Chapter 1926 - Initial Exploration

In the old timeline, this wouldn't have been much of a problem. Ordinary server rooms maintained multiple data backups. If a hard drive broke, you simply bought a new one. But here, hard drives were carriers of precious data storage—extremely valuable items. Once a hard drive was damaged without a backup, it meant the complete loss of a portion of irreplaceable knowledge. Feng Nuo had to attend to them with meticulous care, squeezing the maximum value out of every drive.

Elders' personal computers had begun to malfunction and suffer irreversible damage. Those that weren't broken still exhibited varying degrees of component wear, aging, and failure. Although the high-performance, large-capacity clusters of the Computing Center and Data Center were currently operating normally, he had to ensure carefully that the servers could run for another ten or twenty years.

The Computing Center brought by the Elders on the ship consisted of several sets of blade servers, plus some fat nodes, accompanied by high-speed disk arrays with capacities measured in tens of terabytes for storage. The Data Center consisted of a small number of service nodes and ordinary disk arrays measured in petabytes. There was also a tape backup system.

Equipment wasn't abundant, but the total investment had exceeded ten million. The Senate couldn't afford any more. After all, every industry was reaching out for funding and quota allocations at that time. If computer systems didn't carry huge reserves of knowledge, they would have been completely dismissed as "luxury toys" by some Elders.

Because computer components were essentially impossible to manufacture within the Elders' lifetimes, the storage and use of equipment were calculated down to the last penny.

According to relevant orders issued by the Planning Commission in previous years, one set of all equipment had to be set aside and transported to Gaoshanling to be sealed as original standard equipment templates, not listed in usable reserves. Therefore, Feng Nuo reduced the number of operating units, ensuring only necessary usage. Now a mirror of the Data Center was placed at the Great Library. Feng Nuo's equipment here was barely maintaining normal operation.

In the early days after the crossing, the Computing Center's protection measures against moisture, dust, static electricity, and temperature control were severely insufficient, which had somewhat affected the lifespan of the equipment—especially the hard drives in the disk arrays.

Theoretically, the operating life of servers is very long. Running without shutdown for seven or eight years is common. If maintained properly, running for more than ten years poses no problem. Of course, the key premise is sufficient maintenance, especially timely replacement of accessories. This is why servers need to support hot swapping.

To ensure hot backups of all cluster disk arrays as much as possible, Feng Nuo currently operated only half the blades. Then he adopted a rotation method of periodic booting to extend their lifespan. The Computing Center was powered on for two months out of every four. The Data Center rotated operation with the mirror at the Great Library.

Speaking of which, the Data Center was actually more important than the Computing Center. The Computing Center was mainly used by people in the industrial and military sectors. Large-scale computing tasks in other fields were few, mostly handled on Elders' personal computers and departmental-level small servers. The Data Center, however, was indispensable to every department. Over ownership and management rights of the Data Center, the Great Library and the Planning Commission had clashed repeatedly. The Great Library argued that their core resource was actually the content in the Data Center, while the Planning Commission insisted on the principle of centralized management and use, demanding the Computing and Data Centers be placed together.

The two sides took the dispute to the Executive Committee. In the end, indexing, management, viewing, and auditing of data content went to the Great Library, while the Planning Commission remained responsible only for hardware and software maintenance. Later, during the second anti-encirclement combat readiness period, a set of mirrors was transferred to the Great Library for offline operation—first, as a secure backup; second, to facilitate the Great Library's compilation of indexes and planning of the "Data Paperization" project. Moreover, the power supply there had also stabilized.

The Data Center was originally planned to have three sets of mirrors backing each other up. Running in the current rotating boot mode, it was estimated that maintaining operations for another ten to twenty years wouldn't be a major problem. What was concerning was that recently there had been cases of personally carried portable hard drives breaking. Feng Nuo could still fix simple computer glitches, but if a hard drive broke completely, he didn't have the expertise for data recovery.

Equally worrying as hard drives was memory. Fortunately, these components were small in volume, and they had stocked quite a few memory chips preserved in sealed, deoxygenated packaging.

All signs indicated that the data and information processing capabilities the Senate prided itself on had begun to decline. Feng Nuo felt both his position and his livelihood growing increasingly precarious.

Currently, the Senate's "de-informatization" process had been proceeding for several years and was quite advanced. Not only had a large batch of important technical and historical materials completed sinicization, paperization, and indexing, but departmental business dealings had also completely detached from computers and networks. New office buildings no longer installed wired and wireless networks. Elders' private and official information transmission gradually stopped using USB drives or email. Fewer people posted on the BBS, while Weekly Developments and Morning Star grew thicker. Nature and Science changed from a monthly to a weekly publication. Even after relevant Executive Committee agencies moved to the county seat, work efficiency had slightly improved.

