The Mother of All Circuit Boards...and the downfall of Civilization

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Sometimes I find it difficult to engage your conversations because they seem pointed at debunking what an OP says, just minimizing it to the point where you seem smarter. Sorry, but that's how you come off. It's like your points are always:

1. Here's why YOU are wrong
2. Here's why I am right
3. And this is why there should be no more discussion...because I, above all, am right, and YOU are WRONG!

Maybe I've misunderstood you, so correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how you come off sometimes.

I've got another one for you. On watching another video by the same lady breaking down the circuit board; at the 14:28 min. (see link below) you can see how small some of the die (semiconductor ICs) used are. The equipment used to process (cut & mount) die of this size was truly state of the art cutting edge for that time.

FYI, at 13:50 close-up of IC interior; at 14:20 ICs, at 14:36 ICs with pencil point for scale




video link

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I think that's unfair, when I said this:

"Even if your 3 years advance claim was exaggerated, I do agree that there were impressive technological advances made in the 1960s, and NASA was a driver for those because it had clear goals and funding."

So I'm trying to agree with you that there were impressive technological advancements in the 1960s. But if I just posted that statement in isolation, I'd expect an even more negative reaction like "what does this guy mean my 3 year advance claim was exaggerated?" and I think that would come across as bad if I didn't explain that further, since you did refer to two specific circuit boards made 3 years apart, which did show a huge difference in technology. So I thought I needed to explain why I didn't think those specific two boards were necessarily representative of how much technology advanced in 3 years.

Then fastfred made a good point about the government contractors having more advanced tech than the private sector so there's another confounding factor when trying to assess technical progress.

Then I tried to respond to what I thought was the point of your thread which was the question "How do we get back to making more advancements like we did in the 60's?" and I pointed to Zubrin's thoughts on that which make sense to me, which was trying to make a useful contribution to your thread and has nothing to do with your overreaction in your reply.

I think you're being a little too sensitive if you reacted to my post the way you seem to have reacted, and you didn't really even respond to my points about 4 layer circuit boards being produced in 1960, or Zubrin's ideas on how we need to get NASA more focused so they can get back to making the kinds of advances they made in the 1960s.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Sounds about right. I have heard that the secret technologies that the Gov't has
are at least 40 years ahead of what is on the street. Not surprised at all there.

So they had some tricks up their sleeve that they pulled out because of the
space race.

I mean if you are going to have secrets , they may as well be technological
ones. That way you have the upper hand against the your citizenry and other
countries.

So, what do you think? Did you ask yourself, while watching the video, if we are truly ready to travel to Mars or deep space like I did? What was your answer?

Were rats technologically advanced enough to sail across oceans?
We will travel the stars as "rats" if nothing else.
The real rats are probably already out there.

a reply to: namehere

I don't understand how fourteen pins, can send information to one of the trillions of transistors and then be retrieved as digital information. How does the little electron know where to go? I have asked IT people and they haven't got a clue either, The engineering is not their problem. If nobody here knows I will have to class it as paranormal.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

The cellphone people carry in there pockets everyday today. Is a thousand time more powerful then the computers circuits and all that was shooting rockets to the moon in the 1960.

Though with today's technology we can achieve the same results. Space-X has a blowout and crash every other launch they do.

So my thoughts on it and this piece of rocket? Its cool and all. But! There is a reason why it all ended up in some lady's garage, and she bought it at a garage sale somewhere.

I expect we will be going back to the moon in a thousand years or so. And mars? Not anytime soon.

Computers silicon chips mother boards and all? Are extremely fragile things. I would say this whole computer culture and digital age? May be nothing but a fad in the scope of things.

Lets just say that over 50% of this planet is either downright inhabitable or nobody would want to move there as they would not be having a easy time. So when we cant even live on the majority of our own planet, and most of our cities and way of life, here on earth, is kind of a slippery downward slope.

And there are millions of homeless or otherwise people in all cities not only across the US but the world. Which can attest to that.

What do you imagine trying to colonize other worlds planets? Some if not all of which can kill you in minutes even with the latest fanciest space suit, would be like?

So far. Its a pipe dream. And it will likely continue to be so for a long long time to come.

a reply to: anonentity
That's easy.

Ever hear of the Double-slit experiment? Basically it works by magic, and not asking to many questions. All you need to know is that it works. That's all that is necessary. Its merely an act of faith.

a reply to: anonentity

If nobody here knows I will have to class it as paranormal.

When you get down to the subatomic level paranormal is the best way to describe it.

thought this might be of interest

originally posted by Sleeperhasawakened
I think sometimes about the "alleged" reverse engineering of the onboard systems of the ET craft that crashed at Roswell, and how it was reported that their technology relied on fiber-optics and transmission of light-based signals versus electrically powered circuitry. Seems like a pretty clever thing given how much radiation and magnet fields lurk out their in the cosmos.

great comment.
I've heard theories for years that they reverse-engineered propulsion stuff from Roswell, which is an absurd concept. but reverse engineering computers...that makes a lot more sense.

