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Posted by creaothceann

Posted by tomman
Oh, and my favorite porn doujinshi site (you know which one, you bastards!)

nhentai.net?

Posted by creaothceann

nhentai.net?

Posted by tomman
While we guys protest in disgust about the imminent death of our beloved floppy drives and 32-bit processors on our Linux distros, the priorities at Boeing Commercial Airplanes are quite distinct:
https://www.wingsoverquebec.com/?p=8649

The death trap known as 737 MAX just got yet another computer-related flaw added to its pile of computer-related flaws: a good ol' 286 (as in "Intel 80286", released over 35 years ago!) is in charge of critical flight systems, like the flaps and stabilizers. Turns out if you feed a slowass CPU with a heavy load, said CPU performance will plummet down. We hate this when it happens to our videogames, but on an airplane the consequences are far more serious. As in deadly serious.

So yeah, those very expensive birds with flawed computers won't be flying again for some long time. The MCAS issue? That's EASY MODO. Yet, Boing (not a typo) believes they can add more Javascripts hire more $9/hr code monkeys fix this flight control flaw with more software.

I'll stick to buses, thanks.

Posted by CaptainJistuce
I'm assuming they're using some sort of embedded microcontroller version that runs at something like 200 MHz. I mean, if it is possible for the Z80, it is possible for the 80286.

Posted by tomman
Yet, Boing (not a typo) believes they can add more Javascripts hire more $9/hr code monkeys fix this flight control flaw with more software.

Posted by CaptainJistuce
In all fairness, I'm pretty sure javascript code monkees aren't generating anything runnable on an 80286, even an unusually fast one.
That said, they probably can't fix this with more code. They need LESS code.

Posted by https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers

It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors.

The Max software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs.

Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace -- notably India.

The coders [sic] from [the Indian software developer] HCL were typically designing to specifications set by Boeing. Still, “it was controversial because it was far less efficient than Boeing engineers just writing the code,” Rabin said. Frequently, he recalled, “it took many rounds going back and forth because the code was not done correctly.”

In a statement, HCL said it “has a strong and long-standing business relationship with The Boeing Company, and we take pride in the work we do for all our customers. However, HCL does not comment on specific work we do for our customers. HCL is not associated with any ongoing issues with 737 Max.”

Posted by sureanem
The tablet will occasionally shit the bed, and nothing else will happen.

Posted by sureanem

Posted by CaptainJistuce
I'm assuming they're using some sort of embedded microcontroller version that runs at something like 200 MHz. I mean, if it is possible for the Z80, it is possible for the 80286.

The article says it runs at 20 MHz, make of it what you will.

Posted by CaptainJistuce

Posted by sureanem

Posted by CaptainJistuce
I'm assuming they're using some sort of embedded microcontroller version that runs at something like 200 MHz. I mean, if it is possible for the Z80, it is possible for the 80286.

The article says it runs at 20 MHz, make of it what you will.

I read it as saying the 80286 part wasn't available in speeds above 20 MHz, which is factually untrue(Intel's 80286 parts went up to 25). And then starts talking about the possibility of overclocking.
More importantly, there are no new 80286s available, and Boeing isn't building a plane reliant on eBay to source parts.

I think they heard it used a 286 core, did some googling to find out what a 286 is, and ran. I don't think they have the actual specs of the system.

That’s a Harris 80286.

Can it do floating point math? No.

It can execute, roughly, 0.21 instructions per clock.

Does that say “distributed system” to you?

Not me.

Thing is, according to reasonably reliable sources – that’s what the 737 MAX software runs on.

Before I go any further, I have to state that all airplanes run generations behind the bleeding edge of hardware design in the name of cost, safety, and reliability.

No one wants a zero-day CPU instruction set bug grounding an entire fleet because some dumbass at Intel designed on-chip WiFi for the consumer market, and because of a common fab, the enterprise chips still have the feature, you just have to run some bizarre emulator… You see where I’m going.

Bad news. So you can’t begrudge Boeing for using the 286 architecture to run the 737 MAX software, at all.

Airbus—just to be show-offs or something—when it comes to Kung Fu, they decided to write the entirety of the A32X fly-by-wire software to run on a combo of Motorola 68000s and 186s.

The problem with the Paleozoic-era hardware is that two AOA (angle of attack) inputs, when combined with an inelegantly coded MCAS, can overload the CPU in present iterations of the code.

The FAA calls issues related to this, that came up in the simulator, “catastrophic.” It’s not a term they mean to use to fear monger, of course. But it’s not a happy word all the same.

Software is a challenge, well no. Elegantly-coded software is a challenge.

There are also so many questions as what the FAA will consider “acceptable.” Parallelism would be a kludge that some may consider a vast divergence from the 737NG. New hardware would definitely be considered an extensive modification that, given the realities of a post-MCAS world, will be gone over by CS professors and experts the world over before it so much as is allowed to carry a mouse.

It doesn’t matter how Boeing, ultimately, solves this problem—it’s going to add considerably more time to the aircraft’s return to service than they and their shareholders would enjoy.

Until I know more, I am in no position or want to speculate. You can solve a software problem in ten seconds with fresh eyes, or it could take huge team years.

Early news reports were inaccurate in attributing the problem to an 80286[238] microprocessor overwhelmed with data. The problem was in fact caused by deliberately flipping five bits in the flight control computer. The bits represent status flags such as whether MCAS is active (which disables the cutout switch), or whether the tail trim motor is energized. Engineers were able to simulate single event upsets and artificially induce MCAS activation by manipulating these signals. Such fault occurs when memory bits are flipped from 0 to 1 or vice versa. This can happen due to cosmic rays striking the microprocessor circuits.[223]