It could be said that even if all computer equipment collapsed immediately, the Senate could continue to function. Of course, the replication of the tech tree would suffer a severe blow. After all, paperizing petabytes of data wasn't realistic. Currently, only the most conceivable, most critical technical data was being preserved. After the start of the Second Five-Year Plan, the Planning Commission, the Technology Sector, and the Industrial Sector were already compiling the Senate's medium-to-long-term technology and industrial development plan—that is, roughly determining the tech tree for the next twenty to fifty years. Only then could they clarify needs and carry out the next step of technical data paperization work.

As for computing power, the Senate still had a final batch of reserves. In the dark, oxygen-deficient Planning Commission special controlled goods warehouse in the Gaoshanling caves, several tightly sealed containers held the IT group's "final reserve." Everything was tightly sealed in special packaging. Most were industrial-grade microcontrollers using embedded systems—at least their computing processing power was absolutely sufficient. Most critically, they were light and cheap. A single container could hold tens of thousands. There were also smartphone motherboards—some wholesale from Huaqiangbei, some cheaper imported electronic waste—plus portable scientific calculators. The goal was to ensure that for a hundred years, the Senate would possess computing power and data processing and analysis capabilities superior to other regions of the world. Before most of the Senate's computer systems failed, these unremarkable little devices could at least barely sustain operations until the Senate could rebuild the computer industrial system. Feng Nuo estimated that, optimistically, it would take about fifty years.

Naturally, Feng Nuo set his sights on the predecessor of the computer: the mechanical computer. In fact, the development plan for mechanical computers had a long history. As early as the First Five-Year Plan, the Industrial Sector had begun work on imitating hand-cranked calculators.

Yes, imitation. As the saying goes, what those above favor, those below will outdo. Hand-cranked calculator manufacturing had been initiated two years ago, but no one had asked Feng Nuo if he wanted to participate, so he had remained an outsider. This wasn't really a matter for computer people. It was purely a mechanical design and manufacturing problem.

Can a hand-cranked calculator even be called a computer? At best, it's just a calculator! Feng Nuo thought with some sourness and would complain fiercely whenever he cornered an old colleague. Even Feng Shan's ears had grown calluses from listening.

But the imitation project for this hand-cranked computer—or hand-cranked calculator—didn't go smoothly and hadn't completely succeeded even now. Initially, of course, the project team aimed at the pinnacle of hand-cranked calculators: the Curta. Before the crossing, the preparatory group had specifically bought two original units from eBay at a high price—one Type I and one Type II.

Disassemble. Imitate. Fail.

It was no wonder. The Curta was only the size of a spice jar but was actually composed of more than six hundred parts. The design was exquisitely elegant, and the processing extraordinarily precise. There were many springs, gears, rollers, and other components that Lingao's current processing technology couldn't handle or wasn't mature enough for, and they were extremely small with high precision requirements. There were even rubber and plastic auxiliary parts. In Lingao, these could only be replaced with wood and leather.

Although the era that produced the Curta didn't have the divine tool of CNC machine tools and it was entirely completed by workers' manual manufacturing and assembly, the Senate didn't have such skilled workers. If CNC machine tools were used for processing, the precision could be met, but the materials completely failed to meet processing needs.

Exact replication was impossible, so they had to settle for second best: scaled-up replication.

The successfully replicated sample turned out to be the size of a water bucket. Not only was the crank position no longer ergonomic, but human strength could barely turn it. The self-weight was a major problem—forget portability; even moving it was difficult. Because tolerances didn't meet requirements and material mechanical strength was inadequate, wear was severe during testing.

A few units of the Curta scaled-up replica were eventually sent to the Human Computing Center. At least for calculating four arithmetic operations of more than ten digits, as well as reciprocals and square roots, it was more powerful than an abacus. So when it was first delivered, it caused quite a stir among the naturalized human calculators. However, it quickly became obvious that this contraption was a serious waste of manpower. To be used for extended periods, one or two dedicated crank turners had to be assigned to cooperate with the calculator; otherwise, the calculator would soon be exhausted.

Next came replicating earlier desktop hand-cranked computers. The target was a "Cultural Brand" hand-cranked computer.

In the old timeline, the types of hand-cranked computers produced domestically were very limited. The most common were only the "Cultural Brand" from Tianjin Red Star Factory and the "Flying Fish Brand" from Shanghai Computer Typewriter Factory. The former was "lever-style," while the latter was "keyboard-style." Both were imitations of foreign brands like Brunsviga, Felix, Tiger, Marchant, and Monroe. The control methods differed, but the mechanical principles were largely the same. Later there were also electric computers, but they merely changed hand-cranked to electric, saving the human effort of turning the crank.

(End of Chapter)