The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer - Brian Troutwine on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2015–2019.
talk · intermediate · evergreen
Brian Troutwine's Code Mesh 2015 talk on the Apollo Guidance Computer. It covers the AGC's design, core rope memory, its interrupt and software behavior, and the pioneering engineering effort behind it.
Recommended as a wonderful overview of the AGC architecture, though one commenter found it uninspiring.
“The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer" is a wonderful talk”
4 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
"The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer" is a wonderful talk: ▶ this video The AGC implemented a virtual machine to run higher-level computational routines. The whole architecture is really interesting.
in “Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software” · View on HN
The part about core rope memory was pretty interesting. Star charts and other bits of data were actually woven into a form of read-only memory via loom: ▶ this video [link]
in “The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer [video]” · View on HN
I was going to say much of the same, but I won't echo you. I just recently watched this really interesting video from London Code Mesh 2015 on the Apollo Guidance Computer where the radar antenna-generated interrupts were discussed (among other interesting bugs). ▶ this video
in “In 1975, the USSR fired a cannon from an orbiting space station” · View on HN
A not so inspiring talk about a very inspiring topic. A much better talk about the Apollo guidance computer was held at Code Mesh London 2015: ▶ this video
in “Apollo Guidance Computer Talk” · View on HN