tech question on modern pcs and a doomed day situation

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Mandated DRM'd computers (think something Trusted Platform Module-ish, but more aggressive, looking after the firmware and OS) and leaked private keys.
 
Surely military have secure systems that are isolated , we had them where I used to work. Updates disabled and everything on an intranet. You have to imagine nuclear plants are similar. I don't think reactors shut down to install service pack 3 or .net

so a natural disaster maybe better , solar flare , emp strike ....or something.

if an os is wiped out , it could be restored in a few hours ... Hospitals do it every night around 3 am, full back up.

i can't see total power failure and screaming riots ....because of a system crash , no matter how widespread.

remember the windows xp virus that shut the pc down after one minute ?
 
Rather than try and find an implausible way of sabotaging modern electronics, so that only 8/16 bit stuff is usual, why not write a story where 8/16 bit is cutting edge? A Stempunk world where the Internet runs on cogs, valves and Telegraph lines.
 
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Bryce said:
r0jaws said:
where the Internet runs on cogs, valves and Telegraph lines.
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I thought it ran on cogs at the moment??
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No no, it's a series of tubes. :)

A recent episode of Person of Interest had something related to this. One company had their software running in the firmware on almost all network devices (not completely unrealistic). If this software was compromised, it could be used to cause a worldwide melt down of all network traffic. It would need to be compromised from the beginning with a timer so it would not trigger until it was distributed almost everywhere (would take years).
 
Steam punk , now thats an idea...

get those valves warm boys.


a fork in history ....intel fails to create the 386 and staff move to motorola and Commodore to work on the next gen 68k, mos expands in to the largest fab company in America.
Commodore becomes the largest company in the USA.


or just the world like 8bit / 16bit and C64 , Amiga , ST and Sinclair fight it out for the next 20 years. IBM fails as the supply of 286 runs out
 
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Looking forward to my 32-core Z80 with valve logic! What size steam-engine will I need to power it? :D

Bryce.
 
Bryce said:
@Ed.D : I'm afraid analogue electronics also uses silicon unless you actually meant Valve based electronics.
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Yep valves is what I was thinking of at the time.

Started thinking about this thread again today for some reason, must be too much sun! Instead of valves, how about transistor packages derived from bio-luminescent compounds found in deep see creatures?
 
mjnurney said:
I'm planning on writing a story or game about an end of the world situation where there is no web , no LAN no telecommunication at all. phones everything gone but I would like to heavily use old tech in the story so maybe 8 bit or 16bit survive and are used to start the internet again...

so here goes..

Under what circumstances would all modern computer tech be wiped but vintage would still work ok? I'm thinking a web based power spike or similar ? i.e anything connected.

EMP would kill everything or would it ?

does the x86 have an intrinsic weakness that 68k or 6502 ,z80 does not?

just a thought.

Stephen King did a novel some years ago about a mobile phone infection which triggered madness or paranoia i forget which ...

(Cell is an apocalyptic horror novel published by American author Stephen King in 2006) wiki



Ive got it a kill code....
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If you write the story, you should use the KCS to do it!

:)
 
funnily enough i used MS word v1 on the Amiga to read my old car building log that i found on a PC floppy disk from 1997

the formatting was all over but it was legible.

mike
 
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