Glass Panel Longevity

The recent thread regarding the lack of parts for the Garmin 480 got me
to wondering just how long the G-1000's will "live"?
Steam gauges are forever, but integrated circuits are produced for a
given period, then production is ceased as newer chips come along.
Does Garmin mention anywhere how long they will support their products?
Their earliest GPS handhelds are coming up on 20 years.
We have seen Lowrence discontinue support for some of their products
that are less than 10 years old.

john smith wrote:
The recent thread regarding the lack of parts for the Garmin 480 got me
to wondering just how long the G-1000's will "live"?
Steam gauges are forever, but integrated circuits are produced for a
given period, then production is ceased as newer chips come along.
Does Garmin mention anywhere how long they will support their products?
Their earliest GPS handhelds are coming up on 20 years.
We have seen Lowrence discontinue support for some of their products
that are less than 10 years old.
I guess the more important question is how long will they support it. A
chip may go out of production but will they commit to coming out with a
new board to replace the old one containing a chip that is no longer
available. I think it all comes down to money. It's one thing to
obsolete a 200.00 handheld, it's another to do so to a 30,000 nav
system. I'm going to guess that they will come out for replacement
modules for a while because they can make enough money on the
service/parts to justify it.

It's not so much the chips as the software. Microsoft
ceases support for Windows 98 and previous versions as
most other companies who produce software (embedded or
otherwise).

They want (and need) to push you on to newer platforms
and the only way they can do it is to eventually cease
support for older systems.

john smith wrote:
The recent thread regarding the lack of parts for the Garmin 480 got me
to wondering just how long the G-1000's will "live"?
Steam gauges are forever, but integrated circuits are produced for a
given period, then production is ceased as newer chips come along.
Does Garmin mention anywhere how long they will support their products?
Their earliest GPS handhelds are coming up on 20 years.
We have seen Lowrence discontinue support for some of their products
that are less than 10 years old.

Typically avionics manufacturers stockpile components that go out of
production. Most IC manufacturers make end of live announcments, and
give the consumers of these parts the option to make a lifetime buy.
Garmin can buy up as many 1000's of each critical component as they
think they will need to support their products, and then eventually
redesign around the newer available components when they see fit.

The real question is "how committed is Garmin to supporting product X
after date Y".

Dean

john smith writes:

The recent thread regarding the lack of parts for the Garmin 480 got me
to wondering just how long the G-1000's will "live"?
Steam gauges are forever, but integrated circuits are produced for a
given period, then production is ceased as newer chips come along.
Does Garmin mention anywhere how long they will support their products?
Their earliest GPS handhelds are coming up on 20 years.
We have seen Lowrence discontinue support for some of their products
that are less than 10 years old.

It's best not to assume that any for-profit company will continue to
support a product that no longer generates substantial amounts of
revenue, unless it is required to do so by law.

I expect that glass cockpits will pretty much follow the past of PCs,
unless legislation prevents it.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

john smith wrote:
Steam gauges are forever,

They are?

Is the same model artificial horizon designed decades ago still
manufactured today?

Do people repair mechanical gauges or simply replace them when they stop
working?

Don't forget the GPS-90, which no longer has updates from either Garmin or
Jepp, so the question is for both of them, the G1000 would be useless if
Jepp pull the plug. The price of keeping all this data up to date in these
modern machines is a very real hidden cost (XM, nav data etc).


"john smith" wrote in message
...
The recent thread regarding the lack of parts for the Garmin 480 got me
to wondering just how long the G-1000's will "live"?
Steam gauges are forever, but integrated circuits are produced for a
given period, then production is ceased as newer chips come along.
Does Garmin mention anywhere how long they will support their products?
Their earliest GPS handhelds are coming up on 20 years.
We have seen Lowrence discontinue support for some of their products
that are less than 10 years old.

Do people repair mechanical gauges or simply replace them when they stop
working?

It's a lot easier / cheaper to replace one mechanical gauge than an
entire instrument panel.

--
Guy

Guy Elden Jr writes:

It's a lot easier / cheaper to replace one mechanical gauge than an
entire instrument panel.

And it's a lot easier to survive in flight with one failing gauge than
with an entire failing panel.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

"Jim Logajan" wrote in message
.. .
Is the same model artificial horizon designed decades ago still
manufactured today?

Do people repair mechanical gauges or simply replace them when they stop
working?

In a lot of cases, it's not so much if the item can be repaired, but whether
it is cost effective given the shop rate for the repair guy... If it wasn't
for the added cost (that gets passed on to us, of course) of FAA
certification, it would probably be cheaper for most items to be replaced
instead of repaired... After getting burnt on radio repairs a couple of
times for my old Narco, I replaced it with an MX-11 like was in my other
radio slot... With repairs to the Narco running a few hundred dollars a pop,
I could have bought the MX-11 with the money that I wasted on the Narco
repairs... Since I still ended up buying the MX-11, all that money was
wasted... A MX-11 runs around $900 these days and installation is just a
slide in replacment for the Narco that it replaces and as such, you don't
need an A&P or avionics shop to do the replacement... If it wasn't for the
cost of FAA certification, I suspect that the MX-11s might approach the cost
of CB radios... It's not unreasonable to think that their price might drop
to the $100-200 range... At that price, repairs start getting the same as
the cost of a new radio, so it's more unlikely that someone would choose to
repair the item... Since the newer circuit boards are less component
repairable, technicians are more likely to just be replacing a complete
subassembly board instead of troubleshooting down to a component level...
This saves some time (i.e. money) in the troubleshooting stage, but it
increases the price in the repair parts stage...

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the one system does everything approach in
some of the glass panels... I have no problem with mechanical gauges being
replaced with electronic gauges, but I would prefer for them to be
independent, possibly communicating to some other system through some sort
of standard interface... At Rockwell, many of their new systems were
communicating via TCP/IP packets... I kind of liked this approach... It
seemed rather simple and elegant... A device would have a particular IP
address and port number associated with it... You could send information to
that device or retrieve information from it as appropriate... For a
non-compliant device, you could just design a TCP/IP interface to the device
that translated from the proprietary device information format to the TCP/IP
format...