The team was flabbergasted that they could have literally skipped all of the testing and could have just powered up the AGC Tray A, and it would have worked. Similarly, the 1970’s era Xerox Alto took nine months of effort to boot. For example, the 1960’s IBM 1401, which the team had previously restored, had 200 faults. It is extremely unusual that a computer of this age would try to boot on its first attempt without a month of debug and countless repairs. It did not go very far into the sequence since it still lacked Tray B memory, but the fact that it did so was greatly encouraging. When powered, the logic modules worked well enough that the computer went through the first instructions of its boot sequence. After one week of testing, they were surprised to determine that all A modules appeared to work and were safe to power up. They connected each module to their “mobile test bench” and tested every gate to make sure it worked. As you can imagine, this was incredibly detailed, painstakingly slow work. The team first removed the A modules and tested each one. So the team traveled to Houston and sequestered themselves, a bunch of expensive and sensitive electronic diagnostic equipment, the AGC, and Jimmie Loocke in a hotel suite for two weeks. The restoration team needed to get their hands on the AGC, but Loocke did not dare ship his precious computer to California. Click here to read last week’s blog and catch-up.
That’s when they contacted Claunch, Shirriff, and Verdiell. The AGC is the computer that navigated Apollo spacecraft to the moon and back, including the landing and ascent of the Lunar Module’s to the moon’s surface. Part 1 ended with Loocke and Steward realizing the AGC was in good-enough condition to possibly be restored. Loocke, a former technician at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center), had purchased two tons of scrap Apollo hardware at a recycler’s warehouse in 1975. Included in this purchase was a rare Lunar Module Apollo Guidance Computer, or AGC. Last week’s blog detailed how a group of four men who restore historically significant, vintage computers – Carl Claunch, Ken Shirriff, Mike Stewart, and Marc Verdiell - connected with Jimmie Loocke.