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Apollo On Board Computer Emulator

frankk74 writes "For those of you interested in Historical Computing and the Apollo manned spaceflights Ron Burkey has created a open source emulation of the Apollo Guidance Computer called vAGC. I use it as my desktop clock of choice. Note it only keeps mission time so after 24 hours you have reset the time :-). P.S. Another cool Apollo toy free and payware can be found here."

27 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdotted by dreamer8815 · · Score: 5, Funny

    In three two one... Huston, we have a problem.

    --
    "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
    1. Re:Slashdotted by Mr.+Bad+Example · · Score: 2, Funny

      > Huston, we have a problem.

      Not the least of which is that he's dead.

  2. Ahh, it's the Missing Piece! by Anonymous+Bullard · · Score: 3, Funny
    Now the Chinese Communist Party can finally be confident that their Soviet-era space capsule can be launched at the moon, with one or two "People's Liberation" Army's faithful inside.

    Like Deng Xiao Ping's 50-year plan towards (real) World Domination by using the capitalists' greed against their own long-term interests, this space-conquering plan began over 50 years ago when the "People's Liberation" Army invaded their peaceful neighbour Tibet, to be used as a back-up landing area. Well, Tibet can also be looted for their natural resources (oil, gas, uranium) and subjugation the hapless Tibetan people has been used as a great propaganda victory for Party jingoism, but clearly one of the main reasons to invade was to use the Tibetan territory as a back-up landing site.

    Apollo On Board Emulator, running on Red Flag Linux and locally-built Dragon CPU... even Evil Invading Dictatorships can be pretty geeky when it suits their World Domination Plans... ;-)

    --

    Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?

  3. Re:12-bit Instruction set by kfg · · Score: 5, Funny

    A quick inspection of an Apollo capsule reveals why they didn't just use a PDP8.

    Think of three fat guys trying to move one of those things in a Mini Cooper.

    KFG

  4. How do they get to the moon... by Purifier · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...without having a "Start" button? ;)

    1. Re:How do they get to the moon... by bytesmythe · · Score: 2, Funny

      They just used LaunchPad... ;)

      --
      bytesmythe
      Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
      -- Scott Meyer
  5. Slingshot by Hypharse · · Score: 5, Funny

    I tried to use this to run games. It didn't work at first, there just wasn't enough power. Then I used the gravitational pull of my neighbor's house as a slingshot and was running Doom 3 in no time.

  6. I wonder...... by bhaynes · · Score: 2, Funny

    ......how long it will take someone to try and load it up with pr0n. "Huston, we have a REALLY BIG problem......"

    --
    ASCII pr0n. Coming to a Lunar Lander near you!
    1. Re:I wonder...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Bah. Apollo computers only has a numneric display. The hottest pr0n that it can display is number "69" in all fields.

  7. Game anyone? by NewtonsLaw · · Score: 4, Funny

    Does someone have a copy of that old favourite: "Lunar Lander" which runs on this emulator? :-)

    Hell, even my Texas Instruments card-programmable calculator played that game!

  8. Re:Warning by ricotest · · Score: 1, Funny

    I hope that thought consoles you when you're struggling with the ATI graphics card drivers or recompiling your kernel :)

  9. Linux by schweini · · Score: 2, Funny

    Darn. another platform to port linux to! Just when we thought we had most architectures covered :-)

    But seriously: would it, theoretically (!), be possible to write a x86 emulator on something like that?

    1. Re:Linux by AndroidCat · · Score: 3, Funny

      If you can write a Turing Machine on it, you're there. Just give it a long enough R/W tape, and let'er rip! (I will warn you that your FPS frame rate will suck.)

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  10. Re:Duh... by AndroidCat · · Score: 2, Funny

    If it gets infected with Gator/Claria, it'll probably take them somewhere that sells printer ink and toner.

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  11. Next step: hardware by H_Fisher · · Score: 2, Funny
    How long before somebody cobbles together a "system" this will run on - a re-creation of the hardware using today's components, or at least a neat-looking case for this emulator?

    I'm sure somebody out there with more time than I have is working on it ... :)

    1. Re:Next step: hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      A neat looking case? Uh, I think NASA did. Back in the 60s. I don't know. Something to do with the moon.

  12. Re:12-bit Instruction set by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Funny

    And they made Buzz Aldrin sit in the back. No wonder he gets cranky if someone says that he didn't go to the Moon!

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  13. Car-PC by LakeSolon · · Score: 2, Funny

    Does anyone else have a sudden urge to run this on the touch-screen of their car-pc? I can't wait...

    ~Lake

    1. Re:Car-PC by Dr.+GeneMachine · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just be sure to have a lot of space in your trunk for all the punched tapes containing the data for your navigation system....

      --
      This comment does not exist.
  14. Anyone get a good look at the code yet? by today · · Score: 5, Funny

    Humorous snippet from the landing module code...

    P63SPOT3 CA BIT6 # IS THE LR ANTENNA IN POSITION 1 YET
    EXTEND
    RAND CHAN33
    EXTEND
    BZF P63SPOT4 # BRANCH IF ANTENNA ALREADY IN POSITION 1

    CAF CODE500 # ASTRONAUT: PLEASE CRANK THE
    TC BANKCALL # SILLY THING AROUND
    CADR GOPERF1
    TCF GOTOP00H # TERMINATE
    TCF P63SPOT3 # PROCEED SEE IF HE'S LYING

    P63SPOT4 TC BANKCALL # ENTER INITIALIZE LANDING RADAR
    CADR SETPOS1

    TC POSTJUMP # OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD ...
    CADR BURNBABY

  15. Re:very simple processor by oogoliegoogolie · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...the computer reset because it ran our of memory.

    That's because when the LM was being designed some engineer decided "640 Bytes should be enough for anyone."

  16. Interesting time limit by Chemisor · · Score: 2, Funny

    > Note it only keeps mission time so after 24 hours you have reset the time

    Yeah. 24 hours ought to be enough for everybody.

  17. Beowulf comment ... by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Funny

    If we have a Beowulf cluster of these, do we have a space invasion on our hands ?

    If so: who is invading who ?

  18. Re:very simple processor by Kenshin · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wow. The last thing you want on the descent to the moon is a BSOD...

    --

    Does it make you happy you're so strange?

  19. Intuitive by suwain_2 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Some people complain that the Linux CLI is too user-unfriendly. Have they tried using this thing?

    Setting the time:
    Press Verb 2 5 Noun 3 6 Entr. Then enter a + to indicate you're entering the time in decimal, not octal. Be sure to enter all 5 digits of the hour. Then press Entr, and enter minutes, and then repeat for seconds. And make sure you remember that the seconds are in 100ths.

    V25N36E+00012E+00002E+04400E

    Totally intuitive.

    --
    ________________________________________________
    suwain_2 :: quality slashdot p
  20. Re:nope Re:Disaster waiting to happen by the+pickle · · Score: 2, Funny

    There was an experiment where a scientist used LOX and charcoal to see how fast it would burn - it esentially flashed in less than a second.

    Experiment? More like "let's see how fast we can light a barbecue grill!" ;)

    p

  21. Re:very simple processor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Has anyone ported Linux to this archetecture?