What are Isolinear Chips?

[@qwertyuio404]

_“If you go into my quarters and examine the bulkhead next to the replicator, you'll notice there's a false panel. Behind that panel is a compartment containing an isolinear rod. If I'm not back within seventy eight hours, I want you to take that rod... and eat it.”_

[@KEVMAN7987]

Star Trek version of erasing your friends cookies/history.

[@garry6047]

Can I access the replicator so I can put some salt and ketchup on it first? Isolinear chips are so tasteless without it. 😝

[@NickDaGamer1998]

Literally just watched that episode.

[@Comet5551]

“You’re joking?”

[@cujoedaman]

Plot Twist: That wasn't an isolinear rod, it was a candy cane

[@sagesheahan6732]

When USB sticks and flashdrives came out, I was calling them Isolinear Chips. No shame. 🖖

[@roachman7496]

You can still keep the lingo and be accurate by calling them non-isolinear chips

[@greenaum]

@FlyingMonkies325 The problem with artificial gravity through spinning is, the amount of "gravity" is a function of distance and rotation rate. That is, if the rooms you're spinning are far from the centre axis, on the end of long booms, you don't need to spin too fast. But for anything on the scale we've currently built, or even quite a bit bigger, the thing would have to spin so fast that it would be noticed and make people nauseous. You can still feel being spun round even in space, in fact you feel it for the same reason it produces mock-gravity in the first place. It's only practical on big ships or stations. It's inconvenient when making scifi though to have everyone and everything floating around, eventually the wires would get tangled. So they just invent "gravity plates" and throw the problem away. Fair enough.

[@Corvus__]

Respect.

[@CM-wv8ns]

There was also a time I thought: So this what they use to activate the Lions in Voltron... auto-execute files loaded onto alternative data storage media instead of floppy disks

[@tomf3150]

Nah, they were duotronic storage device.

[@haberak3310]

The simultaneously worst and best part about writing sci-fi these days is how quickly the tech becomes dated, at least relative to when the show takes place.

[@cb-gz1vl]

Yes Mr. Data's storage capacity has already been exceeded and I believe his processing speed as well.

[@cbalan777]

@@cb-gz1vl Yet my computer still has a 1.3 GHZ processor and 2 gigs of RAM. WHY?!

[@cb-gz1vl]

@@cbalan777 Up until covid ram was cheap. I have a 64 gig thread ripper.

[@commiecomrade2644]

@@cbalan777 if you go refurbished you can get Ram cheap. I got a laptop with an i7 with 16gb of ram for 300 bucks. Just have to take your time looking and jump on a deal when you see it.

[@DoctorX17]

@@cb-gz1vl cheap is relative tho... I have 5950X build with 128GB of RAM, and 4x32GB was far more expensive than 8x16GB was... My poor wallet DX

[@lozenger7515]

3:16 the colour of the casings can also identify what the chip does. There’s an episode of DS9 where Jake Sisko is learning the colours of the data rods with chief O’Brien

[@lsamaknight]

@FlyingMonkies325 In someways its the other way around, some people get inspired by Trek and deliberately try to make it happen in real life.

[@michaelsmith4904]

@@phantomreaver85 I agree with everything except the social agenda... Star Trek had a social agenda from day one.

[@JoannaHammond]

@@michaelsmith4904 True, they just ramn it down your throat now, just like Dr Who. In the past it could be quite subtle and cleverly done.

[@arisakathedappergoose4796]

I like that ship's operation is effectively hard-coded programming; give it power, and everything just runs itself.

[@unnecessarilyepic1107]

Unless riker wants to look cool...

[@hanelyp1]

Unless a virus infects the system and spreads like the security design was an afterthought.

[@johnwang9914]

It's the connectionist theory, that everything is in the connections of a neural net but this belies the complexities of state.

[@johnwang9914]

@@hanelyp1 Security is fundamentally afterthoughts as security vulnerabilities are novel discoveries of pre-existing systems. Hence the need for regular security updates to address the security vulnerabilities discovered. Imagine Voyager where the next official security update could be decades away (at least till they got that alien communication relay working for them).

[@DTSephiroth]

And upgrading that program merely requires swapping a few chips for newer ones.

