The russian space programme also used digital computers. Look on youtube 'Curious Marc' and others, he has bought some of it.
The semiconductors flown on apollo had to be liquid cooled, heat does not convect away easily without gravity, fan assisted or not. It's one of the many reasons that Apollo 13 had to shut right down, the damaged fuel cells being one of the main sources of cooling water. Imagine trying to run valves of any kind in that sort of environment. Even ICs would've overheated if they weren't allowed to shed their heat. The astronauts did not need blankets on their beds because if they laid still, their body heat simply clung to them.
The film Apollo 13 portrays the crew's efforts trying to acheive a 'manual burn' of the LM descent engine in order to correct their trajectory on their earthbound journey. Done without the guidance computer, it is portrayed as a 3-man job, frantic and full of swear words a they battle to steer the craft towards earth. That was only a burn of a few seconds, and, if Jim Lovell's autobiography is anything to go by, was quite realistic.
If they didn't have the MIT's chip-laden marvels, I wonder how the rest of the manouvres would've gone?
