Boeing announces $10.55 billion deal to divest Jeppesen, ForeFlight, AerData and OzRunways to Thoma Bravo

[alexz]

Wonder if there is someone here who programmed and razor edited punch cards 

[201Mooniac]

11 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

But you can’t plug that one into a board and run it.

Sure, you just need an ESP32 with Espurino (https://www.espboards.dev/blog/programming-esp32-with-javascript/)

[201Mooniac]

10 hours ago, dkkim73 said:

Ah but how are you going to EMP-harden that. 

Okay, got me there, no EMP hardened platform that I'm aware of for running JS.

[N201MKTurbo]

42 minutes ago, 201Mooniac said:

Sure, you just need an ESP32 with Espurino (https://www.espboards.dev/blog/programming-esp32-with-javascript/)

That looks like it emulates an arduino. Programming those little 8 bit micros in a high level language is a crime. The worst offenders are the Microchip PIC micros. Their assembly language is so elegant once you get the hang of it, but everybody uses C. most tasks will compile down to about 10 times larger than the same task in assembly. The problem is the stack, the PIC doesn't support a stack so it has to be implemented in code, and C requires a stack. It is criminal....

[N201MKTurbo]

1 hour ago, alexz said:

Wonder if there is someone here who programmed and razor edited punch cards 

I have, but if I needed a new card, I would just punch a new one on the machine.

[201Mooniac]

5 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

That looks like it emulates an arduino. Programming those little 8 bit micros in a high level language is a crime. The worst offenders are the Microchip PIC micros. Their assembly language is so elegant once you get the hang of it, but everybody uses C. most tasks will compile down to about 10 times larger than the same task in assembly. The problem is the stack, the PIC doesn't support a stack so it has to be implemented in code, and C requires a stack. It is criminal....

Agree, I just thought it was funny that you could put such a ridiculous stack of code together to get something 45 years old to run.

[Jeff Uphoff]

1 hour ago, alexz said:

Wonder if there is someone here who programmed and razor edited punch cards 

I started out programming IBM 026 & 029 keypunches using a punch card on their internal drums to define the punch-card layout for programming NCR mainframes in NEAT/3, a 60s/70s era assembly language.

Never razor-edited, though--too much trouble when you could just dup/punch a new card easily.

--Up.

[Fix]

2 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Why don’t you use an index register and fill a whole block of memory with zeros?

ldx #$00
txa
loop:
sta $c000,x
inx
bne loop:
rts

 

[201Mooniac]

1 hour ago, alexz said:

Wonder if there is someone here who programmed and razor edited punch cards 

Yep, when I did my Intro to Fortran course it was punch cards on an old IBM (can't remember the model number).  We did one fairly extensive program of several hundred cards and the one lesson I learned, other than editting the cards, was to draw a diagonal line across the top of the stack so when you drop them it is easier to get them back in order.  Ask how I know...

[EricJ]

13 hours ago, 0TreeLemur said:

For grins I just downloaded AvareX on my iPad.   Seems a nice start.  I'll give the UI a score of 5/10 .  It would work as a moving map with selectable background.  I give deducts because I don't see how to enter a flight plan, and random button pushing didn't reveal anything useful in the "Plan" page.   I also see the "Plate" option, but don't have a clue how to display one.  I did download some.  Doesn't seem to have the ability to select an airport, at least not from the Map display.  This is a major gap.  Of course I have not RTFM.

I guess this is a work in progress?   I can see that it could become a competitor to ff someday with some more development.

Is there an FM I should R?   Anyone using it?

The AvareX developer seems to be enamored with a particular modern, minimalist "intuitive" interface style, but he doesn't seem to get that it's not intuitive to many people.  There is no manual, that's part of the whole deal.   It's supposed to be so intuitive that it doesn't need a manual.   Everything really is there if you can figure it out, but I didn't want to be flying along trying to figure out for the nth time how to do something, so I switched to iFly, which I do find 100x easier to use.

FWIW, the old Avare was really nice.    I don't know why they thought they had to change the entire UI or how they display everything in the new version.   Some of the old display features were really useful and just don't exist in AvareX.   It's still a fully functional, useful EFB if you grok the UI, I just found it too frustrating to use.   That's a shame as I really liked the old version.

[Jeff Uphoff]

8 minutes ago, 201Mooniac said:

Yep, when I did my Intro to Fortran course it was punch cards on an old IBM (can't remember the model number).  We did one fairly extensive program of several hundred cards and the one lesson I learned, other than editting the cards, was to draw a diagonal line across the top of the stack so when you drop them it is easier to get them back in order.  Ask how I know...

We had a programmable card sorter. NEAT/3 had page and line numbers on each card, so you could re-sort based upon those.

But I still drew the diagonal line, too--learned that from my dad.

--Up.

P.S. If the keypunch was all steel gray and black with rounded edges, it was probably an 026. If it had some light-blue keys and was more squared off, it was probably an 029.

