CuriousMarc
8 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2019–2024
21:04 · 588K views · Nov 14, 2018
The first episode of CuriousMarc's series restoring a real Apollo Guidance Computer, led by AGC expert Mike Stewart. They set up a makeshift lab in a Houston hotel room to open up a rare machine owned by a private collector.
HN people recommend the whole AGC restoration series as a deeply nerdy look at real Apollo-era hardware, including core rope memory.
9 comments from Hacker News
My new favorite YouTuber, CuriousMarc, has a whole series of videos about restoring the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). His AGC Playlist: this video His channel is full of fascinating retro-computing and EE videos.
I love his videos he has a webpage with merch if you want to support him [LINK] If you are new to his channel I cannot recommend enough the Apollo AGC videos this video
CuriousMarc on Youtube has a very large playlist of him and a few others restoring the apollo systems they have been able to get their hands on, and youre absolutely correct on the hacky possibilities. There was no authentication, just lock on and issue commands. They were not only able to restore pretty much everything to a working apollo comms and control system, they were even able to use lab equipment to communicate with apollo outright. I linked the first part of the series. Its a long one but very worth the watch even if you arent into everything they cover. Many sats were and are similar, theres not much security. Newer ones with specific uses are most definitely encrypted. The only real saving grace is that the size of dish/antenna and power you need to do anything with stuff actually in space at long distances is beyond what most people could do (not saying a very dedicated nerd couldnt, look at SaveItForParts for example). this video
This youtube series of video, follow a group that restored an Apollo Guidance Computer that a collector basically pulled from the trash. this video My favorite part is when they needed the version of the software that was used for the moon landing but they only had the source code for a previous version (scanned from giant binder) and the hash value of the version of the landing. By a series of educated guesses, by reading memos and by analysis of the source code they modified the old code the exact way so it gave them the correct hash, confirming that they correctly and exactly recreated the original code. It's being a while and I go from memory, I might have some details wrong. See this video for this story. [LINK]
Not so much an article about the 50th anniversary, but just the main article about Apollo 11. If you are into space stuff, and haven't seen it yet, there were some pretty cool projects going on on Youtube in preparation for the 50th anniversary: - CuriousMarc's restoration series of an actual ACG [0] - Applied Science made a replica DSKY electroluminescent glass panel display [1] - Project Egress: A maker collaboration on building a replica of the Apollo 11 door (Adam Savage, Jimmy Diresta, This old tony, Blondihacks, etc) [2] [0] this video [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK]