The Apollo believers take it as a proof that the AGC was a decent computer the fact that the NASA proposes an emulator of the AGC, and that some people explain how to build your own AGC.
The Apollo believers take it as a proof that the AGC was a decent computer the fact that the NASA proposes an emulator of the AGC, and that some people explain how to build your own AGC. |
 Indeed, if the AGC can be emulated, and you can build your own one, that means it works. So shut up stupid hoax nuts! |
 In fact the emulator of the AGC uses modern graphic resources (probably the microsoft MFC), and is programmed in a modern language (very probably C++). |
 The representation of the AGC which is shown uses modern graphic tools which were not existing in the time of Apollo. |
 The parameters which are shown are not modified with the original language of the AGC; but with a modern language (C++). The programs of the emulator which make them change have absolutely nothing to do with the original programs of the AGC. They don't use the data which were provided by the gyroscopes, the accelerometers and the radar of the lunar module, but fictional data. It is nothing but a simulation written in a modern language, completely different from the language of the AGC, and it in now way proves that the AGC could work. |
 The program of John Pultorak which was supposed to monitor the AGC was simply displaying the registers of the AGC and allowing to change them, but this program was not written with the native language of the AGC, but with a modern language, the C language (and it is not just a supposition, for I have downloaded the project of Pultorak, and compiled his application with a C compilator, the visual C++ 6.0 of Microsoft). |
 Andf his assembler was just starting from a file containing literal instructions of the AGC and converting them into the machine code of the AGC, but it was not executing this machine code, nor could it control that the program was making sense. The assembler was also written in C language and could be generated with the visual C++ 6.0 of Microsoft. |
 And those who propose you to build your own AGC use modern hardware, modern memory chips which have absolutely nothing to do with the fantasy memory modules of Apollo, modern integrated circuits and electroluminescent display. The hardware which is used to build this AGC had absolutely nothing to do with the original hardware of the AGC, and does not prove that the hardware of the AGC could work. |
 First, there were too many sense wires which were simultaneously enabled to get a pulse, and, the more there are sense wires simultaneously enabled to get a pulse, and the more the current which individually passes through each of them is weak. |
 Furthermore the selection circuit was made so that the current detected in a sense wire, which was already practically unexistent, was becoming still weaker in the primary of the transformer coupled with the amplifier of the sense current. |
 Moreover the RC memorization circuit of the detected pulse is missing on the secondary of the transformer, and this circuit is essential; it allows to convert the short pulse to a temporary continuous one. |
 And the amplifier of the already unexistent sense current was itself showing anomalies, with a connection cut between a base and a collector, which was making that only one edge of the sense impulse was amplified, and an output transistor which, not only was not necessary, but also was incorrectly mounted, for it was somehow mounted upside down. |
 And, like it was not enough, the way the cores were activated was not making any sense either, for, instead of sending a single counter-current through all the cores, some cores were receiving two counter-currents instead. |
 And the erasable core memory of Apollo was not even better as it is shown. They were making the write current and the read current pass through a common line, which is a total heresy. It just could not work, for the principle of this memory lays on the fact that the write current and the read current are separate, for one acts on the other one by induction. |
 And they were pushing the joke still further by showing a bit amplifier which was connected in such a way that the first transistor would have burnt, if activated, because a too great current going from the emitter to the collector (the transistor is a PNP). In conclusion, the erasable memory of Apollo could no more work than its fixed memory (the core rope memory); this computer just had no memory at all! |
 The way the display/keyboard unit was connected, it could not work either, even if the computer itself could have worked. |
 The operating system of the computer itself was totally delirious and not usable. There were unpractical instructions. There were uselessly complicated instructions, but, on the other side, the set of branch instructions was too limited when it is generally rich on other computers. |
 But the most laughable thing was the instructions which were allowing to count hardware pulses: no other computer (including modern computers) has these instructions, not because they are less sophisticated than the Apollo computer... |
 ...but because counting hardware pulses is more efficiently made by external electronic counters which can be read with an IO read instruction (which was existing on the AGC); a computer is supposed to only make intelligent processing and not waste its time to do things which can be made by simpler circuits. |
 The management of tasks was another way of wasting the small power of the Apollo computer, for, instead of being done intelligently, an user's program had to repetitively test if a more prioritary incoming task had been scheduled. This repetitive test was also representing an important waste of the computer's power. |
 Like it was not enough, the flow diagrams of the programs were not even optimized... |
 ...And it is easy to rewrite them to make them more performant. Another way to waste the computer's power. |
 To go on with absurdity, the guidance task was given the lowest priority... |
 ...Which means that, if the astronauts were a little too much playing with the keyboard, they could delay the current guidance task, thus endangering the guidance of the space ship. |
 No wonder if the computer's power was so systematically wasted that they had problems of regularity with the guidance task! |
 And, as the periodical guidance tasks were given resources even before they could run, and that they were accumulating by force of being delayed, there was a moment that an incoming more prioritary task could not allocate resources which all had been allocated by waiting guidance tasks which could not run because one of them was currently running... |
 With the result that the AGC was generating an alarm (1202) and had to be reinitialized! |
 And while the IBM computer of the saturn rocket (which was a normal computer!) was using the two's complement system of binary representation, as it had become common by 1964 (and which is also used in ALL your computers)... |
 ...The AGC was using the obsolete one's complement system, though, at the time that the way to build the hardware was decided, in 1964, the two's complement has already overthrown the one's complement and was acknowledged better and more performant than the latter! |
 So, unlike the computer of the saturn rocket, the computer of Apollo was preferring not to be performant! |
 So, little matters the emulators, and the proposed kits to build the AGC, the AGC still was a clown totally unable to guide a space ship! |
