#radiocomputers

Ok so. Radiocomputers are kind of fun bullshit.

First things first, their components are very much not quite well defined according to a computer as we know it, but we for certain know a few things.

A radiocomputer needs a mainframe, filament memory, an antenna and a repeater station.

Filament memories are a cubic object inserted into the mainframe (like we see in game), made of wires (filaments) casted into glass, though modern ones seem to be made of silicon instead.

FIlament memories like the name implies are memory, the thing you store stuff on, Kim says it's likely a long-term storage device like a cassette reel, except in this case it's wires in glass.

They can operate data On-Air (Soona's computer for example) or Off-Air (Used for military purposes)

Radiocomputers also operate literally on air, aka on the radiowaves, making the antenna analogous to a """CPU""". And the atmosphere the """RAM""" (Not quite physically possible in our world but i'll handwave it later).

An air gapped radio computer has its operations unable to be accessed remotely, it isolates airspace for itself most likely.

Soona's computer is pretty powerful and weaker consumer computers use the term "red-tape" to indicate the operations. GIven concept art, they might be physically smaller, thought these are just concepts and might not actually showcase what consumer grade computers are actually like.

Filament memories most likely have some sort of authentication cryptography, given the need to have a password to the East Insulinde Repeater Station, since Soona's computer is on-air, EIRS unlocks the filament remotely, probably as Lintel protocol.

Filament memories also need to be cooled when not in use, which mean they can't handle heat when not in operation.

Mercury is utilized in newer radiocomputers, its application in valves apparently increases speed and the "azimuthal range" (probably meaning, the range of the antenna)

Like most things in Elysium, radiocomputers do not have a screen like we do CRT and LEDs do not exist! Instead projectors and printers are utilized to display information. You can see projectors being used in SATA and in some concept art of Soona's equipment, while printers are seen in game.

Radiocomputers do have keyboards, given they need to be programmed in.

Speaking of programming, two languages are talked about: Vox and Orbis. Soona knows both, and Trant and Mikhail have a few difficulties trying to set up Orbis to play a game.

Now that we have this said we can tell a few things: Radiocomputers are computers that are not unlike ours, they operate and process on memory, they have input and output, they essentially fit the criteria for what irl computer science calls a Von Neumann computer (They have arithmetic and logic, a work memory, probably a control unit since they have speed in the first place, and input and output).

BUUUUT they have some weird stuff with the air operations, you can't really... store stuff on air. Even if it's RAM where if no input is given it stops existing, the process of fetching and writing data is complex, and the atmosphere is pretty large and full of pollution. How would you get the radiowave you sent back?

The most obvious answer is that that's what the Repeater stations are for, the tons of radio equipment in the East Insulinde Repeater Station are to act as a relay for a kind of city wide RAM for all the Radiocomputers, information is sent back and forth like volley and is caught after a few cycles.

Another WEIRDER idea is that radiocomputers use High Frequency waves, those waves are able to bounce in the ionosphere at the very top of our atmosphere and the the very bottom of the ground, something called a skywave bounce. Does Elysium have an ionosphere? They have sattellites, and northern lights! So yes they most likely do.

If anything this would only be inviable because the information would be veeeeery fickle to work with, you could get data loss from anything, not just 2mm holes in the world, if Soona were in Katla this method would probably cause the entire game to be lost by aurora borealis. At least repeater stations could have filament memory backups and cache.

the computers themselves have minimal or no real processing power. the feld tape experiment may have been the only actual computer in the setting. instead, computation is what happens when radio waves travel through the pale.

the pale is a hyperobject analagous to global warming, but with characteristics more like a black hole. when the material world interacts with the pale, like in the porch collapse, information is not destroyed, just compressed into the singularity-like nature of the pale. this includes the time dimension. the pale contains not just everything it has consumed in the past, but also it already contains everything it will consume in the future. it's a hologram. (maybe supposed to be what a black hole might look like from the inside?)

so, when the radio waves pass into it, they pass through all that information. and the "event horizon" or point of no return is said to be deep within the pale, well beyond the porch collapse boundary, or else interisolary travel wouldn't be possible. so the radio waves can safely bounce back from the pale after interacting with it and being changed by it. the pale is the thing doing the computation, but it probably functions more like a quantum computer; the pale already contains all possible answers, and by asking the right questions (i.e. sending the right radio waves), you can get them back.