fisher@monet.DEC (06/25/85)
For an excellent article about the shuttle computer system, see CACM,
September 1984. Of course, I can't find the article now, but AP101 sounds like
the right model for the computers.
One of the reasons that these things are so old is that the lead time for
developing a thing so complex as the shuttle is enormous. Remember that the
shuttle project was firing up way back in the early to mid 70s. (You know,
IBM 360 and 370 time?) Once you start making major design decisions you
have to freeze the design using then-current technology...you can't continue
to track it. No 68020s back then! (Were there even 6502s?)
In any case, I have read somewhere (probably Aviation Week) that there is a
program to upgrade the shuttle computers. I don't recall whether it is just
in the planning stages, or if it is funded, or what.
BTW, core (or at least plated wire) is still alive and well in spacecraft.
You can't beat it for cosmic-ray immunity and power-fail memory retention!
Burns
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