# The Appolo mission vs the 486..could this be true? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 20, 2000, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-appolo-mission-vs-the-486-could-this-be-true/33910 "2000-09-20T21:24:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2000, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-appolo-mission-vs-the-486-could-this-be-true/33910/21 "2000-09-25T00:07:42Z")
The digital pictures we get use MPEG-2 compression, so the quality will vary with the bit rate. But lower quality manifests itself different - you might get some pixelation, or fast-moving scenes may appear jerky. But you don’t get the static, ghosting, and other problems of analog signals. Mind you, the current digital signals we get from the cable company are no higher in resolution than the current analog. When they start broadcasting in HDTV you should see a tremendous difference. ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2000, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-appolo-mission-vs-the-486-could-this-be-true/33910/22 "2000-09-25T05:15:11Z")
> [@](#): > > and I think the first modern microprocessor (the Intel 4004?) was available by the late 1960’s. Dr. Ted Hoff of Intel developed the 4004 in 1971. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2000, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-appolo-mission-vs-the-486-could-this-be-true/33910/23 "2000-09-25T13:24:19Z")
I was working at Edwards AFB in the early-to-mid 80s (basically, my first job). Flight test data were collected on 9-track reel tapes on a CDC Cyber-77 computer, and real-time data were observed and restored on 8-track strip-charts. That’s right. Long rolls of graph paper with little needles that drew lines on it. Around 1984 we got Commodore 64 computers for real-time procesing. Egads! Sixty-four _thousand_ bytes of RAM! And we could view different parameters (eight at a time) at the touch of a button! And the monitor was _colour_! Absolutely amazing at the time! As far as analog being more accurate than digital. Well… that’s theoretically true, I suppose; but an analog watch is _still_ only accurate for a given instant. My watch is mechanical, from one of the most well-known Swiss watchmakers. It has a legend on the dial: “Superlative chronometer/Officially certified”. “Official chronometer certification” means that it’s accurate between (IIRC) -4 and +6 seconds per day. This watch cost thousands of dollars more than a cheap digital watch, but it’s not as accurate. Assuming it _did_ run with exact accuracy, it still uses an escapement that stops the second hand about 4 or 5 times per second. So there are more instants that the watch would be displaying the exact time (assuming perfect accuracy) than would be displayed by a digital watch, but an analog movement is still not perfect. Just an additional thought: Suppose an electric analog clock that runs off of the mains. It seems to me that at 60Hz, it is “inaccurate” for almost 1/60 second at a time. Of course, perfect accurace – whether in timekeeping, temperature, or any myriad other things – doesn’t have much application in everyday life as far as I can see. Do we really care if it’s 06:00:21 or 06:00:21.016? ---
**Author:** ![jmullaney](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/85e7bf/32.png) [@jmullaney](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jmullaney)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2000, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-appolo-mission-vs-the-486-could-this-be-true/33910/24 "2000-09-25T15:42:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Johnny L.A. \* > **This watch cost thousands of dollars more than a cheap digital watch, but it’s not as accurate.** Hmmm… what you really mean is, correct me if I’m wrong, you have a mechanical watch – one that has to be wound. But the watch you think of as digital, because it uses digital output (also know in that cheese ad campaign as amazing! pulses! of light!), usually has a quartz crystal at the center of things. I must confess, I’ve forgotton exactly how that crystal works to keep the timing of the watch on track, but, once again, that is analog. I don’t think it is possible to do “purely” digital timing. Timing and clock cycles have to come from somewhere. You could just multiply how long a gate takes to change state and approximate a discrete unit of time but that isn’t really a digital solution. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2000, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-appolo-mission-vs-the-486-could-this-be-true/33910/25 "2000-09-25T15:52:55Z")
> [@](#): > > Hmmm… what you really mean is, correct me if I’m wrong, you have a mechanical watch – one that has to be wound. > > But the watch you think of as digital, because it uses digital output (also know in that cheese ad campaign as amazing! pulses! of light!), usually has a quartz crystal at the center of things. I must confess, I’ve forgotton exactly how that crystal works to keep the timing of the watch on track, but, once again, that is analog. Actually, it’s an “automatic”. It winds itself. But I know what you mean. When I said “digital” I was using the common term for a quartz-controlled electronic watch, as opposed to a spring-powered one. ---
**Author:** ![SouthernStyle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@SouthernStyle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SouthernStyle)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2000, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-appolo-mission-vs-the-486-could-this-be-true/33910/26 "2000-09-25T21:51:49Z")
Hi **Johhny L.A.** , I’m from the other coast. In 1978 I was working at the Cape as a system’s analyst and helped maintain the operating system on a Cyber 73. As I recall the machine was about a 3.5 MIP machine. I have in my pocket a Cyber CPU emulator that runs under linux. On a 600MHz pentium class machine the emulator will outrun the old Cyber 73. Let me rephrase that. A Pentium 600 will emulate a Cyber 7x CPU and run faster than all but the 7700. Going to to the OP, the space capsule had very little computing power. Even the engines had an analog firing mechanism – the astronauts physically flipped switches to turn the engines on and off. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Armageddon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/858c86/32.png) [@Mister\_Armageddon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Armageddon)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2000, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-appolo-mission-vs-the-486-could-this-be-true/33910/27 "2000-09-27T00:39:31Z")
Yeah, I know this is from kind of early in the thread, but I just feel the need to make a correction here: > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Skribbler \* > **Around the time of the Apollo mission, the smallest home calculator was around 2 pounds, ran off of 110 current and had no LC display but used tape. I don’t think Pong, the first commercial video game was even around then.** Pong wasn’t introduced until 1972, so it wasn’t around back then. It also wasn’t the first commercial video game, either: Nolan Bushnell designed an arcade game called Computer Space earlier in that year, which was based on an older game designed for mainframe computers called Spacewar. (Spacewar was basically freeware, of course.) Not many people could figure out how to play Computer Space due to complicated instructions, and Pong was probably the first arcade game to catch on because it was so simple to learn. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-appolo-mission-vs-the-486-could-this-be-true/33910.md?page=1)