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Virtual AGC and AGS
  Links and Documents Page

yaAGC
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Luminary
Colossus
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Physical Implementations

Volunteering

If you want to participate directly (in the sense of contributing effort), there are some areas in which assistance would be helpful.

Mirrors

The Virtual AGC website is mirrored at http://apollo.josefsipek.net/.  Thanks, Jeff!

Wiki

If you have AGC/AGS information you'd like to contribute, you could do so by contacting me directly.  However a more straightforward approach may be to contribute your knowledge to the wiki.  Examples of things that are useful are theoretical discussions, historical information or anecdotes, tutorials on how to perform certain tasks with the AGC or AGS, etc.  Editing of the wiki is members-only, and you will find instructions for requesting membership at the link just given.  Yes, this is a hassle, but it's a one-time thing and it helps to keep the wiki reliable.

Discussion Groups

As of July 2005, there is a discussion group for Virtual AGC.  If you'd like to subscribe, changes the preferences of your existing subscription, or unsubscribe, go to

lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/apollo

I expect this to be a very low-traffic mailing list, devoted to very technical questions, if my own inbox is any indication.  :-)  However, as with any mailing list, you're taking your chances.  It's a members-only mailing list, so hopefully you'll be spammed by it only if spammers spoof the email address of existing members.  Also, there are various options you can set for your subscription, such as concealing your email address from the group.  (I think I'd still be able to find out your email address, since I administer the list, but you'd just have to live with that.)

Mark Grant has also pointed me to Orbiter's Virtual AGC discussion, where they seem to be making great progress on the practical details of actually using the AGC for running simulated missions.  Highly recommended if you're more interested in running the AGC rather than understanding its guts!

Archaeological Hints

Sadly, a lot of information that would be very helpful for this project does not seem to be publically available on the Internet.  For example, where is a dimensioned drawing of the DSKY?  What connector types were used for feeding external signals to the AGC, what was the pinout of the connectors, and what were the electrical characteristics of those signals?  Where are additional source-code versions of Luminary or Colossus ... or of Sundance  (alternate CM software)?  (I could go on like this all day.)  Alas! I don't know the answers to these and many other questions.  One can only hope that the materials still exist somewhere and may become available someday.  If you would like some hints about where this kind of information may be lurking, click here.

Fortunately, just enough information has been readily available to allow development of Virtual AGC.  Some resources that have proved particularly valuable for Virtual AGC are listed below.

Unique Content

Here are some documents being hosted here at Virtual AGC.  Many I've created or have managed to uncover by my own efforts  or have been contributed by readers.  Of course, by the time you read this, the content may be duplicated on other sites as well.  (Note:  Additional document scans can be found on the yaAGS page.)

Important note:  The mother lode for historical document scans related to the AGC used to be the Apollo Guidance Computer website of MIT's Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology (hrst.mit.edu).  The Dibner Institute is now apparently closed and its website is gone.  Therefore, we are now hosting the AGC-related historical documents formerly available from the MIT/Dibner site here at Virtual AGC

And here are some that are off-topic ...

Links to Other Sites

There are lots of online sites with terrific Apollo-related resources.  Some terrific ones are listed below, in no particular order.
Here are sites of some folks who are doing pretty much the same kind of stuff as I am:
Here are links to some apparently pretty realistic full-feature LM simulations, but (of course) without true AGC simulations except insofar as efforts have been made to integrate Virtual AGC with them.  (I've not tried any of them myself, except for briefly messing with Orbiter.)
I just want to inform you that I finally released my stuff "Virtual Apollo". It's available at SourceForge together with it's "parent Orbiter add-on" called "Project Apollo - NASSP". You can find it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nassp/. The Virtual Apollo documentation is also available online: Look here http://nassp.sourceforge.net/ and click the "Virtual Apollo - The Virtual AGC integration" link.

