"Digital Archaeology of the Microcomputer, 1974-1994

[Jules Richardson]

William Donzelli wrote:
>> Perhaps I just have less faith than you in the technology being 
>> available in
>> 20 years to probe inside modern systems to figure out how they work 
>> and keep
>> them running :-)
> 
> Do you think that tools will not evolve in 20 years?

Of course they will. But I suspect that there comes a point when you just 
can't practically figure out the function of some unknown chip for every 
possible state and input condition in order to emulate it - at least not in 
reasonable timescales and at reasonable expense.

Think of trying now to reverse-engineer something like a 68000 CPU given just 
a faulty example of the chip and no supporting documentation whatsoever.

I don't think that problem will get any harder or easier over the years; the 
tools readily available will track the advances in hardware fairly closely.

But the point is that reverse-engineering a "complex" undocumented chip (from 
any era) is a difficult task at best, and I think it always will be. We're 
just fortunate at the moment in that *generally speaking* for "our" vintage 
equipment there's often documentation available, and any given chip found a 
home in lots of different systems, so there's a better chance of finding a 
straight replacement.

cheers

Jules