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Build Your Own Apollo Guidance Computer

Posted by michael on from the some-assembly-required dept.

PingXao writes "Well, if you can't exactly give the Moon you can give the gift of a computer to get you there. Almost a year ago this Slashdot story about the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer referenced a pretty cool Dr. Dobbs Journal article from their History of Computing series. Now there's this guy who built one in his basement! It took him 4 years, $2,980 in cash, 2,500 hours of labor and 15,000 hand-wrapped wire connections with 3,500 feet of wire to build. It might be next Christmas before you could build one of your own to give as a gift, but he promises you can build your own for less and it will be better than his. The perfect gift for the space geek who has everything. This guy is my hero."

7 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Re:$3000 by tarquin_fim_bim · · Score: 1, Informative

    It's fallen to about € 0.74 to the dollar in the last week; thus about € 2220.

  2. Re:Every operating system sucks... by neuromortis · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those who don't know, the above excerpt comes from the comedy genius of Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, specifically the track "Every OS Sucks".

    --

    I build model citizens.
  3. Your Palm Pilot is not radiation hardened. by gelfling · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are two reasons why spaceflight computers are relatively underpowered:

    Reliability under conditions your PC would fail, like radiation, shock, vibration, acceleration, heat and cold.

    Built to solve unique specialized problems for people who are not entirely computer expert.

    Navigation computers have to solve complex solid analytic geometry problems for people who are experts in solid analytic geometry but aren't experts in computers and don't have the luxury to spend lots of time to do that.

    1. Re:Your Palm Pilot is not radiation hardened. by fmaxwell · · Score: 2, Informative

      That is complete nonsense, the parent poster was totally correct. And also Palm pilot is about $90 if you use Ebay.

      I worked at a satellite company and used to believe that a lead box would work. I was set straight by the guys who know about that kind of thing. Lead is not impenetrable to radiation. In fact, early geiger counters used lead shielding as a means of scaling the count.

  4. Re:OK, so Apollo can go home, but how about... by HermanAB · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nope, even Apollo is long gone. King Constantine retired all the old Gods in 325AD at Nicea near Naples and defined the Trinity to take their place. Only Zeus, Mercurius and Demeter survived - oh, and Isis - she survived too, Contantine didn't want to kill her and her cute little baby, but in return for continued worship, the Gods were morphed. Constantin caused such divine confusion, that the collective memory of the Western World still haven't recovered...

    --
    Oh well, what the hell...
  5. Documentation by Cryptnotic · · Score: 3, Informative

    What's the most important thing about what this guy did?

    Documentation. He documented every step of the way everything that he did. It's something that's lacking in a lot of geeky projects and it's something that I commend this guy at doing an awesome job at.

    --
    My other first post is car post.
  6. Re:Kinda makes you wonder, by GekkePrutser · · Score: 2, Informative
    Trivial note: You often see 8086/8088, 80286 and higher CPUs, but have you ever seen an 80186 CPU? IBM used to make an ISA network card (Token Ring?) that used the 80186 as the processor.

    Philips used to make a computer called the 'Yes' based on this CPU. It was supposed to be an IBM compatible PC, but for some reason (I think the 80186 itself) it wasn't 100% compatible, and therefore it failed miserably... It was a good CPU though, better than the 8088 that most PC's of the time used.