[EricJ]

12 hours ago, Hank said:

@0TreeLemur, I use Avare, and will check out AvareX, which I'd not heard of until this thread.

In Avare, you have to select an airport on the Find tab. To enter a flight plan, go to the Plan tab; enter your starting location under "Add Waypoint to Plan," hit the Search button then Add; do the same for each waypoint and your destination. 

Once you have a Plan, the Plate page will show all plates for the destination. You may need to.hit the <Destination> button, then choose the destination whose plates you want to see. The center (large) box will list all plates, tap the one you want to see.

Nonidea if this is how AvareX works, I haven't downloaded it yet. But it's probably quite similar. Google says it has a more modern interface than Avare, though.

AvareX is a complete start-over rewrite of Avare, with an entirely new user interface, display, etc.   Not much from Avare carries over to AvareX.   They've already stopped update support of Avare, so what you have now is all it's ever going to be, which is fine.   I liked it.   I suspect, however, that eventually they'll stop supporting chart updates for it.

[Justin Schmidt]

9 hours ago, MikeOH said:

My only exposure to APL was at a local community college back around 1974. I think it was an overview of computer languages: APL, COBOL, FORTRAN, ??  IIRC, the keyboard was unique to accommodate the special APL characters/operators, but it was a very compact/efficient language especially for matrix/data sets...but waaay arcane!

Also that class was my first and last experience with batch processing (keypunch cards)!  The young ones today don't know how good they have it!

Oh, and your Alaska map is NOT even approximately to scale!

In college, my bachelors at Purdue, we learned key punch and such. Even how to use slide rules. I still use assembly for microcontrollers. Ada, Fortran.

[201Mooniac]

6 minutes ago, Jeff Uphoff said:

We had a programmable card sorter. NEAT/3 had page and line numbers on each card, so you could re-sort based upon those.

But I still drew the diagonal line, too--learned that from my dad.

--Up.

P.S. If the keypunch was all steel gray and black with rounded edges, it was probably an 026. If it had some light-blue keys and was more squared off, it was probably an 029.

Jeff, either Rutgers was too cheap or its just because you are younger than me but no card sorter.  Actually I was thinking of the mainframe model, I'm thinking it was a 3031 but I'm not sure.  I don't really remember the card punch machines at all, probably blocked that unpleasant memory.

[Jeff Uphoff]

1 minute ago, 201Mooniac said:

Jeff, either Rutgers was too cheap or its just because you are younger than me but no card sorter.  Actually I was thinking of the mainframe model, I'm thinking it was a 3031 but I'm not sure.  I don't really remember the card punch machines at all, probably blocked that unpleasant memory.

I'm younger, but I was also doing this early punchcard/mainframe programming in the mid-70s, at age ~10.

(My dad built out and then ran our local government's first computer center, which is how I had access.)

--Up.

[M20F]

6 hours ago, Fix said:

I can program 6502 assembler, and will join the project.

lda #$00
sta $c000
rts

 

 

start:
lda #$00 
sta $1000 
jmp start 

I like to think of it at “Killer” DOS lite.  You are on the right path.  It’s probably been a minute for all of us. 
 
I am working on getting @aviatoreb signed up first to do some hexadecimal calculus but I will put you on the list.   
 

[shawnd]

13 hours ago, shawnd said:

We should have a vote on this thread to see how many people understand what the rest of the nerds mooniacs are talking about ... 

 

Apologies to folks if I offended anyone. I am one of those geek/nerds. Was an operating systems guy and then ran into databases and that enabled me to buy my 252….and maintain it.  

Great to see so many tech-savvy folks and engineers on MooneySpace. If Mooney were to ever disappear, I am confident we have the talent here to sustain and improve our beloved birds as a collective!

[Justin Schmidt]

10 minutes ago, shawnd said:

Apologies to folks if I offended anyone. I am one of those geek/nerds. Was an operating systems guy and then ran into databases and that enabled me to buy my 252….and maintain it.  

Great to see so many tech-savvy folks and engineers on MooneySpace. If Mooney were to ever disappear, I am confident we have the talent here to sustain and improve our beloved birds as a collective!

Who invited the IT guy...get me some coffee.

Just kidding...maybe

[aviatoreb]

2 hours ago, M20F said:

start:
lda #$00 
sta $1000 
jmp start 

I like to think of it at “Killer” DOS lite.  You are on the right path.  It’s probably been a minute for all of us. 
 
I am working on getting @aviatoreb signed up first to do some hexadecimal calculus but I will put you on the list.   
 

Aviatoreb here reporting for duty!

[EricJ]

2 hours ago, M20F said:

start:
lda #$00 
sta $1000 
jmp start 

I like to think of it at “Killer” DOS lite.  You are on the right path.  It’s probably been a minute for all of us. 
 
I am working on getting @aviatoreb signed up first to do some hexadecimal calculus but I will put you on the list.   
 

