Although this will start lots of comparisons to things like the cellphone I am typing it on (which is more powerful than an Apollo computer), the comparison isn't just that. The operating system and software in those computers was highly specialized. If you write something that only calculates trajectories based on specific data, it can be optimized much better than things written now on a generic OS. Just loading and running a modern OS takes more power than existed back then.

Yes. although its important to think about what you measure when you are measuring how powerful computer A is to computer B.

Transistor count is one way to measure (the amount of binary switches in a chip that makes up the processing unit). the Apollo guidance computer had 4,100 ICs containing each containing a single 3-input NOR gate. A good reference for this would be this chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count ... Basically by 1975 Intel/Motorola were putting out chips with more computing power than the LEM. That's basically when SS pinball began so almost all SS and beyond pinball machines contained more raw computing power.

Simply, yes.

Yes, but still not as sophisticated as the ones that were recovered in Roswell in the late 40s.

From Stanford University's website on the guidance computers :

"It's cycle time was 1 Mhz, 11 instructions. It had 1K of 16 bit words of erasable (RAM) core memory and 12K of read-only memory (ROM)."

a 6809, as used in a WMS WPC/WPC95 pin, has the following :

2mhz bus, 59 instructions. the WMS design includes 8k of RAM, 8k of IO space, and 48k of ROM (32k permanently mapped, 16k addressable)

So ... quite clearly a more powerful setup.

I think an iphone is a few thousand times 'smarter/faster' then the best high end pc setup in the moon landing decade, .

I would be that something that uses new hardwarde is more sophisticated, like the Prock stuff, or maybe JJP's stuff. The Stern Whitestar has been around for quite some time if I'm not mistaken.

The PROC boards simply run the solenoids/motors, lamps, and switches. You still need something to process the input from the switches and issue driver/lamp commands, like a small form factor computer or single-board computer. With a PROC setup, the computer contains all the programming for the game rules.

Regular DMD pins have their own MPUs, which are more or less equivalent to a single-board computer in a PROC setup. The game rules are contained in a ROM chip.

The PROC setup is certainly more accessible for hobbyists. Since you can slap a computer into a PROC setup, and run and change code on the fly, it has the potential to be fairly powerful than stock hardware in a traditionally manufactured pin.

Video games have always been more sophisticated. Some of the video games that came out in the 90s from Sega alone were always pushing the limits, well ahead of console games. Today's videos (mostly Raw Thrills and Global VR) are basically mid-level OTS desktop computers with dedicated graphics cards.

Weed

kush

1st day with vape. Wow.
Superior to every medium I know of,...thus far.

Look, all I know is this:

You can't fly to and land on the moon in a pinball machine.

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1626

Dabs.

They landed on the moon..?

No. They crash landed in New Mexico

They did, have not made it to Roswell to verify it yet myself.

Let's form an exhibition.

We'll neve know until somebody tries it.

Another way to ask it is whether the computers on the Apollo 11 could run a pinball game of today. The answer is basically 'no'. It didn't even have enough memory to hold the sound files on Gorgar, much less the speech used today. Even if it did have the memory, it didn't have compute power to process sound files.

We have an old mainframe at work from the early 90s. I looked up its computational capacity and basically any decent smartphone runs rings around it. And that mainframe was at least 10x as powerful compared to the original CRAY-1, which if I recall correctly ran most of Fed-Ex's operations for a time.

So yeah, in the case of smart phones and most computation devices, you literally hold a supercomputer in your hand. Even the credit card reader at the supermarket checkout is more powerful.

The difference from then till now is those machines and their programs were very purpose-built, given the limited resources. They were extremely specialized. They were designed to do a very narrow range of things. Today your smart phone can not only do those things, but emulate in software all of the hardware functions those things did, and play Angry Birds on the side.

1.3 Ghz (iPhone 5s) vs. 1 Mhz moon landing computer. Not thousands but 1300 times faster.

But still, just think about it back then...no GPS and you have to shoot a giant missle and land a piece of it on the moon. I can't find a terrestrial Starbucks without my phone.

On that day, we went fishing. Had a BBQ to boot. The live stream was a bit grainy, but somewhat believable. The one thing that still bugs me is how they got the camera pics of the first guy out of the landing craft. No, really I kind of remember pics from above while he was walking down the ladder...

There are no pics from above. Camera was in the MESA, and on the rover. You just smoked some wacky tobaccy.

My Demolition Man on Steroids!

It has an Intel NUC i5 CPU, with 64Gb SSD;

Intel NUC Core i5-4250U Dual Core 1.3GHz, DDR3L SODIMM, SATA III 6Gb/s, 1x 2.5" Bay, Intel HD Graphics 5000, 200MHz GPU

My Pinball Arcade on steroids!

X8 Eight core processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon S4Pro family processor (1.7GHz Dual-Core Krait CPU, Quad-Core Adreno 320 GPU), a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor.

ss_9972fa4739f1f665656d50d2e8bf61b77320a483.1920x1080.jpg

Another interesting fact about Saturn V era rockets is that the flight control computer was analog! I can't believe they got that to work in such a harsh environment. The thought that they could get that much mass into space and back with that technology is incredible.

