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Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9308

Posted: 08:15am 02 Jun 2023

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This is actually quite interesting.
I'm amazed that the radiation has not destroyed the chips or otherwise done damage enough to prevent the unit from booting at all, but.....

Chernobyl Computer...

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

Volhout
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Joined: 05/03/2018
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 4247

Posted: 10:15am 02 Jun 2023

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Not surprised. It is silicon from the 1980's. There where no small geometries, not atom deep doping. For radiation to destroy old silicon it must be really high dosis (so taken from the reactor building inside the coffin).

But take a modern (11'the generation i7) CPU there and it will die in weeks.

Volhout

PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS

Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
Location: United Kingdom
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Posted: 10:21am 02 Jun 2023

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I really enjoyed that video. :) They have done a few on Russian computers.

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

pd--
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Joined: 11/12/2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 122

Posted: 12:21pm 02 Jun 2023

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That brings back memories
for me it was dec pdp11's
when storage was so expensive you went to the trouble of packing 3 asci2 chars into a 16 bit work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_RADIX_50
Still have a VAX4000 cpu card that we usto run in a pdp11/84 chassis

ville56
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Joined: 08/06/2022
Location: Austria
Posts: 95

Posted: 03:37pm 02 Jun 2023

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We had a lot of DEC stuff running in our small computer center serving production. Once in a while we had a memory parity error and the account technicians first answer usually was "don't worry, this was certainly just a single alpha particle". More than once it was a slowly dying memory chip, as there was no radiation source around.

Regards,
Gerald

73 de OE1HGA, Gerald

phil99

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Joined: 11/02/2018
Location: Australia
Posts: 2140

Posted: 11:19pm 02 Jun 2023

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The Alpha particles the tech was talking about come from the chip encapsulation not external radiation. There are trace impurities in the plastic used that are very expensive to remove. Most Alpha particles only travel a few inches in air and less than a mm in anything solid so external radiation has to be very intense to penetrate. Military spec. chips of the era used "Alpha free" ceramic encapsulation.

ville56
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Joined: 08/06/2022
Location: Austria
Posts: 95

Posted: 10:47am 03 Jun 2023

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Quote phil99 said:
Military spec. chips of the era used "Alpha free" ceramic encapsulation.

ahh tnx, didn't know that. The product line with the highest reliability, I got in touch with, was railway security. But they didn't use mil grade components either.

73 de OE1HGA, Gerald

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