May 23, 2026
Space nerds lose it over tiny holes
Reverse engineering circuitry in a Spacelab computer from 1980
Inside the 1980 space computer that has commenters obsessing over every tiny hole
TLDR: A reverse engineer cracked open part of a 1980 Spacelab computer, revealing how a space lab was run before modern all-in-one chips existed. In the comments, readers were less busy arguing than marveling at the weird board design and the sheer patience needed to decode such old hardware.
A vintage space machine has the internet doing what it does best: turning deep nerd curiosity into a full-on comment-section event. The article dives into Spacelab, the reusable science lab flown in the Space Shuttle, and the French-built computer that helped run it in the 1980s. The big shocker for non-hardware readers? This wasn’t a sleek modern chip-powered box. It was a chunky, board-filled brain built from many small parts, and one determined reverse engineer is now unpacking how one piece of its calculating core worked.
But the real show is the community reaction. The author casually pops into the thread with a “Author here if anyone has questions...” and instantly sets the tone: class is in session, and the nerds are seated. One commenter zeroes in on the board itself, practically spiraling over its strange grid of tiny holes and asking whether they were for easy rewiring, hidden traces, or some old-school design trick. That curiosity became the strongest vibe in the room: less “wow, space history” and more “wait, how on earth did they physically build this thing?”
There’s also a layer of admiration bordering on disbelief. People are basically saying they’d never have the patience to reverse-engineer something this dense, which turns the whole article into a mini-drama about obsession, endurance, and retro-tech wizardry. The jokes aren’t loud meme chaos here; they’re more affectionate geek humor—half awe, half “I can’t believe someone willingly stared at this board long enough to map it.” In other words: old space hardware dropped, and the comments immediately made it a fandom moment.
Key Points
- •The article reverse-engineers a processor board from the Spacelab computer's arithmetic/logic unit in the Mitra 125 MS minicomputer.
- •Spacelab used the Mitra 125 MS, a militarized version of the French Mitra 125 minicomputer family originally developed by CII and produced in this variant by CIMSA.
- •A typical Spacelab mission carried three computers: a Subsystem Computer, an Experiment Computer, and a Backup Computer as part of the Command and Data Management Subsystem.
- •The computers were normally installed beneath the Work Bench Rack in the Spacelab laboratory and operated through the Data Display System; on some missions they were instead mounted in an igloo module.
- •The computer used board-level 16-bit processor logic built from military-grade 5400-series TTL chips rather than a single microprocessor, with the 74181 ALU chip identified as one of its most complex components.