[LINK] F-22 Raptor stumped by International Date Line

[Adam Todd]

At 05:00 PM 28/02/2007, Tom Worthington wrote:
>  t 07:35 AM 28/02/2007, Stilgherrian wrote:
>> >From http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=6225 ...   On a 12 to 
>> 15 hours flight from Hawaii to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The 
>> U.S. Air Force's mighty Raptor was felled  by the International Date 
>> Line (IDL)....

I'm going to go with Howards hint "Are they runnin winduz" and with Tom's ...

>What seems more likely is that the trip across the Pacific was longer than 
>the software was designed to operate for. The software contains numerous 
>timers and buffers. These are set back to zero when the aircraft systems 
>are powered off. If the systems were operated for too long the timers 
>reach their maximum values and then click over to zero. I recall the 
>Patriot missile system had a problem of this sort.

I'd guess buffer over runs.  Data steaming into virtual devices, reached 
the peak, a checksum errored and the whole lot stopped.

Not sure if the max roll over would apply.  That would be REALLY sloppy 
programming.  Even I don't fall for that one!  And with memory and storage 
no longer a premium today, having a 64 bit word or a 128 bit word wouldn't 
really be an issue.  Well I'd like to think not.

I'll go with the buffer overrun :)  Ran out of allocation, clobbered the 
data in the next address space and whamo!

What fun it is to speculate on nearly no information!

Gordon, I like the idea of the inverting 180, but really, you don't think 
that the Americans would design a $125 million plane and limit it's use 
only to the Norther Hemispeher?

Oh the other hand, from their point of view there is no "rest of the world"