Watching this, it seems like a miracle that we made it to the moon. Some of this construction is downright scary. Sometimes soldering is not good enough -- so they weld. Other times they don't even solder -- they wire wrap! Even in 1965, the wiring of the memory modules was so complex that it was beyond human comprehension. All of this brought back memories of that wonderful book "Sunburst and Luminary" by Don Eyles. I have hopes that he will appear in the MIT video about landing on the moon. Don worked on those programs.
Bill,
ReplyDeleteFascinating Video! That looks like one of the early "Blocks", as the Program Memory was increased from 24576 to 36864 words, and some other changes.
Why weld instead of solder? Reliability, as soldering is relatively dirty (flux). And welds can be really small.
Why the wirewrap? Back then PCB Multilayer Backplanes were going through early pains, such as Plate-Thru and delamination issues, which were resolved later. By the time I was on the Shuttle Guidance, soldered Hermetic Flatpack IC's attached to 24 layer Multilayer PCB (on both sides) was in. Plug-in assemblies into a PCB backplane. Lots of progress in just one decade! Gyros and Accelerometers also way better by then.
The AGC Harvard architecture looks like PIC or AVR, different terms, similar functions.
73!