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ZL2VAL > TECHNO 12.01.05 11:14l 112 Lines 4430 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : EF0657ZL2VAL
Read: GUEST OE7FMI
Subj: Engineer recreates Apollo comp
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Sent: 050111/0948Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:55138 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : TECHNO@WW
Jan 11, 8:18 PM
Engineer recreates Apollo computer
Persistence key to completing four-year project
BY CHRIS KRIDLER
FLORIDA TODAY
John Pultorak doesn't have a moon rocket, but now he has a computer to
run one.
It took four years for him to finish what he calls an "outrageous
project" -- building an Apollo Guidance Computer in his basement.
"It's kind of like telling people you built the Eiffel Tower out of
matchsticks or something," he said.
A Lockheed Martin software engineer who lives near Denver, Pultorak was
looking for something to fill his spare time after finishing home
renovations in 2000. He thought it would be fun to build a computer like
those that flew on the ships that took Americans to the moon.
Now 51, he was too young to have worked on the moon shots, but he was
thrilled by them, especially when he saw the launch site during a visit
to Kennedy Space Center when he was about 12. He took a picture of the
big blue NASA "meatball" logo on the side of a building, blew it up with
a slide projector and made it into a latch-hook rug.
Clearly, Pultorak likes a good project.
Married with six kids, he limited his work on the computer to about 10
hours a week, sometimes late at night or early in the morning., so he
wouldn't take too much time away from his family.
"I thought it would take about 18 months," he said. He spent a lot of
money buying technical documents and talking with historians and
reference librarians at NASA's Johnson and Goddard space centers and
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which developed the original
computer.
In one sense, he built the computer three times, twice through
simulations. The second time, when he tested virtual circuit diagrams in
a computer, "took forever," Pultorak said. "I spent six months just
debugging and testing this version of it."
He had to substitute some parts and ended up with 500 microchips to
connect. "When you look at this thing, there are 10,000 metal pins
sticking out at you, and they have to be wired together," he said.
It's what he calls a character-building activity. "I consider this right
at the ragged edge of what one person can do," he said.
He got it to work in October. He has a video of astronaut Neil Armstrong
doing a demonstration on an Apollo computer, and now, "I can press the
same button, get the same lights," he said. "It is so cool."
What really surprised him was the interest in his project. He arranged
to get his how-to manual on a Web site in December and told a few friends.
"It just clicked, and all of a sudden they were getting 3,000 downloads
an hour," Pultorak said. "It was unbelievable. It brought down the
servers." Now, mirror sites keep up with the traffic.
He doesn't know whether any of the downloaders have plans to build one
themselves. "They certainly could," he said. "I'm no genius. It's all
persistence."
The computer is taking up space in his family's music room, and he
doesn't know what to do with it, though he might write games for it --
say, tic-tac-toe. Three-by-five feet and a few inches deep, it might end
up as a bathroom wall decoration. He's also thinking of entering it in
the state fair, possibly in arts and crafts.
Pultorak is considering building another computer, or maybe one of the
whimsical machines created by tinkerer Edmund Berkeley. His family is
skeptical. "I've been eyeing some other things," he said, "and they're
saying, 'You're not going to do another one, are you?' "
*Computer manual*
Learn how to build an Apollo Guidance Computer by going to this site
(http://starfish.osfn.org/AGCreplica/) and clicking on one of the mirror
sites to download John Pultorak's documents.
-=###=-
73, Alan
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