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[alt.folklore.computers] Roswell's impact on Computer Science
On 18 Dec 1997 10:11:02 -0700, in alt.humor.best-of-usenet "Xenophon
Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated" <[email protected]> wrote:
>Subject: Roswell's impact on Computer Science (Was: Bell Labs)
>From: [email protected] (,,,)
>Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
>
>>
>> >but the
>> >military was actually able to boot some of the surviving alien computers.
>> >Since Bell Labs had extensive capabilities in computer analysis, the alien
>> >computers were sent there.
>>
>> What processor did the alien computers use? What kind of storage did they
>> have?
>
>I spent some time at Bell Labs (Department 1227 (old numbersing system),
>Murray Hill), and I still have occasional contacts in that world. My
>understanding is that the computers from the Roswell New Mexico crash
>are very similar to the Pentium, and that the OS they run is very close
>to being a version of Windows.
>
>As I understand the Roswell story, nobody could even begin the reverse
>engineering efforts until we had scanning electron microscope technology,
>and then, the chips were totally incomprehensible until the early 1970's.
>Fortunately, this was shortly after the UNIX design was set in stone,
>and it took years to reverse engineer enough of the chip architecture
>to begin work on disassembling the OS code.
>
>Some of the alumni of this project joined Intel shortly after the IAPX 432
>hit the streets, and their arrival with what management interpreted as an
>advanced design was what drove Intel to abandon research on modern
>capability-based computer architectures and concentrate instead on the
>bizarrely irrational x86 family of architectures. The fabrication
>technology reverse engineered from the Roswell chips was indeed advanced,
>but the architectural fallout is another matter!
>
>By the mid 1980's, the funding for continuing the reconstruction of the
>Roswell OS dried up, and the programmers from that project had to look
>elsewhere for work. Some of these programmers were snapped up by
>Microsoft for work on the system that eventually was named Windows 95.
>
>Overall, I'd estimate that the fallout of the reverse engineering efforts
>on the Roswell microprocessors have set computer science in the united
>states back a good 20 years. Too many good people have spent too many
>years of their lives attempting to deal with these truly screwy machines.
>No wonder the starships they ran crashed at Roswell! The technology of
>these machines may have been advanced, but the alien designers of these
>machines were not good engineers and had a very bad notion of top-level
>design!
>
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