[@BirthquakeRecords]

I just wanna hear someone talk about the fictional science of Star Trek all day

[@tobiasfunke6284]

He should a long compilation of a bunch of his videos for that purpose

[@TheMrPeteChannel]

It's becoming fact.

[@johnwang9914]

There's a book on physics called "The Physics of Star Trek" and it portrays what we know of physics in terms of how what we see in Star Trek might be realized or rather what real world physics, Star Trek may be extrapolated from.

[@iamdmc]

today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact :)

[@julesverne4339]

@@iamdmc Live Forever and Prosper, xybp942.

[@ELCADAROSA]

Rick, another item that was on Star Trek that predated reality is Lt. Uhura’s ear piece in TOS. Her ear piece (and Spock’s, too) are early examples of Bluetooth technology that I’ve not seen mentioned elsewhere.

[@daveh7720]

Years ago I saw a Web site explaining Bluetooth technology, with photos of various BT devices of that day. They included a photo of Uhura with her earpiece and captioned it as a "hands-free headset, manufacturer unknown."

[@nagash303]

wireless earplugs yes!

[@greenaum]

Why is it Bluetooth? There's a lot more to Bluetooth than just being wireless.

[@testicularoxide5055]

👍

[@greenaum]

@FlyingMonkies325 Bluetooth isn't just computers using radio. They've been doing that for decades, one example being in warehouses, where you'd have a handheld computer or tablet, back in the early '90s or so, linked by radio to a computer in the office. You'd go round scanning barcodes into your handheld computer and it all goes to do whatever it does. Wireless payment uses RFID, a totally different technology. It's the grandson of anti-theft tags they use in shops. Bluetooth is really a protocol, a set of standards. Specifying frequencies, signal strengths, but particularly what format messages are sent in. What Uhura has is just a wireless earpiece. Seeing it from today's point of view, you'd think Bluetooth, but in the '60s people would have just thought of it as radio. It's also connected to her desk console, not a portable phone. You can say that, now, it resembles Bluetooth, but it didn't predict it. There's no suggestion of other crew members having versatile wireless links between many different devices, that are interchangable and standardised. Back then you'd assume that the earpiece came with her console and would only work with that. Just wireless + ear isn't predicting Bluetooth, there's much more to it than that. You can get all sorts of Bluetooth stuff, all from different manufacturers, all interchangable, that's the point of it. Uhura's thingy seems like it's an accessory to the console it came with. A wireless earphone. We had those in the '80s at least. Your "applications in the future" thing just sounds like ordinary radio, and that is used for all sorts of sensors, radar being the obvious one. Radio astronomy too. Kirk's Enterprise probably had those. Nowadays it'll be some boring newfangled "subspace" thingy, the word they use when they can't think of a word. Like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

[@markfergerson2145]

Ever since we learned that gel packs can "get sick" on Voyager, I've wondered how strong Starfleet's confidence in them is. The last thing they'd want is their enemies to find this out and start working on ways to infect them in battle.

[@iamdmc]

the bio-aspect of the system was highly suspicious to begin with, and it makes sense that it would appear only on the very first prototype of the Intrepid class... although it doesn't make much sense that it ever made it out of drydock with a full crew for an actual mission (or anything beyond testing)

[@markfergerson2145]

@@iamdmc Yeah, if it was me I'd make a large shuttle or maybe a Runabout the testbed, not a full-blown starship. It may or may not be safe to assume that something similar will eventually come out in lore, but considering some of the incredibly stupid decisions Starfleet makes, the Intrepid class may have been the testbeds.

[@adamgray1753]

Well, @@markfergerson2145, seeing as Starfleet is a Communist organization and Communists naturally make some of the dumbest of decisions on a regular basis you get what you get with a bunch of Commies running the show.

[@markfergerson2145]

@@adamgray1753 That... makes far too much sense especially considering the performance of some of the characters on the show who are rather more radical Leftists. Looking at you, Counselor Troi.

[@JNJNRobin1337]

It Doesnt Make Sense Because Isnt Biotech Or Atleast Genetic Modification Banned Anyways? *meaning good food with maximal good yet minimal requirement isnt possible unless your lucky*

[@shingshongshamalama]

Another thing Star Trek predicted: interchangeable/removable solid state data storage media.

[@daveh7720]

I was fascinated by those square "cookie" memories they used in TOS. They were even higher tech than the cassette tapes that had just been introduced to the market.

