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The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer - Brian Troutwine

The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer - Brian Troutwine

Erlang Solutions
2 HN recommenders · discussed 2015–2019
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About this video

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.

Why it appears in the archive

Recommended as a wonderful overview of the AGC architecture, though one commenter found it uninspiring.

AI-generated summary and labels from the source dataset; verify important details against the video. Source & credits.

From the Hacker News discussion

EvanAnderson · 2019-07 · strong rec

"The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer" is a wonderful talk: [VIDEO] The AGC implemented a virtual machine to run higher-level computational routines. The whole architecture is really interesting.

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shawnps · 2015-11 · rec

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: [VIDEO] [LINK]

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EvanAnderson · 2015-11 · rec

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). [VIDEO]

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alephnil · 2017-12 · critical

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: [VIDEO]

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