[X] My Assistant

[nprev]

Hey, everybody. I'm beginning work on my thesis for a master's in system engineering, and my selected topic is built-in-test equipment. Specifically, what I'm trying to do is determine how much is TOO much, and/or not enough; I suspect that there is a critical point where BIT equipment becomes more complex (and therefore more failure-prone, and more of a maintenance burden) than the system(s) it monitors.

Most of my case studies will involve aircraft systems because of the direct maintenance burden and extensive human interfacing implicit in such systems. However, I'd love to also examine a planetary spacecraft fault-protection system as an extreme example with respect to airplane stuff (i.e., it theoretically absolutely, positively HAS to be accurate to a very high degree, and it'll be pretty darn hard to fix if it breaks). The data I'm looking for is the number of interfaces with monitored systems, redundancy features, and cost as a fraction of total developmental expenditures.

So, if anybody has any of this information available (and, of course, releasable...NOT trying to get anyone in trouble, here!), please ping me. Thanks!

[dvandorn]

And I suppose HAL's final breakdown was caused when there was an extremely unlucky flip of the bit in its programming that turned on the "Become monomaniacal and murder the crew" subroutine?

I think the question then becomes the sanity of Dr. Chandra for including that subroutine in HAL's programming in the first place...

-the other Doug