have a long history of crashing and being less than
stable.

I thought Linux rarely ever crashes but that is only what I've heard.
My company has part of it hardware running off of WX Works. That has
120 motors to control in real time with motor encoders plus
mechanoelectrical secondary feedback to compare the motor counts to,
assert interlocks when any of those are not within tolerances plus
much more and I've never heard of one crashing. I have heard of
the Windows XX boxes they are connected to crashing a lot more often
and they more or less doing a LOT less work. But every application
is different.

It would be interesting to know why you think Win NT would be
unstable on something like the MX-20. The device is dedicated to running one
program. It has no peripherals. It never runs for more than a few hours.
Basically, all the issues supposedly making Win NT unstable simply do not
exist on a closed box like this.

And you never have to do processor intensive calculations like bold
facing a word.

Gerald

"Gerald Sylvester" wrote in message
.net...

I have, however, seen the OS crash on Garmin handheld
GPS units. Frequently.

I have a Garmin V mounted in my car. By now I can program anything in
there without looking and use it to drive to my nextdoor neighbor
(LA Story reference there ). anyway, yes, they do lock up but
not too frequently. In some regards they are more complicated.....it
calculates routes automatically while the Garmin aviation units only
have to calculate direct routing for the most part.

To be honest, I would prefer the more stable Windows OS.

I don't.

All operating systems have a long history of crashing and being less
than
stable.

I thought Linux rarely ever crashes but that is only what I've heard.

Actually, I have a Red Hat Linux server. In the six months that I have owned
it, it has crashed four times and had to be restarted. OTOH, the Windows XP
Professional computers have not crashed even once during that time.

I hear a lot about Windows' instability. I say it is crap. All I can go on
is my own personal experience, but MS operating systems are the only ones
that I have ever used that can go for more than a few weeks without
crashing. What am I supposed to do? Believe my own experience, or believe a
bunch of anti-social geeks who begin frothing at the mouth and chewing the
carpet at the mere mention of Microsoft or Bill Gates?

"C J Campbell" writes:

It would be interesting to know why you think Win NT would be
unstable on something like the MX-20.

As a user of 1966 aviation technology, I look at "stability" over
a longer term than a few hours.

Manufacturers who use proprietary software like NT give up control
of their products. In the short term, that means that they might
not be able to make required changes in a timely manner. In the
long term, it means that a very expensive piece of equipment could
become a paperweight, or at least much less useful than it could
be, at the whim of a third party (MS).

The risk of those things happening is, I hope, fairly low, but I
still prefer to deal with a company that takes more control of its
product when investing such a large (to me) amount.

--kyler

In article , C J Campbell wrote:
The MX-20 runs plain vanilla Windows NT 4.0. I don't know why anyone except
software bigots would have a problem with that. There have been no known
problems with the OS in this application.

Except even Microsoft recommends you don't use their software in safety
critical devices. If you've ever been exposed to the gory details of the
Windows API you'd agree with them.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
Except even Microsoft recommends you don't use their software in safety
critical devices.

IMHO, that's as much a CYA move by a company that's self-insured and has
deep pockets, as it is any sort of real indication of what they think of the
suitability of their OS for stuff like that. If they were serious about
keeping NT out of "safety critical devices", they wouldn't sell it to people
using it for "safety critical devices".

Pete

Gives a whole new meaning to "the blue screen of death", doesn't it? ;-)

Dave Reinhart


C J Campbell wrote:

"Bruce Horn" wrote in message
news
I've been wondering...

What underlying OS do the various glass panels (Avidyne, Garmin, etc.)
use? It might actually make me think twice about buying a particular
system if I knew that (for example) it was Windows underneath.

The MX-20 runs plain vanilla Windows NT 4.0. I don't know why anyone except
software bigots would have a problem with that. There have been no known
problems with the OS in this application.

The Garmin G-1000 runs a proprietary OS.

"David Reinhart" wrote in message
...
Gives a whole new meaning to "the blue screen of death", doesn't it? ;-)


You are going to die if your MX-20 fails?

C J Campbell wrote:

You are going to die if your MX-20 fails?

That was in a Futurama episode. They'd gone back in time to a point before
GPS. As the ship approached Earth, warnings sounded. No GPS, Navigation
failing, the ship was going to crash. "Not if I can help it", says Leela
the pilot. Then the engines power down. "Oh. I guess I can't."

Yep. The GPS is that important.

Laugh

- Andrew

See the wink emoticon? That indicates the remark was not intended to be
serious.

Dave Reinhart


C J Campbell wrote:

"David Reinhart" wrote in message
...
Gives a whole new meaning to "the blue screen of death", doesn't it? ;-)


You are going to die if your MX-20 fails?