[@cdreid99999]

@@daveh7720 i think those were supposed to be high tech tape drives. I remember one ep sortof referencing that

[@MichaelClark-uw7ex]

I remember an episode of TOS where they had to swap memory modules inside a Jeffrey's tube and they were like blocks of colored Lucite. Crystal memory?

[@MichaelClark-uw7ex]

@@Tyneras Pong wasn't even invented until 1972, TOS ended in 1969, there were no game cartridges before TOS. There were removable storage media like the gigantic floppies and tape cartridges for mainframes though.

[@AgaresOaks]

Not really. You just described a floppy disk, which would have been very well-known technology at the time of TNG. They'd even run automatically on insertion (some... interesting security decisions were made back then). Alternatively, you've described a video game cartridge, although to be fair those typically weren't hot swappable. (except when they sorta are which has lead to some interesting and controversial speedrunning techniques lately) In general, portable persistent storage media has been well known since almost the dawn of computers, although it may not come in the form you'd expect (I doubt most people would be thinking of punch cards as such a thing, but it does fill the role technically). The 3D part, not so much, but it's a fairly logical extension of technology available at the time.

[@andrewbutton2039]

From what I remember, they are both storage and processor, the more you have plugged in, the more powerful your computer is and the more it knows, though that's somewhat dependent on what information has been loaded onto the chips.

[@hanelyp1]

That would be very useful for database style storage where data is looked up by attributes. Broadcast a search request and the chip finding a match replies.

[@Robert_Douglass]

And if the writers of Star Trek predicted USB and 5D storage, this is not such a long stretch as we might wish to believe. I'm starting to see visions of SanDisk MicroSD portable external processors and memory cores on every shelf in Wal-Mart ..

[@ancapftw9113]

That could be possible. The human brain uses combined memory and processing, and there are companies developing something similar for AI.

[@johnwang9914]

@@hanelyp1 Or just holographic storage. With holographic storage, the data is distributed everywhere in the device and retrieved by aspects of the data itself. Holographic storage would also be more conducive to crystal devices but more likely to exist as diffraction patterns on a reflective two dimensional surface at least initially. However, currently the data density of holographic memory is still quite low, it just has potential. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage

[@iamdmc]

Memristor-processors, of course

[@Perserra]

When TNG came out and introduced the idea of isolinear chips, we were still using floppy disks and tape drives. Though TOS really deserves the credit, as they had 'duotronic circuitboards' that functioned nearly identically to isolinear chips in most respects, just with a lot less capacity. So Star Trek predicted modern USB drives and pocket smart drives by not just a couple decades, but more like half a century.

[@whathanul5798]

The great thing about sci fiction is sometimes the ideas don't remain fiction if people think they are neat and feasible.

[@ptonpc]

"Take this cheese to sickbay" You don't have that problem with Isolinear Chips

[@GraceSerenityK]

Every new technology has growing pains! Hopefully they can work out the "Gets a bacterial infection when your Talaxian hitch-hiker decides to make Delta Quadrant cheese" bugs...

[@casbot71]

There's Beta Canon that later ship designs had fully redundant isolinear backups for every bio neural gel system ready to switch over instantly. Although (IMHO) a hardwired duotronic system as a tertiary backup for basic controls in limp home mode would also be prudent. In the old *StarFleet Battles* StarFleet ships would have multiple redundant systems and even power generation, based on completely different technologies - so that somet weird phenomenon that interfered with the primary systems wouldn't get the backups as well.

[@chonconnor6144]

@@casbot71 laughable, if there is a full backup isolinear chip system, why bother with the complicated biogel processors?

[@gottfriedwegemuller3223]

@@chonconnor6144 because bioneural gelpacks are much faster as you know

[@battlesheep2552]

You also don't have that problem if you don't let Neelix on your ship

[@roachman7496]

dammit , each time Senator Vreenak shows up I keep going "It's a faaaaake"

[@raven4k998]

well that's cause it's a fffaaakkkkkeee.....

[@roachman7496]

@@raven4k998 btw i think i have the mandela effect regarding this scene. It feels like he stretches the word for like 3 seconds but it really only lasts under a second.

