Apollo Spacecraft Computer - replicated in a guy's basement

The FULL story here http://starfish.osfn.org/AGCreplica/

Thought this might interest late night computer hobbyists!

... the PDFs to describe the project are many times larger than the maximum memory available to the entire machine.

Says a great deal about CMOS and integrated circuit technology.

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In 1966, as a teen, I had an opportunity to work in the "Computer Room" with our Department of Transportation.

It was the ONLY room in the whole complex that was air conditioned, the computers (about the size of a luxury side by side fridge/freezer) being excessively sensitive to varying temperatures.

Below is an image similar to what I remember working with in 1966 - image links to more info - -






The whole system, computer room only, was on a generator back-up system, including the Air conditioning.

Some of the higher "executives" found it necessary to visit this room frequently, although mostly when it was VERY hot in the rest of the building. Go figure . .

Anyhoo, data was input on punch cards(a little smaller than a regular A10 envelope), each card good for about 75 characters, or about 10 words if I remember correctly.

Cards were typed out on special typewriters (in a different room - secretaries didn't need air conditioning back then . .)then dollies heaped with boxes of these cards transported down the hall to the 'Puter room, where they were sorted in a card sorter before being input to the computers, and yes, they had those 18" reel to reel jerky type revolving reels on the fronts of them huge "fridges"

PROGRAMMING the card sorter, computer was done literally by a series of jumper wires than one manually moved from hole to hole according to a schematic for whatever "program" was to be run.

I'd be curious to know, just in theory - how long it wold have taken to "load", say Win98 on those reels, albeit the puters back then wouldn't have even a fraction of the memory capacity to "run" the program - -

Imagine

THIS



does not do a FRACTION of what today's laptops will do

(ps: where did all these dinosaurs GO ?? :shrug: