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Hack Chat Transcript, Part 3

A event log for Hacking Apollo Hack Chat

Apollo was a hack from the Earth to the Moon

dan-maloneyDan Maloney 04/22/2020 at 20:220 Comments

carlclaunch511:02 PM

When Ken asked if I was interested in joining the project, it didn't take a microsecond to decide yes

I hate to do this, but we've been at this for an hour and if any of our guests need to get back to work, we should let them go. But this has been really fascinating, and I really want to thank Marc, Ken, Carl, and Mike for coming along today and sharing their insights and experiences. Feel free to keep the discussion going as long as you'd like, of course - the Hack Chat is always open.

Mark VandeWettering1:03 PM
Thank you all. Really interesting and inspiring!

Ken Shirriff1:03 PM
Thanks for setting this up, Dan.

simon.dancose1:03 PM
Great stuff! Thank you.

Mike Stewart1:03 PM
Thanks Dan! I'm happy to stick around if anybody has more questions

Dag Spicer1:04 PM
Really great way to spend lunch!

hb9xar1:04 PM
Thank you for this interesting session.

curiousmarc1:04 PM
Thanks Dan for the opportunity. I can stay on a little more but I'll have to go soon.

Diego Garcia del Rio joined  the room.1:04 PM

Ken Berkun1:04 PM
Thank you all!

Peter Bosch1:04 PM
was awesome to be able to ask some questions here :) you guys did a great job at the whole thing

carlclaunch511:04 PM
I have no work, only hobbies so I will stay on also

Diego Garcia del Rio1:04 PM
Y

Andy Geppert1:05 PM
Fantastic work AGC restoration team!

Thanks all! I'll wait a while to pull the transcript, in case there are any more interesting bits.

And don't forget next week we'll be sitting down with Ben Krasnow from the Applied Science YouTube channel, to talk about Citizen Science.

Diego Garcia del Rio1:06 PM
Thanks everyone! its amazing to see what you guys did!!! and surprised to find out most of you don't have "formal" EE background... yet do more low level stuff than most EEs I know...

curiousmarc1:06 PM
Oh cool. Ben is such a fascinating guy! Is it on the same chat next week?

Andy Geppert1:07 PM
I've gone into the rabbit hole with core memory and I am working on a kit for those who are interested. I aim to have some produced this summer (just received another prototype batch of PCBs 20 minutes ago!). Would appreciate your feedback if you are interested in exploring core memory. https://hackaday.io/project/166155/gallery#dcf4b886fedebceec2c7fbdeda92829d (shameless plug... but you all are likely to be interested in this sort of thing!).

carlclaunch511:08 PM
@Andy Geppert Indeed we are all core memory afficianados

Mike Stewart1:09 PM
oh cool! what cores are you using?

Andy Geppert1:09 PM
"target market?" if that's fair to assume!

Andy Geppert1:10 PM
They are 1mm OD from somewhere in Europe via good ol' eBay. NOS I'm guessing.

carlclaunch511:10 PM
yes. Have an Arduino shield core memory board project I bought, but also worked on core more directly. Saw a great hack where someone put lighting to visualize the state of the cores, as an overlay.

Andy Geppert1:10 PM
It's soooo satisfying to weave them together and have it actually work.

carlclaunch511:10 PM
Yes to target market too

curiousmarc1:11 PM
@Andy Geppert Nice! How far can you extend this? I have two Russian memory core planes that I'd love to turn into a working demo display. A 4k plane and a less dense and probably better suited 1k plane.

Andy Geppert1:11 PM
@carlclaunch51 I think you saw my proof of concept then, last year after Maker Faire?

carlclaunch511:12 PM
oh, that was you at the after party! Yes, loved it

curiousmarc1:12 PM
Oh yes I remember it. That was awesome!

Andy Geppert1:12 PM
Yes, thanks. Based on the feedback I got, I thought this was worthy to pursue, so this is an extension of that concept to a proper 8x8 bit array. Just think of what you can do with 64 bits!

carlclaunch511:12 PM
I have a few minicomputer core memory boards that come with onboard access electronics, much easier than engineering the drive for a naked core board (but less satisfying)

Peter Bosch1:13 PM
i've only had some real old core planes to play around with and all of them had damaged wiring

carlclaunch511:14 PM
My IBM 1130 computer is a 16K word core based machine but can be expanded to 32K. I have the mini core boarrds to provide the memory portion, but alas IBM left off the gates for any address bits not installed on the machine so it requires some modifications to the register boards and other portions of the machine to activate it all.

carlclaunch511:15 PM
Marc has some video of our experiments to drive an IBM core plane (successfully) with our own drive circuits and sense detectors. Worth watching if you like core.

Andy Geppert1:16 PM
Oh, I have definitely watched that video! I learned a lot of fundamental stuff, and it helped me break out of a rut and get my system working.

Peter Bosch1:17 PM
seems like theres some pretty affordable soviet core planes on ebay

Andy Geppert1:18 PM
I've been tempted by those. For this project, I'm focusing the interactive/LED part. But it has been suggested that a full LCD behind a larger core plane would be the next logical step.

carlclaunch511:18 PM
that makes a lot of sense, Andy

curiousmarc1:20 PM
@Andy Geppert Exactly my thought. LCD behind a Russian core plane!

curiousmarc1:20 PM
Looks like this would be fairly doable

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