[@melissamenchaca9121]

I cannot tell you how much I adore that little, “neat” at the end

[@spikedpsycho2383]

given the fact they're used to store programs ,they're the 24th century equivalent to flash drives. In TNG 'Naked Now" engineer while inebriated pulled isoliner chips which contain the ships "propulsion operating system" and data put them back. My guess is Iso chips do anything. as RAM, ROM and computer memory as well as data transfers and personal files. Isolinea circuits run thru the ship transfering data, instructions

[@Janoha17]

Or SD cards.

[@Akriashi]

This. They aren't just flash drives, they're more like the rack-mount units that make up servers in datacenters today. Some are CPU/RAM modules, others NAS units. Whatever you need more of, just slot it in.

[@johnwang9914]

Remember how short the videos recorded on those removable memory slabs were on TOS and how often they had to use multiple slabs for the necessary information... Removable memory could have their own addressing information on them so order of insertion should only affect performance not functionality, however even today, RAID systems often fail to design in an insensitivity to where the drives are inserted. If it was only memory whether RAM or ROM, it would've just been poor system design for the order to have been that critical on TNG's "Naked Now".

[@iamdmc]

I just realised how meta it was when Data reprogrammed the ship's computer in 'The Naked Now' by rearranging the isolinear processors ... Data's data moved data to move the ship that contained Data and data

[@TechBearSeattle]

As I recall, trinary storage is not a single bit that can hold three states but a single bit that can hold three distinct states simultaneously. This is typically holographic in nature made of red, green, and blue light, giving rise to 8 (or 2^3) possible values: black (all off), red, green, blue, yellow (red and green), magenta (red and blue), cyan (blue and green), and white (all on.)

[@nightrunnerxm393]

I remember reading somewhere that a similar idea was what defined Trek's "quad" as a unit of information. Can't recall _where,_ exactly, though... Still, given how much information Trek computers have at their disposal...quantum states added into that? Y'know, charmed, strange, up, down, etc.?

[@iamdmc]

I'd imagine ST 'trinary' to be to qubits what qubits are to bits so it's likely there are quantum superpositions of states where each colour is simultaneously ON and OFF until the measurement collapses the quantum state

[@gajbooks]

@@Tyneras Now multidimensional encodings are returning in the form of QLC NAND and PCIe using QAM.

[@Locutus]

I think my favourite isolinear chip episode was when Data had to put all the chips back into place with just minutes to do it.

[@Merennulli]

The USB sticks shaped like (somewhat thick) isolinear chips were one of my favorite ideas someone put out for a Trek themed useful product.

[@superpilotdude]

They kind of reminded me of a mini server farm. Instead of a vcr sized computers stacked together, it a bunch of usb sticks stacked together.

[@Moonbeam143]

I really like that they had the forethought to have something for memory that wasn't just a fancy looking floppy disk.

[@ThatSoddingGamer]

Hmmm, I thought of them more as multipurpose devices for expansion slots. They could do 'whatever computery thing needed'. More processing power, extra memory, etc. And it was up to the main device to interpret and use the chips. Basically, like the PCI slots in a computer. We can use those for everything from GPUs, to specialized sound cards, to high speed SSDs. The isolinear chips were made to be used in those slots, and their function depending on their architecture and data.

[@daveh7720]

While it's true that TNG predates USB memory sticks, Atari had game program cartridges even earlier than that.

[@joshuahadams]

The first Read-Only Memory cartridges that saw wide use were with the Fairchild Channel F (the “F” is for “fun”) console in 1976. Atari started using cartridges for their games consoles and home computers in 1979.

[@johnwang9914]

Granted but when TOS was made, the most advanced solid core memory would've been Apollo's Core Rope Memory... I suspect the removable memory of TOS was more inspired by the punch cards and punched tape of the time however the solid wooden slabs was more a matter of a low prop budget. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory

[@greenaum]

@@joshuahadams Nah the Atari VCS was 1976, though Fairchild was a bit before them.

[@RagnarokiaNG]

I like how realistic Voyager was with trying to upgrade to fancy new organic parts only for them to mess up the ship and inevitably move back to older parts. Reminds me of early water cooling systems for computers leaking and getting replaced by standard fans. That's real life PC building issues right there.

[@wavetrex]

USB before USB was USB... amazing vision of the creators !

[@리주민]

Reminds me more of the printed circuit board inside the original game boy games.

[@Monni95]

USB can be thought as both generic term like UFO and specific standard. Not all UFOs are alien ships or "flying saucers".

