Apollo spacecraft premodulation processor teardown

This submission includes a comment by the author inviting questions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368713

Talking with the Moon: Inside Apollo's premodulation processor (righto.com)

98 points by picture 2 days ago | 24 comments

Edit: Strange. I made this comment yesterday. So that suggests this got reposted via the second-chance queue or whatever it's called.

Yes, we put it in the second-chance pool without realizing there had already been a significant thread on the same story. Happens sometimes!

Why no PCB?

They had printed circuit boards back then but point-to-point wiring was very popular.

Especially to be hardened for space flight.

I think the fear was that subjecting a PCB to the vibrational stresses imposed during launch could possibly crack traces or solder joints. Even with P2P, they spotwelded where they could. Whatever the reasons, the equipment proved to be reliable. I don't think there was a single comms failure across the entire program.

Well there was the famous SCE->AUX comm failure, but that wasn't due to the construction of the modules.