With "I finally released my stuff" I don't mean [that the integration of Virtual AGC] is finished or that this is the final release.... :-). My stuff isn't finished; the IMU is working fine, but optics, RCS, the DAP and so on are still missing....  [Later] I plan to do a tighter integration of the Virtual AGC in Project Apollo.... But I suppose it will be months (or years) until all this is finished. Perhaps Mark Grant will help with that; more help, any comments or suggestions are welcome.  ;-)
 
Project Apollo - NASSP is not only an Apollo CSM add-on but it contains the complete Apollo missions including a fully functional LM, mission specific textures, the Skylab, the Saturn 1b missions... A really huge add-on! But "Virtual Apollo" covers only the CSM and there only lift-off and earth orbit insertation.

Update:  I've also received the following comments from Mark to indicate that the integration effort continues to make great progress:

I now have the AGC functioning up to orbit and outputting something resembling the correct numbers on the DSKY.... Actually, we are [working on an LM simulation also]. The Virtual Apollo release only had the Saturn V, but we've also got the Saturn 1b and LEM. The LEM AGC is up and running the Luminary code, but currently doesn't do much other than P00.
Emulators for other spacecraft-borne computers, such as the Gemini flight computer, the Apollo LM Abort Guidance System (AGS), the Apollo launch vehicle inertial guidance system (LVDC), or the shuttle computer (4pi AP101). 
... And some folks who are doing nothing relevant, but cool and possibly interesting to anybody interested in Virtual AGC.
Tools used in developing for Virtual AGC.  Modern Linux distributions typically provide all of the tools needed, if not in a default installation at least in the distribution's package system for painless download.  Win32, in contrast, provides none of them.  (Hey, folks, they're free.  It wouldn't cost Microsoft anything to provide them.)  Mac OS X is somewhere in between.

Tool
Linux
Win32
Mac OS X
UNIX & BSD
GNU gcc, make, etc.
Provided automatically by almost all Linux distributions.
 www.mingw.org Apple developer CD, or download from www.apple.com.
Often provided automatically.  Note that although GNU tools are assumed (www.gnu.org), native tools may work also.
wxWidgets cross-platform GUI toolkit for building VirtualAGC, yaDSKY2, yaDEDA2, and yaACA2.
Provided automatically by many Linux distributions.  Otherwise, download from www.wxwidgets.org Download from www.wxwidgets.org Provided in Mac OS X 10.5, but you may need to update.  The version provided in Mac OS X 10.4 is too early, so download from www.wxwidgets.org If not provided, download from www.wxwidgets.org
gtk+ cross-platform GUI toolkit for building yaDSKY and yaDEDA.

No longer needed for the yaDSKY2 and yaDEDA2 programs that have superceded yaDSKY and yaDEDA!
Provided automatically by many Linux distributions.  Otherwise, download from www.gtk.org www.gtk.org Install using fink Sometimes provided automatically.  Otherwise, download from www.gtk.org
Optional glade GUI builder for gtk+.

No longer needed for the yaDSKY2 and yaDEDA2 programs that have superceded yaDSKY and yaDEDA!
Provided automatically by many Linux distributions.  Otherwise, download from glade.gnome.org glade.gnome.org (Don't know.)
Sometimes provided automatically.  Otherwise, download from glade.gnome.org
Thread library.
(Not needed.)
POSIX Threads for Win32 (Not needed.)
(Not needed.)
Allegro cross-platform GUI toolkit for building yaACA.

No longer needed for the yaACA2 program that has superceded yaACA!
Provided automatically by some Linux distributions.  Otherwise, download from alleg.sourceforge.net alleg.sourceforge.net alleg.sourceforge.net May be provided automatically.  Otherwise, download from alleg.sourceforge.net
bzip2 for unpacking development snapshots.
(Not needed.) sources.redhat.com/bzip2/ (Not needed.) (Not needed.)
tar for unpacking development snapshots.
(Not needed.) www.gnu.org/software/tar/tar.html (Not needed.) (Not needed.)
Tcl/Tk scripting language for LM_Simulator.
www.tcl.tk/

Recommended Reading and Viewing

Books

Video


This page was last modified by Ronald Burkey on 2009-06-29