
Mystery Aircraft Parts and Atomic Clocks - kierank
http://blog.m0tei.co.uk/post/2013/04/20/Mystery-Aircraft-Parts-and-Atomic-Clocks
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tekacs
I oftentimes find myself wondering what might be the equivalent of this sort
of electronics hackery in the world of software.

It's not uncommon for me to see engineer friends of mine working on these
sorts of projects and to find myself envying the _apparent_ complexity of such
projects - nothing (kernel hacks, ATMEGA projects, large C++ ( _shudder_ )
systems, crypto/security work, ...) feels as though it requires the same level
of knowledge/expertise as working on even relatively simple engineer's
projects like this.

Might this just be a standard insider's view of one's own field?

To put it in context, Alec (M0TEI) is a student of engineering at Cambridge
and a friend.

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revelation
I think the software variant of reverse engineering still surpasses it. It's
the infinite complexity.

The "combination" of the two then yields reverse engineering chips. See SRLabs
presentation on low cost chip microprobing for some of the challenges:

[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2247...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2247_29C3-Dexter_Nohl-
Low_Cost_Chip_Microprobing.pdf)

~~~
dchichkov
In terms of complexity, certainly. When you look at the assembly code from the
inside, with something like IDA it branches out infinitely. In terms of fun.
I'm not so sure.

Say, finding and replacing some part in an aviation radio is a lot more fun,
than spending time annotating insides of some executable.

~~~
tekacs
I think that depends rather on who you are and your interests, to be fair - as
much as I'm a fan of the former, the latter sounds like rather more fun.

~~~
dchichkov
True. But a lot also depends on the context. When you are dealing with some
binary, unless it is antique, most likely you are doing something nefarious.
Like obliterating somebodies license check. And while there is certainly a
feeling of some elation, when you are finally succeeding, it can't compare
with the joy you feel, when some electronic component is coming alive after
you've finally fixed it.

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runjake
Has an NSN, so it's military. Also, it doesn't look like it was ever used
(and/or recently-manufactured. although if they use the pseudo-standard serial
numbr scheme, then it was manufactured in 97).

The indicator light styles are kinds I have seen around in years on military
a/c. That doesn't really mean much, though. Slightly interesting, nonetheless.

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joelhaasnoot
So what would this actually be used for on a (military) plane?

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danbruc
If I understood it correctly, it is part of the military HAVE QUICK frequency
hopping system [1].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAVE_QUICK>

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shabble
Somewhat-related: a teardown of a rubidium standard probably similar to the
one mentioned in the article: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymV9LwhD0W0>

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jacquesm
It's not actually an atomic clock, it is an atomic frequency standard. The
difference between the two is that an atomic clock outputs 'time' whereas an
atomic frequency standard merely outputs a very regular square wave.

You can easily build an atomic clock once you have such a frequency standard.
The confusion probably stems from the electronics term 'clock' for square wave
used to clock other digital circuitry but the general public would definitely
misinterpret the term atomic clock to mean something different.

That said, very nice find and very nice hack!

~~~
Havoc
Fair enough. I think its close enough though to warrant the use of "atomic
clock" in the blog post - you need to simplify things just a limit bit if you
want to audience to be bigger than 14 people.

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rikacomet
Gosh, I could never do this. some interesting stuff.. I'm gonna refer to this
sometime in future. thanks mate!

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wrbishop
Great Job Alec!

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elf25
so, what's it good for?