Another fact I found interesting is that the first stage engines burned for a total of 165 seconds and in that time burned through 203,400 gallons of kerosene and 318,000 gallons of liquid oxygen. That's 1232 gallons per second! Imagine the size of the plumbing to get that much fuel through the engine!

I remember a story from a few years back that some guy picked up a 1980's era supercomputer at some point. He was using it as a garage heater, it ran so hot.

-Hans

video games, but 99.9% of the computing for modern games is for graphics processing. AI and other game logic is virtually insignificant in terms of processor and ram usage. which, by the way, is why it is such a joke when every new console that comes out boasts about better AI ... hardware hasn't been a limiting factor for AI since the NES. the limiting factors are budget and developer skill level.

i manage a rack of old 90s Sun SPARC servers in a room with it's own dedicated cooling unit about the size of 2 refrigerators. when the cooling unit fails, the room heats up to 130+ degrees (thermometer only goes to 125 so i'm not sure of the actual temp). the power draw is absurd, too.

the funny thing is, all that hardware basically boils down to a medium-sized database (by modern standards) and some web apps to interact with the database. also self-backups and some redundancy. the whole thing could be run on a mid-level laptop and it'd be faster, more reliable, and use about 1% of the current energy draw.

I used to work at an arcade around the 2000s, and installing the newest Tekken into our big cabinet meant grabbing a PS2 with a special lock-out chip and putting in the game disc. Makes perfect sense. If you're going to eventual release it at home, why not just develop for the system the first time?

nah, an iPhone is millions of times faster. the processor design is totally different and the processor can process far far far more stuff per cycle. the hz rating of a processor is akin to RPM, not MPH.

Agreed. I was just comparing the clock speed. Yes, all the underlying architecture is different equating to way much more processing power.

I am always fascinated by the classic comparison of modern day electronics complexity to those used in the Apollo program. It's completely understandable given the pace that computers and electronics have advanced and are accessible to any person today given just a small amount of financial resource. But, space travel (or even "just" the moon since it seems so close) is completely out of reach for almost everyone.

I've always been interested and fascinated with space. I also had an interest in electronics and computers since I was very young. So much so that I made a career out of it.

While the Apollo program happened when I was very very young (I wasn't even 3 years old yet), I definitely remember it. I remember my parents taking me outside when I was a little kid and pointing up into the sky at a slowly moving dot of light. They explained to me that it was a spaceship on it's way to the moon. I was too young at the time to grasp the enormity of what they were telling me, but it obviously made enough of an impact that I still remember it today.

Fast forward to many years later, I went to a college where co-operative education was a key part. So, I got a job as a co-op student at the Oak Creek facility of Delco Electronics (now long gone). The company was owned by GM and part of their electronics arm for vehicles. Delco, particularly at this location, also had a significant avionics, space, and military arm mainly doing guidance systems. As part of that, Delco was responsible for the guidance system on the command and lunar excursion modules. While I wasn't there when Apollo was active, I did get the privilege of working side-by-side with a lot of the men and women who were. The overlap was relatively short though as those that were young in those days, were close to retiring by the time I got to know them. Those that were older in the Apollo days had already retired by that time. I truly cherish the people I got to meet and work with knowing the impact they had on our history. Listening to the memories and stories they told will always be with me (particularly the ones relating to Apollo 13 where nothing was used the way it was designed).

Here's a little snippet from one of those gentlemen. I hope you enjoy it!
(sorry for the slight sideline... it got me sentimental)
Jaz

http://www.livinglakecountry.com/blogs/communityblogs/51258287.html

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You're being ridiculous. No way the aliens were using computers. They had to have something far more advanced to either bend time/space or travel faster than the speed of light to get here.

This:

warpchbr.gif

That is an awesome story. Thank you for sharing it with us.

I'm in my late twenties and while I never got to witness the Apollo program as a huge space exploration fan I envy those that did. With NASA now focusing on the Space Launch System I hope both the generation from Apollo and today's get to see another spacecraft traveling to the Moon or Mars.

In my opinion NASA has been the only organization that everyone, no matter your race, political side, where you were born or religion, can get behind and be proud of. It represents what we as a species can do when we work together to better understand our universe, planet and each other. I remember reading Apollo 11 astronauts comments after they had returned from the moon and were visiting other countries. They said that people from all over the world were happy for what they, NASA and everyone that worked on the program did as they could be proud of it too. I can't think of anything else in this world that has had that affect.

Good idea.

I'm curious as to why it isn't run on a mid-level laptop.

Jeez, how to answer that politically ....... DoD works in mysterious ways.

They designed the lander with an outside camera, pointed at that ladder, specifically to capture that shot.

Per Wikipedia :

"For each lunar landing mission, a camera was also placed inside the Lunar Module (LM) Descent Stage's Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA). Positioning the camera in the MESA made it possible to telecast the astronaut's first steps as they climbed down the LM's ladder at the start of a mission's first moonwalk/EVA. Afterwards, the camera would be detached from its mount in the MESA, mounted on a tripod and carried away from the LM to show the EVA's progress; or, mounted on a Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), where it could be remotely controlled from Mission Control on Earth."

Moore's Law: Computers double their transistors/processing power every 2 years (and now they say every 18 months).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

They were under the desks.

weren't Apollo astronauts mostly former military pilots? don't imagine there were too many women in that applicant pool.