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?
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?
That depends on what we mean by reverse engineer.
The overall purpose and function of each component, the PCB and PSU can go pretty far back, maybe even prior to the invention of the semi-conductor. I think without knowledge of electricity, and even AC current, would make it very hard since they couldn’t power it on. So my bet is around 1880 and it would need to be investigated by Nicolai Tesla.
But if we mean construct a similar one we’re going to need a lot of tech which you can’t infer from looking at the components, no matter what tools you have. The build of a modern CPU/GPU chip is absolutely mind-blowingly complex. 10 years for sure, 20 years likely, 30 years and I’m unsure. 40 years and it’s going to be extremely alien. 50 years completely impossible.