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THE VIDEO SHELF · apollo guidance computer

The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer - Brian Troutwine

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.

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Why HN readers recommended it

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

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Erlang Solutions
Topic
apollo guidance computer
Format
talk
Level
intermediate
HN recommenders in dataset
2
HN mentions in dataset
4
Recommendation years in dataset
2015–2019

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • "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.

    EvanAnderson on Hacker News · 2019-07
    In Apollo 11 Had a Hidden Hero: Software

  • 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]

    shawnps on Hacker News · 2015-11
    In The Charming Genius of the Apollo Guidance Computer [video]

  • 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]

    EvanAnderson on Hacker News · 2015-11
    In In 1975, the USSR fired a cannon from an orbiting space station

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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