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How far back in time can a modern computer be reversed engineered (lemmy.today)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Another post regarding time travel got me wondering how far back in time can I hypothetically leave a modern computer where they, the most capable engineers of their time, can then somewhat reverse engineer it or even partially?

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Depends on what you expect them to do exactly. Today's transistors aren't much different than older ones, just smaller mainly. People of, say, 20-30 years ago may have the technology to inspect them (electron microscope or something like that), and the knowledge to understand them, but not the equipment to reproduce them.

If you go much farther back in time, say before integrated circuits (1960) or even transistors (1947) were invented, I think it's unlikely that someone could reverse engineer the thing