Tornado Avionics, Displays...
Dear Tornado-Techies,
in 2005 I asked on the "Spectators Balcony" of pprune regarding a black-box I got via eBay and which should be from the early RAF-Tornadoes where it has been re- placed by something newer. In the last years I reverse engineered this one as a very interesting hobby project. This box called PROGRAMMER ELECTRONIC CONTROL contains a full 12bit computer with 8192 words of core memory and I was able to bring it back to live again, i.e. I can write programs for it now and I even connected a LCD to the box for a first "Hello World" program. A report on this restoration project can be found in the vintage computing mailing list via this link: http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/...ch/075079.html An slightly modified version is available via pdf from the following link: http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputer..._ReportPEC.pdf As I got quite far, the question arises, what the original purpose of this box in the Tornado aircraft was . From some input I conclude, that it must have been responsible for controlling some of the displays in the back cockpit. So I got some books from Dour Richardson and Andy Evans to learn about the Tornado and the displays in question are named the TV-tabs or the CRPMD. Maybe on this forum there are people still knowing about technical details on these vintage displays and whether the "Programmer Electronic Control" was involved here, too? Did the TV-tabs include some kind of analog storage included? From discussion in the German forum "www.flugzeugforum.de" it is obvious, that German and UK versions of the Tornado are different. Are the displays, too? As every techie might imagine - the real dream would be to have one of these original displays to connect it to the box. In Germany trashed equipment is often sold on auctions (www.vebeg.de) to the public. Is there something similar in the UK or is there an other way to locate one of these vintage displays? Any hints are highly welcome, best regards, Erik. P.S. the RAF-version of early Tornado contained a TV-tab like display for the pilot, as well. Was this display technically similar to the TV-tab? |
Erik
A fantastic piece of work, but don't you think you should get out more...:8 N |
One of the stickers is from GEC Marconi - I know one major component of the early F2/3 made by them and it was little better than the concrete it replaced!
If your box is part of this equipment and you got it to work you did a lot better than the RAF who had to spend lots more money and effort to turn it into the good piece of kit it is today! |
named the TV-tabs or the CRPMD. Maybe on this forum there are people still knowing about technical details on these vintage displays |
This doesn't really answer your question but to give you some more info - The F3 has 2 TV tabs in the back and 1 in the front. They were all monochrome (green) then a few years ago the rear ones were replaced with colour displays, but they can only be operated in monochrome (makes things a little tricky with 30 odd tracks on!) The front display is still the old tv tab (pilots dont break them anywhere near as often as clumsy navs:}).
I think that the mono ones all went to the GR4 - but I could be wrong! |
Hi and thanks for the answers so far. Maybe I have to apologize
especially to Olly O'Leg for using the term "vintage" in my question as these displays seem still to be airborne and some people may be annoyed by this term! For me the term "vintage" is in no way negative. As the development ot the Tornado started (I think 1968), the computers of thoses days where PDP8 with 12bit and 4k of memory. The legendary PDP11 was released in 1970. Both where rather large 19" machines - so it was a masaterpiece to put a machine like this into a box like the Programmer Electronic Control. Additionally IO-Devices in those days have been the keyboard and the teletype - graphics displays where NOT commonly available. So these TV-tab displays where ahead of time those days. This is the reason why many people spend their free time in getting hands on and keep machines like this running. So sorry again if anyone feels offended by my question. My only interest is understanding how this interesting technology was implemented... Best regards, Erik. |
Originally Posted by WannaBeCiv
The F3 has 2 TV tabs in the back and 1 in the front. They were all monochrome (green)
cockpit and your assumtion is right. But the pilot's display looks different (only a few knobs below the display) than the normal TV-tabs. So since the photo in the book shows even text on the pilot's display ths is definitively some computer controlled display. Those days displays with internal analog storage where widely used since the computer could draw the information and the display will display it until a change has to be made - maybe the TV-tabs where of this type? |
Erik, an interesting project!
As for the box at the heart of your project, I do not recognise it, but I'll ask about. |
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