[@greenaum]

Nothing like USB.

[@mikewolf8437]

The Isolinear Chip makes me think they have more in common with M.2 SSDs. Crazy how they predicted them 30 years before M.2s. In a time when 3.5" HDD were introduced and became the standard HDD we have today, and also had the hard plastic Floppy Disk.

[@RobertN010]

The idea of 3d data storage in glass is actually pretty old. In 1999 Romanian scientist Eugen Pavel presented at EUREKA, an exposition for innovation and technology, the Hyper CD ROM, a disk 1.2 mm thick and 120mm in diameter, made of a fluorescent photosensitive glass. It had an initial capacity of 1PB that could be theoretically extended to 100 EB.

[@julesverne4339]

3D optical storage : physical 3D data lithography. ( e.g. 3d translucent dye mixing in optical media. ) 4D optical storage: holography : 3d optical storage + time coordinate data = programmable floating liquid dye in 3d optical storage. The read / write device has to provide provide proper instructions to access or manipulate the data. else the data gets archived/ stasisized in a secure 3d state while not being used. 5D+ optical storage : in order to increase storage density ( depending on the technology limitations ) 4D storage patterns can be repeated dimensionally ( there by adding computational complexity while accessing the data ). subatomic storage is also feasible but can be easily misused.

[@mikeyfrederick1232]

I really dig how you make the fictional world of Star Trek seem tangible and real..superb content sir...fascinating and educational

[@bloodnin]

got dammit rick. every single upload is so interesting, I never get bored

[@BeekerButts]

Ric*. Rick is his Mirror Universe counterpart.

[@bigloudnoise]

The original full-size Sony Memory Stick always reminded me of isolinear chips, especially the later models that came in translucent colors. Because of that, my inner Trek nerd has a soft spot for them. I've got a couple of them saved in my collection solely for that reason.

[@namelesscynic1616]

I remember watching Time Machine (the original 1960s film) with my father. In the film, the Morlocks stored data on a disk which were spun to 'play' the data. Nothing existed like this at the time when we were watching, however my father pointed out that we had reels of magnetic tape which was disc shaped. Of course later, CDs and DVDs bore a more striking resemblance to the fictional disk. The point is that Sci fi writers simply imagine things, but they do inspire future scientists to think out the box and so it looks like a self fulfilling prophecy.

[@MikeIsCannonFodder]

I assume the "storage gems" from Babylon 5 are similar based on how we see them being used.

[@That_Guy42]

And data crystals from Stargate.

[@The_Egg21]

loving the yu-gi-oh reference Rick

[@jgunnels6773]

I didn't expect to see that, but I liked it too.

[@CathrineMacNiel]

Card Games on Motorcycles!

[@dougmhd2006]

Here's what isolinear chips remind me of: the memory units of the HAL 9000 ship's computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey" (first released in 1968 in the U.K.). Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea), the last surviving crewmember of the "Discovery", disabled HAL by disconnecting its memory units. Those memory modules were rectangular translucent backlit units, aligned in rows and columns.

[@alexflores7652]

Another form of optical data storage in sci fi would be the Data Crystal from B5. It also used holographic read/write technology. Some races there produce the best crystals one of note are the Mindari.

[@Shatterverse]

Also biogel is prone to literal infection, since it's alive and all, which is why Voyager feel back on isolinear. I also feel that a "quad" is used because made up units of measure are real-world-resistant. Though it could just as easily be shorthand for quad-yottabyte" or something like that - maybe they use parallel memory like we now use parallel processing.

[@Marvin_R]

it could be short for petabyte/petabit (peta being a quadrillion)

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@Marvin_R I remember reading the Wikipedia article in 2008 or 2009 where someone speculated a quad was a quadrillion bits or bytes. My mind was blown at that much storage… but now we’re not too far off with 8TB hard disks and 32+ disk NASes.

[@dodecahedron1]

@@kaitlyn__L nimbus data's main product is 100tb SSDs, HDDs reached 10tb in 2014, 20tb in 2020 and 32tb this year

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@dodecahedron1 interesting about 100TB SSDs, I did know about HDDs being on the order of 15-30TB lately though but yeah.

