Ahh! What's Wrong?

I thought it stood for Multi-Functional Display. Makes sense to me!

 

The day I heard my well-respected English prof use the phrase "willy-nilly" to mean random, haphazard, or without apparent correlation, I gave up on the notion of upholding "correct" over colloquial English.

The professor in question eventually corrected herself, but it certainly illustrated hdrygas's point.

Then again, when discussing subjects of a technical or scientific nature, it's a bad idea to allow terminology to be changed pell-mell.

I'll just do the gen-X thing - yawn, stretch, and move on.

 

Actually, the language changes. Have you ever had someone explain that the Romans put English into writing, and back then the spellings were phonetically correct in all regards?

night

Originally pronounced nickhet.

Did you have to read Beowulf in college?

Ever consider that someone today would have a hard time understanding the English in use in Revolutionary war times?

I still think that it was a plot to fatten America to move Dinner (a large meal from the noonday repast to the last meal of the day, which used to be supper, and it was the lightest meal of the day.

When people had that hearty breakfast, dinner and then supper, America was thinner.

 

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And more often than not: Did a lot more manual labor, walked a lot more, etc

Heck WAY back when I was a kid, you had to get out of the car and walk into McDs (or up to the window, ours didn't have an 'inside') and they didn't have biggie or super-size. You even had to get up to change the channel or volume on the TV! Amazing that we managed to exist at all!! ;-)

 

And as far as replace without question, considering there have been numerous claims on the same symptom, showing up more often when cold than hot, what is the aversion to getting it replaced if it is under warranty? Besides, the new one will allow you to toggle between consumption and energy screens with the Info button on the steering wheel. Unless the toggle is the aversion.

As for MFD used as acronyms, it does seem Toyota uses Multi-Display, or Multi-Information Display. The resulting acronyms would be MD or MID. Both of those would definitely cause more confusion than MFD. The former might have someone thinking we are talking about Evan (MD), the latter about something between two other things/values (MID).

 

If you are talking about the button on the bezel, if the button itself is bad, the whole assembly gets replaced. It's all one piece.

 

Did you ever opened hood of your Prius, Daddy?
Go back to planet Earth, Minnesota programmer. Toyota school of thought is tough nut for a naive [mid] Western mind.

I'm sure you're kidding, pal.

 

In the aviation community, swapping components between aircraft is at times a necessity in order to find the cause of a problem in a timely manner. If the problem follows the component to the other aircraft you may have saved many hundreds of manhours in trying to narrow down the problem in a complicated multi-component system.

If your table lamp does not light, you don’t troubleshoot by getting a multi-meter and testing the wall outlet, then the plug and cord, then switch, then socket. It is much easier to swap bulbs with another good light.

The Prius is more technologically advanced than many aircraft. Heck, with VSC it even has the equivalent to a flying airplane’s Stability Augmentation.

It makes sense for Toyota to have the Techs swap out components and send the suspected bad one back for testing and possible refurbishment.

 

Say What!?

 

John you have to understand the primary job of the field tech is to quickly diagnose a problem and return the car to service. They're not expected to do a stack dump and start playing with breakpoints.

At least in the Industrial Process Control world, the mantra is "replace" not "diagnose." That's the entire reason behind ORU's (Optimum Replacement Unit). You quickly repair to bring production back on schedule.

If there is a software glitch affecting something like a sensor or a valve positioner, usually the ORU guidelines call for immediate replacement and return to the factory. The factory can either try to figure out what happened from the dump files and issue a hotfix, or they can just ignore it.

For a rare problem, they tend to ignore it. If they see a trend, they may send an advisory.

In the Aviation example that Patrick mentioned, you also have to consider the relevant FAA, ICAO, or EU guidelines. Generally, in-flight failure of any sort is just *not* tolerated. For the Military, they also will generally not tolerate any sort of failure, as their mission profiles are a lot more critical.

The software must meet appropriate CMM +5 guidelines, which you rarely see in the Civilian world. To perform to CMM +5 requires lengthy and incredibly expensive testing/prototyping.

That explains why the control system in something like an Airbus or a Boeing 777 costs upwards of $10 million. That's a lot of money for what boils down to lines of code. Of course, as the old saying goes, "failure is NOT an option."

Although folks may automatically blame the software, that tends to be the cheap way out. It's rather convenient to blame a "software bug" without knowing all the variables involved.

I personally perform Reliability Analysis, and things like FRACAS and Fault Trees are very time consuming and expensive to implement. Never mind the number crunching you have to set up for Weibull Analysis.

As an example: A few years ago, an Air Transat Airbus 330 ran out of fuel at cruising altitude near the Azores. They glided for almost 90 miles, around 10 minutes, with no working engines. This single incident almost resulted in the curtailment of ETOPS (Extended Twin engine OPerationS) for all twin-engine aircraft.

Of course, ETOPS aside, a 4 engine airliner can also run the tanks dry as a bone. A greater number of engines does not equal greater reliability or safety. Though the public perception is hard to change and a fatal crash may have set ETOPS back by a decade.

The pilot initially thought a "computer bug" was to blame for the rapidly dropping fuel level. So the two-man crew became so wrapped up in the idea of a "computer bug" they lost every drop of Jet-A.

As it turns out, faulty engine maintenance procedure caused a fuel line to abrade and start leaking, which was made much worse when the pilot opened the crossfeed and dumped the remaining fuel into the leaking fuel pipe.

They lucked out and just barely landed at an Azores military airport owned by the Spanish. If they had run out of fuel even 2 minutes earlier, they would have ditched in the Atlantic.

A few years before that, a Boeing 767 flown by Martinair had to make an emergency landing in Boston when onboard systems began to experience severe malfunctions. The systems acted so glitchy it just *had* to be a software "bug."

The crew actually noticed a slight error on the ground in Amsterdam, the system clocks on the pilot and copilot CRT instrument displays were not in synch. They reset the system time and everything seemed fine, just another "computer bug."

Halfway through the flight, serious malfunctions occurred. The autopilot refused to stay engaged. Warning messages appeared on the screens then went away by themselves. By the time they declared an emergency, around 15 minutes from Boston, the situation had become critical.

All the automated flight systems had failed, which in the case of CRT or LCD primary flight displays will put bright red X on the screen. This reminds the pilot the information is not available or cannot be trusted. With the screens blank, the standby instruments not agreeing with each other, the ILS dead, they went from a minor "computer bug" to a possibly fatal situation.

They were able to manually land the stricken 767, but the anti-skid didn't work and the thrust reverse refused to engage. So they stopped on the rims with the tires cooked, flat, and on fire. Lucky there were only minor injuries.

In that case, the minor "computer bug" was caused by a maintenance tech improperly installing the ground cable shunt to the main battery bus. The ground cable worked itself loose while still on the ground, causing a floating ground to every electronic component. It's amazing the flight systems didn't cook themselves from such conditions.

So it's easy to blame "the software" for the problem but you have to look at the basics too.