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I don't think this cases needed to use 64bits for the clock. Because realistically I would hope that the plane would be serviced more than every 248 days. Therefore each service the computer could be reset or go into a self-check which would reset the computer and therefore prevent the overflow.


That's a silly attitude. You're right, the plane should be serviced regularly but that's no reason to build a time bomb in the code.


It's a pragmatic attitude, especially at a time when embedded devices were far more expensive and limited.

Granted the software could have been written to always take a delta and handle overflow of the variable gracefully rather than using the raw value.




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