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Comment by de_Selby | Hacker News Reader

I expected the debugging session to end when they identified the transistor that was bad, but these guys were dedicated!

I've never seen a transistor can opened like that. I love how it's essentially just a shrunken down version of the very first transistor ever made[1]

Great story about the USAF. It's a shame that circuitry is essentially a black box nowadays.

1: https://physics.aps.org/assets/c5065b1e-4bf2-4501-a05b-6a841...

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A transistor is just as much of a black box, only incredibly simpler.

You can decap hardware today in roughly the same way, and given of course enough time, understand it, and eventually control it.

These days decapping involves sandpaper and a magnifying glass.

Most likely acid. Sandpaper will destroy whatever you are trying to decap if you get close.

Used to be able to burn the package off with a torch and leave the chip somewhat unscathed. I hate to think of the chemicals I was exposing myself to when I did that as a kid, though.

> It's a shame that circuitry is essentially a black box nowadays.

Yeah, quite a shame that we have high speed low power electronics today. I pine for vacuum tube computers.

You get my point. Most advances come at a cost. The cost in this case is worth it.

Vacuum tube machines computed with more pleasing harmonics, resulting in the output having a richer, warmer sound.

And we all know that germanium is waaaaay better than silicon in your diodes and transistors.

I just installed a germanium Dallas-Arbiter Fuzzy Logic unit, and boy did I ever see some benchmark improvements

How much HP exactly? If I put one in my Civic does it mount on the trunk-wing bleacher seat spoiler or to the muffler resonator tip?

Oh, God, "germanium Dallas-Arbiter Fuzzy" isn't just word salad ...

I'm dying over here ...

And have you ever tried to compute the "Pride and Joy" algorithm using a silicon-based computer? Exercise in futility, to say the least.

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