Damn, a control panel to input values, probably straight to the CPU. I guess the astronauts didn't have to learn assembly, but imagine a programmer having to recite all the raw code (I guess the commands (verbs) are numeric as well) to debug something, all the way at the moon.
The purpose of this project is to provide the original flight software and emulations of the onboard guidance computers flown in historical spacecraft, so that the flight software can be run on computers commonly available to the public today. The particular emphasis is on the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) flown in lunar missions in the 1960's and 1970's.
Great to see the AGC assembly code and knowing that Apollo 11 is coded purely in assembly. Not sure if it has any compiler. Also found https://github.com/virtualagc/virtualagc while searching for compiler.
> knowing that Apollo 11 is coded purely in assembly
Of course. According to Wikipedia, it was introduced in 1966, so it's development must have been started earlier. Also according to Wikipedia higher-level languages like Fortran and Cobol were introduced in 1957/58. They were a cutting-edge technology of the era.
So programmers of the day would have been comfortable with assembly, and the inefficiency and novelty of higher-level languages would have probably been a bad fit for the application.
Part of the AGC ROMs implemented a virtual machine for things like matrix multiplication. So, a higher level of abstraction was available but it was still very much coded in its own assembly language.
Happy 10-year anniversary to this repo being shared on HN.
Most significant discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12048945, 652 points, 145 comments on July 7, 2016
All previous submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/chrislgarr...
Thanks! Here are the two past submissions with comments:
Apollo 11 Guidance Computer source code for the command and lunar modules - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22367416 - Feb 2020 (30 comments)
Apollo 11 Guidance Computer source code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12048945 - July 2016 (145 comments)
Clicking around the code, it mentions a page with images... even more clicking around got me to this page/image: https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Block1.html#DSKY / https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Block1ControlPanelDSKY.jpg
Damn, a control panel to input values, probably straight to the CPU. I guess the astronauts didn't have to learn assembly, but imagine a programmer having to recite all the raw code (I guess the commands (verbs) are numeric as well) to debug something, all the way at the moon.
More here (linked in the repo):
Original scans (featuring Margaret Hamilton!)
https://28gpc.csb.app/
The Virtual AGC Project Spaceborne Computer Systems
https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/
The purpose of this project is to provide the original flight software and emulations of the onboard guidance computers flown in historical spacecraft, so that the flight software can be run on computers commonly available to the public today. The particular emphasis is on the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) flown in lunar missions in the 1960's and 1970's.
Wikipedia on the hardware:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
Great to see the AGC assembly code and knowing that Apollo 11 is coded purely in assembly. Not sure if it has any compiler. Also found https://github.com/virtualagc/virtualagc while searching for compiler.
> knowing that Apollo 11 is coded purely in assembly
Of course. According to Wikipedia, it was introduced in 1966, so it's development must have been started earlier. Also according to Wikipedia higher-level languages like Fortran and Cobol were introduced in 1957/58. They were a cutting-edge technology of the era.
So programmers of the day would have been comfortable with assembly, and the inefficiency and novelty of higher-level languages would have probably been a bad fit for the application.
> Not sure if it has any compiler.
What you're looking for is an assembler.
Part of the AGC ROMs implemented a virtual machine for things like matrix multiplication. So, a higher level of abstraction was available but it was still very much coded in its own assembly language.
Really cool to see this digitized and archived, it's such an important piece of history and really one of the earliest digital ic bases computers.
Ok, someone evaluate it with Fable and vibecode it better. Remember "make no mistake".
In 1969, they had not invented lowercase yet.