On a related note; here is a real conspiracy....this is a real deep dark secret that I probably shouldn't reveal, but why not.

Did you know that nearly all processors and comm. devices have a secret communication circuit embedded in them for the most part unknown to the IC co. themselves? It is placed there during the fabrication process, and doesn't appear in the mask set. The circuit is cleverly hidden underneath one of the bond pad's metal. This is so that when viewed under a microscope, the circuits can't be seen. And if de-processed, the bond wire itself obscures the view. The only way to see it is to de-process an un-bonded die/wafer (or view one prior to final metalization). Note, the circuit is small, usually located along the edge of the pad to make it even harder to view. I have had this confirmed by a friend at another company who was very scared about this when he first discovered this eighteen years ago. So as Snownden said, everything is monitored...it is, or can be. If it has a processor or controller, it probably has a hidden comm. device.

FYI, this is part of the firmware used by the three letter agencies to keep tabs on us when they want to target someone.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Just wanted to add a reply to OP so that you would see this....

In my previous post above, note these are not ESD (Electro-Static Discharge) structures. ESD structures are large, as they have to be to handle high voltage/current stresses. The circuits I'm talking about are small, and take up a very tiny area a long one side of a bond pad typically. This way it is best hidden.

Oh, and I should mention, it does appear in some mask sets, but not in the documentation, as it is added to the data after, but with certain key individuals knowledge.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

My thoughts?

The advent of electronics has been a disaster for mechanical engineering.

Remember the first TI calculators with their red LEDs?

Now think about how little progress has been made with mechanical conveyances since then.

Jet airlines: same design, same speed. Cars and trucks, pretty much the same.

Oh yeah, they all have some neat new features ... which are all ELECTRONICS.

We traded mechanical development for Pac-Man. Some of what has followed has been doubtlessly useful. But whether, overall, the trade-off was worth it ... of that I am not convinced.

Cheers

originally posted by: fastfred

Did you know that nearly all processors and comm. devices have a secret communication circuit embedded in them for the most part unknown to the IC co. themselves?

How, exactly, does this work?

a reply to: FatherLukeDuke

Yeah, I guess I'm not real clear on this either... Aren't we talking about semiconductors here? The IC mfr. would have to be complicit because otherwise it would have to show up in the silicon media itself.

If it was insignificant enough to be undetectable electrically then it would be so low powered it wouldn't have any range. I mean, it's not like people just write off noise as noise without any further investigation, and about the only way I can think of to disguise something like that would be down in the noise floor. Otherwise a spectrum analyzer would pick it up right away.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

[also replying to FaterLukeDuke...]

I don't want to get too technical, or reveal too much. But here goes.

Usually only a couple of individuals in the company may know that this circuit has been inserted into the die (semiconductor).

The circuits are low power, but are benign until activated remotely, or can be on constantly but the small amount of power used compared to that of the processor, HD etc would be lost unless you were specifically looking for it.

Like I said it is a conspiracy...it may be at the IC fab, or at the mask shop (or both). My guess it was mostly done at the mask shop when masking the mask sets. But as things evolve and we move to mask-less fab operation, it must be done at the fab. So, it's not really being done at the fab, but the data to do it is being added to the data set prior to going to fab. This is why someone in the co. is involved; to get the data into the mask set...and someone is strong arming them to do it.

As for noise, it is not always transmitting and active. I suppose it could be, but that's not a very smart way to design a this kind circuit.

I'll admit I don't know everything about these circuits, how they are used, and who uses them. But I do know they exist. Where they are located. How they get there, and what they do. They are not put there by the original owners for the IC's original purpose. They are purposely hidden in a way that even when de-processing makes it hard to analyze.

FYI, for those curious, I found these circuits doing ESD structure analysis on a wafer that had metal-1 removed. Also the friend who spoke to me, prompted me to investigate surrounding circuits.

originally posted by: fastfred
As for noise, it is not always transmitting and active. I suppose it could be, but that's not a very smart way to design a this kind circuit.

So it transmits what, exactly? Radio frequencies, wirelessly?

I remember reading few years back that something like a billion or so Intel CPUs had a hidden MINIX operating system with built in web server and if the hidden OS is enabled it can make permanent changes to the system. It didn't use wireless communication though, the article mentions TCP/IP and web servers.

MINIX: ​Intel's hidden in-chip operating system

Buried deep inside your computer's Intel chip is the MINIX operating system and a software stack, which includes networking and a web server. It's slow, hard to get at, and insecure as insecure can be....

