8 ms·

The Apollo On-Board Computers

• mshook 4y ago
  If you're into that kind of stuff I recommend: - watching https://www.youtube.com/c/CuriousMarc https://www.youtube.com/c/CuriousMarc - reading Ken's blog/twitter http://www.righto.com/ http://www.righto.com/ / https://twitter.com/kenshirriff https://twitter.com/kenshirriff
  • CamperBob2 4y ago
    Also: https://www.amazon.com/Sunburst-Luminary-Apollo-Don-Eyles/dp/0986385905 https://www.amazon.com/Sunburst-Luminary-Apollo-Don-Eyles/dp...
  • Bayart 4y ago
    I was about to recommend CuriousMarc. I don't know where I found out about him, perhaps on HN, but watching someone knowledgeable geek out in depth about ancient computing (beyond the Apollo stuff) really does scratch an itch.
• itsjustjordan 4y ago
  The source code is available on GitHub along with a virtual version you can play with. - https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11 https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11 - https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/ https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/
  • bmitc 4y ago
    The main person behind that effort, as far as I know, is Mike Stewart, and there is an excellent video of him working on restoring original AGC hardware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU https://www.capellaspace.com/meet-mike-stewart-a-capella-flight-software-engineer-who-is-restoring-a-historic-apollo-computer/ https://www.capellaspace.com/meet-mike-stewart-a-capella-fli... https://thenewstack.io/how-a-programmer-recreated-apollo-10s-lost-software/ https://thenewstack.io/how-a-programmer-recreated-apollo-10s... https://github.com/virtualagc https://github.com/virtualagc
• shadowofneptune 4y ago
  The best presentation I have seen on the AGC architecture: https://youtu.be/xx7Lfh5SKUQ https://youtu.be/xx7Lfh5SKUQ It does present addresses in hexadecimal, oddly. The computer was 15-bit and used octal in its display panel. I suppose the presenters thought the audience would understand hex better.
• tatoalo 4y ago
  In addition to the fantastic ccc.de talk, I suggest this one related to the 1202 alarm: https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM Great talk and overall super presenter IMHO.
• james-redwood 4y ago
  I once met a first year engineering student who was the daughter of a friend of mine. When she complained that you can do nothing cool with small computers, I pointed her to an article about this.
• compumike 4y ago
  You may also enjoy some of the historical photos here: https://wehackthemoon.com/tech/apollo-guidance-computer-agc-computer-engineering-breakthrough https://wehackthemoon.com/tech/apollo-guidance-computer-agc-... A few highlights: - photo #2 shows the construction of literally hand-weaved read-only memory for the 36,864 words of fixed program memory. Literally weaving wires through (or bypassing around) tiny magnetic cores for each bit of storage. Must be re-weaved for a new "build" - photo #10 shows the prototype, occupying many many racks (not yet miniaturized!) - photo #20 shows characteristics of the machine (2048 words of writable memory; 575us for a double-precision multiplication) - photo #24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gIrELUMtp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gIrELUMtp0 (32 seconds) shows large-scale breadboarding before the computer logic design was miniaturized - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1-KBKaCiMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1-KBKaCiMM (4 minutes 28 seconds) gives a nice overview of the AGC challenges
• mrtri 4y ago