[@The_Lucent_Archangel]

Isolinear chips are cool, but Stargate's control crystals were always flashier. More so the Goa'uld ones being of varied colors and a truly crystalline shape, whereas the Ancient or Asgard-derived ones more resembled isolinears.

[@Squidbush8563]

How about the fact that Goa'uld flew around in giant spaceships that had open flaming braziers at the end of every hallway?

[@The_Lucent_Archangel]

@@Squidbush8563 According to my uncle, those were for decoration. And I kind of missed them after like Season 4 or 5 when they just vanished from Ha'taks for the most part.

[@ryank5424]

Damn, had no idea ppl were actually developing similar tech. Nicely done video and thx for the heads up 😀. 🖖

[@stanislavkostarnov2157]

they were in some ways from the late 80s... though only recently did it become somewhat feasible in terms of real use (the problem seems to be that to access the data the amount of processing one needed to do was too much of an overhead to manage)

[@WM-ln4dz]

I think these are actually based on military fire control computers that go back to the 1930s/1940s - by opening and closing valves, you could pair data coming in from different range finders (and later different radar arrays) with various guns on the ship. On a battleship, for example, you could match whatever radar array with either anti aircraft guns, shore bombardment "big guns", etc.

[@leotoro51]

That's a solid info, great content. I like to add that each Isolinear chip has also programmable microchip that's has reflection in our time too, as FPGA processor [].

[@andrewolson5471]

Another fun fact: the data tapes used in TOS were almost exactly the same size as the 3 1/2" floppy disks that were popular in the 90s.

[@rf3162]

The bioneural systems were experimental on the Voyager. By the time the ship had reestablished contact with Starfleet, they were informed that it already moved on from the idea to something better.

[@GreenBlueWalkthrough]

How they work in Trek seems to be a mix of an OS floppy disk and Game Cartridge as in they are part of how a computer works like a hard drive/SSD then a thumb stick. Which makes sense given the day the chips were brought to life in.

[@swj719]

Re: “didn’t TNG have these before USB sticks”: The data cards of TOS we see every so often we’re very close in size to 3.5 disks that wouldn’t exist for decades.

[@benw9949]

I remember in season 1, Voyager's bioneural gel packs got sick (they got an infection, viral or bacterial) and Janeyway and B'Elanna declared they would need to replace the bioneural gel packs with conventional isolinear chips or something else. By the end of the ep, of course they'd found a cure, but supposedly, also in that ep, they couldn't replicate replacement gel packs and they only had a few hundred spares in stock. However, I don't think we ever heard about it again, except that they were still using the darn things all the way into the final season. So, yeah.

[@johnwang9914]

And why would the gel packs be distributed in walls throughout the ship rather than in frames in a server room...

[@greenaum]

@@johnwang9914 It's Star Trek, EVERYTHING is hidden behind the walls. That's what all those tubes they have are for, everything is everywhere. They don't believe in "rooms" in the 24th Century.

[@johnwang9914]

@@greenaum And yet the blueprints they keep releasing are nothing but rooms. The only room Star Trek doesn't care about is the restroom. When they need to show something, it's in the walls, the most inconvenient walls such as holodeck systems being only accessible from within the holodeck but when it comes to blueprints, it's all in rooms.

[@luciferangelica]

since you wanna talk about the doctor, i wanna talk about vic fontaine. i can really see that level program as a definite step between the program which created moriarty and the doctor. the vic fontaine program has an amazing level of emotional intelligence, probably higher than most people. idk, i just liked the episodes he was in

[@Revan2908]

Vic was the man. I loved it any time he appeared.

[@Bighappykitty]

Fun Fact: The data disks used in the Original Series were about the size of 3.5" floppy disks and served much the same function.

[@phillipj1135]

1970s like networked computers electric cars and solar cells the holographic storage device is something we've been waiting for for a long time.

[@XanthinZarda]

I think another thing to keep in mind is that the isoliniar chips might be optronic, that is to say light based rather than based in electronics.

[@Monni95]

So basically they are like hybrid of USB sticks and optical discs, but with more data layers than current DVD or Blu-Ray... The data (or code) they contain can be either generic or very specific depending on use... So changing one chip to another "port" or "connector" of a system can change the behavior of the system.

[@chibill_mc]

They make me think about how in Star Gate all the highly advanced aliens used crystal based technology for both power and everything else.