These processors are running a closed-source variation of the open-source MINIX 3. We don't know exactly what version or how it's been modified since we don't have the source code. We do know that with it there:

Neither Linux nor any other operating system have final control of the x86 platform
Between the operating system and the hardware are at least 2 ½ OS kernels (MINIX and UEFI)
These are proprietary and (perhaps not surprisingly) exploit-friendly
And the exploits can persist, i.e. be written to FLASH, and you can't fix that

In addition, thanks to Minnich and his fellow researchers' work, MINIX is running on three separate x86 cores on modern chips. There, it's running:

TCP/IP networking stacks (4 and 6)
File systems
Drivers (disk, net, USB, mouse)
Web servers

MINIX also has access to your passwords. It can also reimage your computer's firmware even if it's powered off. Let me repeat that. If your computer is "off" but still plugged in, MINIX can still potentially change your computer's fundamental settings.

And, for even more fun, it "can implement self-modifying code that can persist across power cycles". So, if an exploit happens here, even if you unplug your server in one last desperate attempt to save it, the attack will still be there waiting for you when you plug it back in.

How? MINIX can do all this because it runs at a fundamentally lower level.

Hard drives also found compromised at firmware level which required someone on-site at the hard drive company but they denied knowledge. Yes, the spying conspiracy was/is real, and electronics provide some tricky ways to spy:

Moscow-Based Security Firm Reveals What May Be The Biggest NSA "Backdoor Exploit" Ever

a reply to: fastfred

Ummmm, okay, I won't argue. I'll have to digest what you're saying better, but honestly I find it pretty incomprehensible at the level you're talking about unless a whole lot of people know about it.

IC's only do what an IC can do, there really isn't any other option. Could you put something in a mask layer which created some other process? Yes, you could, BUT...this process would be quickly revealed during testing when the values in the circuits didn't add up. Plus, anything with RF involves larger current, and this would be easily detectable.

Honestly though, IP is a different story. However, I would think any QA testing would reveal opening ports which the application doesn't need, for some unexplainable reason. Typically this would be shut down by most firewalls, although I guess it might work with cellular. I don't know.

Interesting subject, but it must be pretty discrete (like really discrete) because otherwise it would be easily found...OR, the people making it know all about it.

Our greatest lack or liability in attempting space exploration is not our technology, but our bodies. They are completely unsuited to the environment even of sublunar space, much more of interplanetary and interstellar space.

Not only is there no recognition of this: there's not a single programme to set to work evolving our physical and psychic bodies to improve them suitably.

During the course of "normal" human evolution, space travel begins initially in the psychic realm using techniques such as "astral projection" and the like. This provides a clear understanding of the frontier, its possibilities and its problems, clarifies the developments needed, and moderates enthusiasm to practical levels. After all, there's a great deal of NOTHING out there, and very little of SOMETHING worthwhile unless you travel a VERY long way.

The problem here on Earth is that our normal development has been crippled by centuries of interference from highly-evolved and basically inimical entities who have used us as they please. The present programme of space exploration is being pursued in accord with an agenda serving interests other than our own.

Go to Mars if you want, but don't plan on returning. And don't expect to enjoy the experience unless you love absolute servitude.

The video was interesting, and showed an electrical engineer marvelling at the advancement made in circuit board design and implementation in 3 short years, and how, 65 years later, the design and implementation hasn't changed much. The question that kept forming in my mind as I watched the video was...

Who designed it?

Using what experience to draw on to formulate their design at a time such innovative thinking couldn't look ahead at the problems that would need to be overcome to end up with such a design? Three years from blind seems to me to be too short a time, so I would suggest that what we are seeing in the video is only a small time frame of the board's actual evolution? So the question has to be asked, is this a human attempt of reversed-engineered alien technology?

I remember (vaguely now) reading about how crashed retrieved alien vehicles brought about firbre optics, integrated circuitry, teflon coating, etc. I think it might have been in one of Timothy Good's books?

As for sending a small group to Mars, I think we are now capable of doing so, but we would firstly need to send unmanned vehicles there to drop supplies from which a manned craft would later be able to assemble some kind of small base. If we want our species to survive (and it will be a very small highly selected contingent as a first step) we will need to go out into space and get very far from our own solar system. Space, not planets, will become our permanent home. The crafts we build for that should be able to build temporary bases on planets capable of sustaining us, and maybe, on particularly favourable planets, we could leave behind contingents of our species to colonize it as a permanent home for that contingent? I'm just speculating.

The original journey from Mars occurred in 1938 and the Martians were not depicted as very friendly.
We have the declassified projects from the PBJOINTLY era which used technology to extract information from the noise floor.
The Dunlop Jimi Hendrix Fuzz Face Mini Distortion Pedal uses Germanium transistors.
Back in the 60's I think Jimi favored silicon for mixing signals using octal harmonics.
This probably scales for still classified signal seeding with ASK, FSK, PSK style interpolation techniques.