Roughly, the FMCs on different aircrafts works the same way, and needs to know the same information in order to work.
But the actual interface and programming may be a tad different, this is very evident when comparing a Boeing FMC and the Airbus counterpart.
But there are some differences in the Boeing models aswell, but that's due to the different FMC manufacturer (Smith's industries for the 737's, and Honeywell/Pegasus I believe for the big Boeings)
I took the liberty of posting a reply I made in another thread regarding Boeing FMCs. It's pretty straight forward with no technical jibberish
"The FMC is your best friend (aside from the blond flight attendant)
It keep tracks of a huge navigation database: departure procedures and approaches, aswell as your current route. The FMC is linked with the Autopilot, flight director, autothrottle and the IRS. They inturn form the FMS (flight management system)
However the FMC also knows the capabilities and LIMITATIONS of your aircraft, so it can plan your flight and give you the most economic values. To accomplish this, you have to feed the FMC with some parameters.
What the FMC want to know is this (chronologic order, corresponding FMC buttons in bracketts)
- Current position (MENU/FMC/POS REF)
- Route, origin and destination airport (RTE)
-Take off runway and the SID (DEP ARR)
- Routing; waypoints enroute (RTE or LEGS)
- TOGW, ZFW, Fuel, fuel reserves, cruise altitude etc (MENU/FMC/PERF INIT)
- Thrust derate (N1 limit)
- Takeoff performance; Flaps, v-speeds, cg and trim (MENU/FMC/TAKE OFF)
Now this is done step by step so when you have executed one step, you'll automaticly be presented with an option to jump directly to the next step by clicking LSK 6R (Line select key 6 right), but I posted their complete path if you get lost on the way"
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