M2dude et al,
I have the rare privilege of actually having one of those rare "secret" air intake computers (AICU) sitting right next to my desk.
The circuit boards are mostly quite neat, with only the odd wire strap here and there.
However, the wiring of the unit itself, between the connectors, is a nightmare.
This is one of the PROM boards from the AICU, with one of the PROMs taken out of its socket. I have more photos, but will have to download those first, if anyone is interested.
Landroger
What little horrors hid inside those TO5 cans?
They're operational amplifiers, one per can!
Don't forget that all the computing in the AFCS computers was analog, not digital!
The vast majority were LM101As, with 741s in non-critical locations, and the odd LM108 for the really hiigh-precision stuff.
Apart from the fact that your board must be brand new - the track cutters and wire linkers hadn't got at it yet!
The board is actually a true antique, dating from one of the development aircraft.
We did not always do the kind of "butcher job" I described for the A/T. If there was enough time between major mods, the "firm" would redesign the board(s) and send us a new set, and the old ones would be binned... it made for better reliability. I kept a few as souvenirs.
What is interesting are the connections - only eight pins, as far as I can tell? We had 15/25/60 pin 'D' connectors or multi path, gold 'edge' connectors at least
I see you missed the real connector!
It's the big blue "thing" at the centre of the board, with no less than 80 pins.
This is the back of the card
This is the central connector closer up
The idea wasn't bad at first sight.... it allowed stacking three boards on top of each other, so that many signals could pass from one board to another without any intermediate wiring. A small motherboard with a fourth conector would then take certain signals to other stacks, etc.
Another claimed advantage was that it made the board layout easier.
What was learned only gradually was that those connectors were hideously difficult to solder in place, and even more difficult to repair. Concorde was too far "on the way" to redesign the entire AFCS, so we learned to live with them, but the concept was abandoned afterwards.
The central connectors were only used for the analog boards ; the logic boards used more conventional 84-pin connectors on one side.
This is one of the logic boards.
Re the weight question, I would say
M2dude's answer is a lot better than mine, so ignore my remarks.....
Re the wiring, Concorde had about 300km of it.
IIRC the A380 Flying Hippo, which is vastly bigger, "only" has about 500km of wiring, and it seems a lot of that is the IFE (in-flight entertainment)
CJ