posted 11-21-2018 11:33 AM               

We embark on the restoration of a very rare and historically significant machine: the Apollo Guidance Computer, or AGC. It was the revolutionary MIT-designed computer aboard Apollo that brought man on the Moon (and back!). Mike Stewart, space engineer extraordinaire and living AGC encyclopedia, spearheads this restoration effort.

In this first episode, we setup a makeshift lab in his hotel room, somewhere in Houston. The computer belongs to a delightful private collector, Jimmie Loocke, who has generously allowed us to dive in the guts of his precious machine, with the hope of restoring it to full functionality by July 2019, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

posted 11-21-2018 11:35 AM               

Mike Stewart gives an overview of the hardware. Enamored by the success at checking the IC gates, we proceed to check out and power up the supplies.

• Backplane viewer
  
• Manual with block 2 schematics

posted 07-09-2019 08:37 AM               

I wrote a SHA-256 algorithm for the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). In this video, the program ran on the vintage AGC that we are restoring.

The video shows the Bitcoin hash output on the DSKY replica created by Carl. Mike and Carl ran the program. This supporting blog post explains this video in more detail.

posted 07-17-2019 12:59 PM               

In 1976 in a warehouse in Texas, Jimmie Loocke bought two tons of scrapped NASA equipment. Years later he realized it included a computer from an Apollo lunar module, like the one used to guide the lander to the surface of the moon during Apollo 11. Fifty years after that mission, computer restoration experts in Silicon Valley are trying to get his computer working again.

posted 07-17-2019 12:59 PM               

Restored Apollo Guidance Computer Visits Cradle of Aviation Museum for 50th Celebration

The Apollo Guidance Computer that sat at the heart of the Apollo Lunar Module and Command Module, and provided spacecraft control as the first digital autopilot while also providing guidance and navigation, is on tour, and will be visiting the Cradle of Aviation Museum & Education Center on Thursday, July 18th in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Apollo. This revolutionary system has been restored to full working order by Mike Stewart, Ken Shirriff, Marc Verdiell and Carl Claunch.

The team will provide talks about the computer (and its restoration) as well as demonstrate the computer flying parts of the Apollo 11 mission, with a commentary. That involves entering commands into the Display/Keyboard (DSKY) replica and watching responses from the AGC displayed as it controls the landing. A display will showing the view from the cockpit of the LM along with the output on the DSKY.

posted 07-18-2019 10:27 AM               

Jimmy - I know you are a member of this forum and congratulations on the deserved publicity, magnificent find, and heroic rescue effort.

(Closest I ever got to this kind of thing was reverse-engineering a gate array for replacement in my old Commodore 64 )