"Jonathan Goodish" wrote in message
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Though I'm not Windows fan, I believe that Avidyne and others use
Windows as the foundation for their avionics systems. However, they
strip out all of the junk that normally accumulates on a PC and are left
with a fairly stable (and hardened) system. I suspect that you could
approach that level of reliability if you did the same--stripped the
system of everything but the FlightPrep, WxWorx, etc. But then, that
would remove most of the non-aviation utility from the system.

As I understand it, Avidyne uses Embedded Windows NT (a Microsoft product)
in their EX5000 MFD. I suspect they also use it in their EX500 MFD. This
was one reason why it took a long time for them to introduce USB flash
memory compatibility for data upload/download. The original version only
supported USB Zip drives, since that was the only USB drivers available for
Embedded Win NT.

Starting with Version 6.x on the Cirrus (EX5000C) MFDs, they now support Zip
drives and USB "keychain" drives.

You are correct that Embedded Win NT is "stripped down". That's one reason
why it is much more reliable than the desktop versions.

As to the Entegra PFD, it's an entirely different (although externally
similar-looking) product. It does not use any Windows operating system. I
believe they do use an RTOS (real-time operating system), but they would not
tell me if they used an off-the-shelf RTOS or wrote their own.

-Mike