[@EnderMalcolm]

One problem I see with isolinear chips / the current development of crystal storage systems is that they don't seem to be re-writable. So I'd treat them more as archive storage, or ROMs. You'd still need a writable and rewritable storage solution for computing, data storage/editing, and video games.

[@JoannaHammond]

I can remember when I first heard of crystal storage, it was on a Tomorrows World episode back in the 80's.

[@LazyBunnyKiera]

They also have stuff like encoder/decoders, and scripts, along with some basic AI. So depending on which order you put them in, changes the dataflow. encryption key--------\/ encrypted data->recoder iso chip.-> decrypted data. If door controls are stored in an iso chip, you can simply remove the chip to disable the controls. Or put in a modified chip to grant you access. Or use a chip that modifies the data within the control chip. The game genie of ISO Chips. So they are so much more than memory storage. Also like modern 3D-NAND flash, some Isolinear chips have many more layers. But of course, the more layers, the tougher to produce accurately.

[@simonacerton3478]

The New Age/Ancient Aliens crowd called these things Atlantean Reader Crystals back in the day.

[@CM-wv8ns]

So... that must been one of those incidents Temporal Investigation doesn't want the rest of the Federation to know about?

[@kevinschlitt704]

the 5d in the storage referes to the 3 dimensions in the crystal + polarization of the light + the wave length of light.

[@HrLBolle]

If I consider the main computer core in the series A City Called Eureka: This is made of a special type of diamond "Logic Diamonds" and appears to function on the principles of quantum entanglement within it, and the interactive terminal systems look like a very early development stage of the LCARS. As an external viewer of the works, one could almost get the impression that the Daystrom Institute could have emerged from the Global Dynamics branch in the series mentioned at the beginning

[@disky01]

I love these little diversions into the minor details of my favorite universe. Thanks for creating them, and for delivering them with such a genuine pleasantness.

[@gallendugall8913]

They're basically less versatile versions of the "RAM chips" used on the SOL as seen in MST3K.

[@generaljimmies3429]

Funny, I just finished watching a playthrough of Star Trek a final Unity, and they used isolinear chips in that game too.

[@CM-wv8ns]

I remember that game...my friend had it and i was blown away [at the time] of seeing computer versions of the crew 'speaking' on his PC. Then the tv opening played and we busted out laughing: the Enterprise is on the monitor!?!?!

[@CathrineMacNiel]

Scotchbox?

[@Unobtanium1010]

One of the most awesome things about Star Trek is the fact that a lot of the technologies shown there are actively being researched. Star Trek is the reason why we even have cell phones and a few other technologies. I'm pretty sure that's where USB drives came from.

[@qawamity]

Not at all. A lot of the technology predates Trek, or at the very least there was scientific/engineering conjecture on it. Wireless communication is just radio. Hell, modern cellphones still use radio frequencies to transmit information. Computer tablets are just fancy clipboards, able to hold thousands of books instead of a few dozen loose pages. Much of the tech in Trek isn't revolutionary, it's evolutionary. USB drives aren't significantly different in application to video game cartridges or even old reel-to-reel tape drives.

[@Unobtanium1010]

@@qawamity I understand that but many of the people creating our new tech have said Star Trek was the inspiration for it. Google themselves have stated they want to create the Star Trek computer.

[@davidedward10]

I’ve heard stories these were the inspiration for memory cards, like the ones used in cameras etc

[@literatesasquatch]

I can't find a particular quote but I was always under the impression that they were some combination of memory and/or programmable circuit. So it could store data or process data or even process data with certain configurations depending on its configuration.

[@Andrew-zv4fm]

Another thing you could have mentioned is that when Ensign Ro was transferred into the Enterprise D her orders were on an Isoliner Chip.

[@IN-tm8mw]

I remember talking about this a few years back on how the ships are shown to operate in a RAID storage network also.

[@lovipoekimo176]

Isolinear rods were used by Cardassian systems. Chip form is what Starfleet used

[@johnadger6699]

Preach it Lovi, preach it!😁

[@inachu]

before chip the idea of r 3d storage was done on cdroms and the florida company said they were almost complete with the design and the bulky working demo was super slow and i think it broke down often. Also out of florida was quantum compression technology. this other company bragged you could put a full length movie onto a floppy disk.

[@greenaum]

"quantum compression" sounds like bullshit to me, particularly if it stores stuff on ordinary floppy disks.

