Cyber ​​Heroes

Chapter 895 Tape
"Fuck..."

This was the first sentence David said to Xiang Shan after returning to the office in a daze.

The Engineering Research Center is now quite empty.Over the past few months, people who wanted to leave have already left one after another.The team shrank a lot at once, and many project teams were directly merged.Many technicians with military backgrounds began to fill the lowest-level vacancies.These technicians are not scholars and rarely do research work, but after a period of training, they are enough to undertake the tasks that ordinary scientific researchers need to undertake.

And the remaining scholars are also automatically upgraded.

This is a great benefit to Xiang Shan.Originally, with his age and qualifications, he could not get a position of this level.After he returns to China, he can directly obtain the rank of assistant researcher, and can directly wait for the review of the assistant researcher.If he worked here for a few years and made some achievements, even this step could be skipped.

In the Republic, scholars who can obtain this title before the age of 30 can be called "the future is bright."

But for Xiang Shan, the biggest advantage of this "unconventional promotion" is that it is more convenient for research.Many materials that were inconvenient to obtain before can now be browsed directly.

But even so, the information in his hand is still not as "timely" as David's.

Xiang Shan remembered that these two days were when Project Rama disassembled the only complete alien machine.Obviously, it is impossible to say that this kind of thing can be placed in a large auditorium and then disassembled in full view, which is not realistic at all.

Although the process of dismantling this thing must be very ceremonial, but not all scholars can see it for the first time.The current Xiangshan doesn't have this ability.

Xiang Shan could only bring some of his researchers to continue sorting out and studying the data of the wreckage.

Xiang Shan smiled at David: "What's the matter? Is there any amazing discovery?"

David and Xiang Shan's desks were already very close.Now a group of people have left, and there are three desks per person in this research center.It is said that when it is free.Partitions will be made here to allow some scholars to obtain private office space.However, Xiang Shan and David belonged to the kind of friends who could get along with each other, so they only expanded their "territory" to pile up materials and documents, but they were still sitting in the original place.

"I should have thought of it earlier. Those guys..." David stared at Xiang Shan, bloodshot eyes even appeared in his eyes: "They use fucking scanners. They use tapes."

"What..." Xiang Shan was stunned.

"Tape." David repeated: "The little robots in Ogonli don't need to care about work efficiency at all, and the stored information doesn't need to be repeatedly erased and rewritten. Those little robots don't use electronic scanners. To identify the signal...they most likely temporarily magnetized the surface of those copper plates to convert the symbol directly into a specific magnetic signal and burn it on the tape. Its memory is the tape drive."

Xiang Shan was taken aback: "But we didn't find any traces of the tape outside..."

"Let's radiate." David whispered: "Some polymer materials will deteriorate faster under the action of radiation. The mechanical remains outside the core area may have been there thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. The metal parts are all glued together due to transmutation. These things are not afraid of radiation, but polymer materials are not so strong against radiation. When we entered, the magnetic tape in the wreckage outside, the tape base of the polymer film disappeared , even the magnetic material particles are demagnetized. The time is too long."

"But the machine in the core area is different. Its belt base is made of aluminum alloy. Although it has been glued together and cannot be separated, you can still see what it is in general."

Xiang Shan said suddenly, "I'll fuck it... that is to say... there are some mechanical structures with unknown meanings, maybe they are alien tape drives?"

In fact, even in the middle of the 21st century, people on Earth are still using magnetic tape.

on a professional machine.

Compared with hard disks, tapes actually have lower cost per unit capacity, higher stability, and lower requirements on the storage environment, and can easily achieve long-term backup.In fact, with the current human technology, the capacity of a dedicated tape has easily exceeded 500TB.

However, tape does have its disadvantages as well as disk.The modification and erasure of tape is indeed far inferior to that of disk.It also only does linear reads.

And today's human beings have indeed manufactured professional machines with hundreds of magnetic tapes inserted at the same time.

"However, from a structural point of view, those small robots can't insert a few tapes..." Xiang Shan was a little hard to accept: "Such a simple and rigid device cannot support complex artificial intelligence... That's right..."

"It can be made up with time." David said: "You know what... the most important thing these guys lack is time."

One of the few disadvantages of tape is "speed".What is written on tape can only be read linearly.

If an artificial intelligence is supported by magnetic tape, it may take a long time to respond.It may take a long time for the machine to rewind before it can find out the preset countermeasures for the current situation.

But the robots in Ogonli need time the most.

"I guess the head of the tape works like this..." David picked up a roll of scotch tape with an auxiliary device and scratched it on his desk.A line of tape sticks to the tabletop.David scratched his head: "That's probably what it means. There should be a device to retract the tape. That's what it means..."

Xiang Shan took out an oil-based pen, wrote a few words on the table, then took the tape, scratched it on the table, and then tore off the tape.

That line appeared on the tape.

"so?"

"Magnetize the area where a symbol is located, and at the same time use a tape to approach it... Maybe the details are a little different, but it is roughly the same principle." David said: "And in this process, the surface of the tape and the copper plate should not be directly connected. Contact, there may be a distance of a few tenths of a millimeter. Otherwise, we will detect a large number of friction marks with the half surface. Well, but it is also possible that the magnetic head induces electromagnetic signals, and then records them on the tape after being transformed by a purely mechanical structure .”

Xiang Shan pressed his head: "You're really right... It takes a long time to enter a symbol like this... But what they need most is time."

Originally, in Xiangshan's impression, the black cabin of Ogun's core should be like a honeycomb, with countless machines moving in and out quickly, working alternately, orderly, busy but not complicated.

But think about it carefully, why are these machines busy?

What they faced was a long journey ranging from tens of thousands of years to millions of years.

In the dark, only a few magnetic heads are working slowly and steadily.

　As a side note, the idea of ​​this recording medium has actually changed a few times.I have also imagined before that aliens use artificial diamonds to make large walls with zigzag grooves on the walls, just like the grooves of record records.A metal "stylus" moves between the grooves to read the information.

　　But then I dropped the idea.The builders of Ogun couldn't have predicted the length of the journey, and certainly couldn't have predicted how many times this information would have to be read.Although diamond is the hardest substance, even diamond cannot withstand millions of years of reading.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)