Replicas - was Re: *** Ideas needed for developing

[Antonio Carlini]

> What's the point in having a working machine if you never run 
> it?

I agree that machines should, in general, be run if possible.
Not all the time, but on a reasonably regular basis. (Assuming
you are a museum. For me at home, I'll run them when I need to
to perform some task, or when I want to. The rest of the time
they stay switched off - I cannot afford the power or the
space to run them all 24x7!)

> so
> what's the difference between having a working machine you never run 
> because it might do damage and a machine that's got some custom chip 
> failed becuase you did actually run it?

In the future we might have the technology to probe those
ancient chips and figure out how to build a replacement.
Hopefully.

Antonio


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Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org