If you're into that kind of stuff I recommend:<p>- watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/CuriousMarc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/c/CuriousMarc</a><p>- reading Ken's blog/twitter <a href="http://www.righto.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.righto.com/</a> / <a href="https://twitter.com/kenshirriff" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/kenshirriff</a>
The source code is available on GitHub along with a virtual version you can play with.<p>- <a href="https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11</a><p>- <a href="https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/</a>
You may also enjoy some of the historical photos here: <a href="https://wehackthemoon.com/tech/apollo-guidance-computer-agc-computer-engineering-breakthrough" rel="nofollow">https://wehackthemoon.com/tech/apollo-guidance-computer-agc-...</a><p>A few highlights:<p>- photo #2 shows the construction of <i>literally hand-weaved</i> read-only memory for the 36,864 words of fixed program memory. Literally weaving wires through (or bypassing around) tiny magnetic cores for each bit of storage. Must be re-weaved for a new "build"<p>- photo #10 shows the prototype, occupying many many racks (not yet miniaturized!)<p>- photo #20 shows characteristics of the machine (2048 words of writable memory; 575us for a double-precision multiplication)<p>- photo #24 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gIrELUMtp0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gIrELUMtp0</a> (32 seconds) shows large-scale breadboarding before the computer logic design was miniaturized<p>- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1-KBKaCiMM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1-KBKaCiMM</a> (4 minutes 28 seconds) gives a nice overview of the AGC challenges
The best presentation I have seen on the AGC architecture: <a href="https://youtu.be/xx7Lfh5SKUQ" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/xx7Lfh5SKUQ</a><p>It does present addresses in hexadecimal, oddly. The computer was 15-bit and used octal in its display panel. I suppose the presenters thought the audience would understand hex better.
In addition to the fantastic ccc.de talk, I suggest this one related to the 1202 alarm: <a href="https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/B1J2RMorJXM</a><p>Great talk and overall super presenter IMHO.
I once met a first year engineering student who was the daughter of a friend of mine. When she complained that you can do nothing cool with small computers, I pointed her to an article about this.