Tornado Computer (Programmer Electronic Control)...
 

Hi dear experts,

recently I came across an offer from a company mainly selling used equipment in the UK. On their web site they offer a sort of black box for sale. Those boxes have been on eBay, too. This box titled "Programmer Electronic Control" shall have been part of a Computer of the Tornado aircraft as their offer claims.

Looking at the pictures the box is full of 74xx TTL-chips having been obsolete 15 years ago. So it might be 30 years old. Does anybody know what is was used for? Since it contains quite a lot memory for those days it might indeed have been some vital computer part? Additionally I wonder where these boxes come from?

Thanks,

Erik.

'Erik' - a few amendments to remove commercial links etc, as per forum rules

Additional Info, 1/24/2005, Baigar: Sorry for my mistake in including a link to a commercial site. The partnumber of the box, made by Marconi Avionics, is 51-019-02, NSN1680-99-652-3410. It contains lots of modules.

I took some photos of the box and put em on my homepage (see http://www.baigar.de/TornadoComputerUnit/) maybe someone is interested...

The label of the box reads "Programmer electronic Control", manufactured by Marconi Avionics with part number 51-019-02, NSN1680-99-652-3410. There are lots of boards in it. Among them are boards dealing with driving the core memory:

(1) Driver Board, 1680-99-646-6754 and
(2) Data Board, 1680-99-646-6755.

The core memory itself consists of a sandwich of two boards by GEC-Computers. The capacity must be around 64k Bits:

(3) Core Memory, 5841-99-652-3386.

Thanks, Erik.

And more boards beeing something like a processor assembled from discrete components.

During the last weeks some small pieces of information accumulated and indicate that the unit was part of the Tab-TV system in the rear cockpit of very early panavia tornado aircraft. The box was manufactured by Marconi avionic's "Airborne Display Division" in Rochester, Kent/England.

Has anybody out there seen those displays? Where they alphanumerically only or was it possible to display lineart graphics? More displays?

Thanks, Erik.