Originally Posted by
M2dude
Aghhhh The dreaded AICU. I'd almost forgotten the innards, as you say the motherboard wiring was a total nightmare (good piece of knitting I seem to remember).
Mine is one of the 202 development units, and 'knitting' is too kind... 'kludge' describes it better. I'll post a photo, if you like.
As far as the 'secret' bit of the AICU, I think we all know that is a little bit of Concorde mythology, more science museum than secret really.
That myth was amplified substantially by BA removing those "secret" AICUs from the aircraft after the final delivery flights.
The way I understood the story was that they tried to collect as many reasonably reliable spare AICUs for the last few delivery flights, so as not to have to suddenly cancel a flight.
The AICU was right at the top of the list of "unscheduled removals". IIRC the tea maker was second...
Around ten years ago we had some fairly substantial modifications done to the units, due to component obsolescence. (I seem to remember that some of the components concerned were not only out of production, but only a few hundred examples existed worldwide}. I do remember that the power supply board, resolver demodulator boards as well as a couple of others were replaced with new ones using modern components. The modification did do wonders for component reliability.
The one I know about is the ADC/DAC board (analog-digital and digital-analog converter board). The supply of either ADCs or DACs ran out literaly worldwide, and the board
had to be redesigned, requalified and recertified with more recent components, and a new batch manufactured. The cost, for the replacement of that board alone, came to about 3 million euros.
Much of the Concorde intake development trials were flown out of Tangiers and Casablanca, where cold stratospheric temperatures would be guaranteed.Software changes as a result of the flight trials had to be done in there and 'the field'. The way that you made programmed the PROMS was by 'burning' each individual logic gate with a 9v battery. It was highly specialised, as well as extremely tedious work indeed, as we can all well imagine.
Somebody passed me a photo taken at Casablanca of a table full of AICUs waiting to be programmed... of course every software mod had to be programmed into all eight computers!
"... 'burning' each individual logic gate with a 9v battery." I believe you, thousands wouldn't... Didn't you have at least some sort of programming unit?
I went through a similar exercise around 1976, but at that time at least we had a programming "suitcase", that let you copy the original in RAM, modifiy bit-by-bit with a keyboard, then 'burn' the PROM (or EPROM, by then) 'automatically'. Still took half the night....
Funny in a way how these things have stuck in our memories... But then, yes, Concorde was unique.
I've said this elsewhere, but I don't mind repeating it... in those days, there were two programmes to be part of. One was Apollo, the other was Concorde. And I've had the chance to be part of one of them.
CJ