Analog non-sampled RAM for PCs

OOPS! Change that from "quantum" to "elementary" or "basic". Analog signals are *not* quantized. Sorry for my ignorance.

Maybe not with a PC, but I'm sure someone has made analog recordings on a disc (rather than on a tape).

Mmm... magnetic storage media don't "know" that they're being recorded with analog or digital signals; it's ALL analog at that level. True, digital storage sometimes relies on saturation so there's effectively a much larger "signal to noise ratio" than with analog storage, but if you thoroughly erase digital storage, it's just as unrecoverable as anything anything you might use.

This sort of possibility is exaggerated by the folks who'd like to sell you security software. If you overwrite the area of the disc where you digital information is stored several times, as well as adjacent areas... your data is just plain gone for good.

Of course, you haven't told us how you're going to convert that analog signal back into bits -- which is what your PC cares about.

Or were you going to hook this up to an all-analog computer? :-)

I'd like to see your theory as to how you can recover properly deleted digital data...

If it's a flash ROM you might be interested to know that these days it's most likely storing analog values in each cells to increase storage density... a comparator turns these analog levels back into, e.g., 2 digital bits.

It'll cost far more than necessary to achieve the desired goal?

But heck, maybe those guys who buy gold-plated speaker cables will buy it!

Seriously, you're better off just using strong deniable encryption...

---Joel

It was called cassette tape.

It sucked, much like everything you post.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

Everything is depending on quantum effects. Even your magnetism is a summation of quantum effects. Things just look (somewhat) analog.

The Monrobot XI computers, one of the first transistorized "office" computers (about the size of a desk), made circa 1959, used a magnetic drum for RAM. Average access latency was 17ms, with 512 words of 32 bit words, or 1024 words on the double-size drum. The 8 "fast access" registers had their own track, and the value was written 16 times, for a read latency around 1ms (writes still took 34ms).

First computer I ever wrote programs for... in hexadecimal machine code. That was in 1974, after they'd been retired from various insurance companies, etc.

Clifford Heath.

gnal

Using an ADC.

gital

Disk-splicing

Quote from

:

"Under the illusion that they'll have complete protection, many people burn floppy or hard disks, crush and mangle them, cut them into pieces, pour acid on them, and otherwise physically manhandle them so that there's no possible way they could ever be used by another computer again. Unfortunately, physical destruction of floppy and hard disks still can't guarantee that your data will be safe, since government agencies such as the FBI and CIA practice a specialized technique known as disk splicing."

"With disk splicing, someone physically rearranges the pieces of a floppy or hard disk so that it is as close as possible to its original condition."

This disk-splicing is a problem only if the information on the disk is digital or even analog-but-sampled. If the data is purely-analog and non-sampled [i.e. continuous-signal], even the most intelligent of the NSA will not be able to recover any hint of information.

most

a

I don't intend to use flash ROM. The only ROM in this hypothetical PC is mask-programmed ROM since that's the most secure.

Just out of curiosity is it possible to design/build a purely-analog electronic computer whose signals are not subject to the Nyuist, Hartley, and Shannon sampling restrictions?

When you burn floppys or hard disks in a fireplace the temperature should be higher than the curi point. Then all magnetics is gone. I don't see how the can recover things.

-- pim.

You can google on "analog computer".

An opamp does not sample signals.

--
pim.

Google for MLC flash.

-- Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools... nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)

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ISD

They managed to get the company public, but it was mostly a one product deal. The company got tossed around a bit. The chip still exists:

Now technically these are sampled time analog voltage storage devices.