18 Sep
2018
18 Sep
'18
10:37 a.m.
On Sep 18, 2018, at 1:28 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Amazingly detailed 1hr talk about the Apollo Guidance Computer. It's
stunning how much they got into mid-1960s technology: 1 MHz hand-made
processor, 1 k of RAM, 4 k of ROM, and bank-switching, with a
fault-tolerant multitasking OS with an interpreted metalanguage.
Absolutely stunning.
Yes. But it's actually 12 k of ROM if I remember right, and that was expanded further
later on.
Another nice example of a large program on a small computer is the original ALGOL
compiler, written by Dijkstra and Zonneveld in 1961, in about 6 months. It implements the
full language -- not a subset -- on a 4k machine.
Gauthier van den Hove wrote a Ph.D. thesis about it, I believe that will be published
soon. Very nice work.
paul