Don't forget to put the Origin and Assembler directives for the assembler at the top of the file.   Good practice is to put them together at the top:

.ORG

.ASM

I knew I was going to enjoy my career when I kept running into stuff like that.

[GeeBee]

5 hours ago, alexz said:

Wonder if there is someone here who programmed and razor edited punch cards 

ME! Talk about thread creep.

[hubcap]

Has anyone ever seen a private equity company lower prices on anything?

I wouldn't be surprised to see  ~40% price increase on Foreflight after this buyout takes place. Many will leave, but many will stay with Foreflight and in 5 years the buyer will set it on fire and spin it off with so much debt that it collapses in a few years.

Remember ----- Remington, Toys-R-Us and Red Lobster? The same exact thing happened to all those companies. I think TWA had a similar ending......

[1980Mooney]

Re: Thoma Bravo.  Per Wiki -" Two of Thoma Bravo's most recent 14th and 15th funds were among the lowest performing funds in Fortune's list, posting an internal rate of return of 4% and −2% respectively, while the 13th fund saw some big exits and was among the highest on the list with 27%"

Considering their poor returns on their last 3 rounds of investment funds, I suspect they will try to make up for it with this acquisition. They will be desperate to juice up the profitability of Jepp and ForeFlight in order to flip them at much higher prices than they paid.  

And since there is

• no material untapped customer base
• no chance that the customer population will grow materially

That leaves only a few options:

• Steal all the customers from Garmin for ForeFlight and convert all the users of US Govt Charts/Plates to paying Jepp subscriptions
• Convince Musk/DOGE to sell or outsource all Gov't Charts, Approach Plates, Documents and NAV data to Thoma Bravo so that they can have a MONOPOLY
• Sell us, the existing costumers, more/new "product" that we didn't know we needed.
• Or....RAISE PRICES

[redbaron1982]

48 minutes ago, 1980Mooney said:

Re: Thoma Bravo.  Per Wiki -" Two of Thoma Bravo's most recent 14th and 15th funds were among the lowest performing funds in Fortune's list, posting an internal rate of return of 4% and −2% respectively, while the 13th fund saw some big exits and was among the highest on the list with 27%"

Considering their poor returns on their last 3 rounds of investment funds, I suspect they will try to make up for it with this acquisition. They will be desperate to juice up the profitability of Jepp and ForeFlight in order to flip them at much higher prices than they paid.  

And since there is

• no material untapped customer base
• no chance that the customer population will grow materially

That leaves only a few options:

• Steal all the customers from Garmin for ForeFlight and convert all the users of US Govt Charts/Plates to paying Jepp subscriptions
• Convince Musk/DOGE to sell or outsource all Gov't Charts, Approach Plates, Documents and NAV data to Thoma Bravo so that they can have a MONOPOLY
• Sell us, the existing costumers, more/new "product" that we didn't know we needed.
• Or....RAISE PRICES

They might also take the NOTAM service, and make it a paid service.

[76Srat]

I've enjoyed all of the info on this thread, for sure.  What's funny to me is that literally none of the FF issue is vital to being able to actually fly.  Am I blown away by FF and all of the EFB stuff out there?  Absolutely and my two-pilot household subscribes to literally every option of such out there.  That said, my teenage pilot son has never flown without any of them, ever.  Me?  I literally never flew with any of them until he started flying three years ago. 

To me, six-packs were of the baby-seal-endangering plastic ring holder thingies and round dials in a panel.  To him?  Only the former.

Back to the OP:  Boeing off-selling FF and its entire digital asset portfolio (save for that related strictly to its monitoring and airframe maintenance programs themselves) is merely the result of a board room decision and the ~14BB write-down of its core business these past few quarters.  It has nothing to do with the actual value/profits/losses/core value of the digital assets themselves to Boeing's bottom line.  Akin to GE Aerospace doing what it (rightly) did a few short years ago:  off-selling its finance and maintenance businesses to separate units.  That's all Boeing are doing here.  

At its core, Boeing owning anything related to EFB makes zero sense, and I argue has never made any sense.  Boeing has no interest in what happens in the mind of the pilot.  Its an airframer on the civil side, pure and simple.  Its larger business is that of government contractor, but that's the subject of for a different day.

Bottom line to me:  FF and all of its kindred in the marketplace has not just been a true game-changer for how we fly our planes, it is a totally new universe that is as exciting as the actual universe way up there.  Is it required for us to actually fly?  Absolutely not.  If we're not in favor of the next best PE group buying it up, then we can always speak with our wallets and not engage in any of it.  But guess what will happen when we do that?  You guessed it:  absolulely nothing.  As the debacle that is the debate over EAGLE/UL100, etc., we as a general aviation lobby simply don't matter for squat when it comes to what will actually happen to that which we use while flying.  Same is the inevitable case for what will happen with FF, etc.