[@inachu]

@@greenaum well the math may very well be out there but you need output representation of the data you are compressing or else it will be compressed but not data to tell how to uncompress. If I won the next 500 million dollars lotto I would buy the 3d cdrom tech. totally worth it.

[@PS4sos21]

Star Trek ahead of the curve again. First phones, then ipads, now new storage type chips too.

[@HospitalLocksmith]

We may not have had USB sticks but we did have floppy(8" then 5-1/4" then 3-1/2") disks, which could be what Trek used as a base idea

[@wolfbane7497]

Honestly this has been the biggest question I've been wondering you see. I'm a writer and I was writing science fiction and one of my inspirations was Star Trek. So I found the concept of these chips very interesting but I don't exactly know what they are. I know they're important chips that controls certain functions of a Starfleet ship. And I know they come in very wide varieties some bigger some smaller even some. Sit on Picard's desk I know the romulans use them I know the Klingons use them. And the Cardashian use a similar type of technology except their rods instead of chips. They use for data storage and information storage but other than that I really don't know much more beyond that. So this video is going to be a very big help to me and keep in mind I like the concept of the idea of the chips I'm not trying to rip them off completely.

[@johnwang9914]

These technologies are all just hand waved by other writers with very little explanations. Isolinear means arranged in a linear fashion such as Isolinear hydrocarbons having their hydrogen chains in one long chain. Perhaps it has to do with how the semiconductor masking and dopings are done to deposit the devices and circuits into the substrate which for us is a planar process, perhaps it's with how power and communications are done, with how heat produced are removed, who knows. Why is it that isolinear chips can be traded by Janeway to traders in the Delta quadrant? Perhaps it's a substrate base that can be configured with technology of whatever standard found in the Delta quadrant which will of course not be directly compatible with Federation technology in any way. You probably don't want to make too much of them except that they are components that can be removed and replaced to make things work again or to not work as they should.

[@wolfbane7497]

@@johnwang9914 well from what I understand about Voyager it seems like Janeway doesn't have a problem manufacturing these chips. Because from what I've heard from lore reloaded that Voyager might have an industrial replicator aboard. So manufacturing these chips shouldn't really be that hard if they're damaged or broken it was the bio neural gel packs that were the issue. But also thanks for the scientific dump I'm really trying to write a Sci-Fi series. Grounded in some reality and these chips are very interesting I've always wanted to know the origin behind them and how they function. But now with this in-depth much more scientific look at these chips it's really interesting how intricate these chips are and how much data that they can store. It is like stupidly crazy how much information they can hold essentially you could store thousands of years of information on one chip. And with your explanation I can understand them a bit better and incorporate them into my story so thanks.

[@johnwang9914]

@@wolfbane7497 Yes but why would such chips even be compatible with technology in the Delta quadrant? Much of our computer technology is arbitrary, the use of 5 volts, the use of 3.3 volts, what constitutes a one and what constitutes a zero, the error correction coding of our computer memory, etc. You can't even move components that do the same essential function between all computer technologies on Earth so why would Isolinear chips have any value at all in the Delta quadrant. It would be like plugging a US 110-120 vac only appliance into a socket in the UK, all the magic smoke escapes... To be honest bio neural gel packs would be a type of molecular computer combined with a neural network which should actually be easier to produce than say semiconductors. In theory, you should be able to grow them in vats like you would beer or perhaps more correctly like say growing a mRNA vaccine combined with bioprinting tissues. However, I believe the excuse was that Voyager replaced failed units that they could not replace with makeshift Isolinear circuit equivalents.

[@wolfbane7497]

@@johnwang9914 well maybe for various reasons to study the chips in their construction so that they can adapt the technology to handle all that memory and power. What maybe frivolous as junk to you could be something very valuable or pure melted gold to somebody else. I mean getting your hands on these chips that can store stupid amount of information and you can just sell these to random people. Who in turn will sell them to other random people who find the value in them. And be impressed with the computing power if you sit down and explain how powerful these chips are. And how valuable they are as bargaining tools and plus with an industrial replicator that can mold and shape these chips however they want. They would just you basically just analyze these chips and if they're worthless to them and. They can't replicate the technology then they'll just sell it off to someone who can. It's the whole one man's trash is another man's treasure what's frivolous to you could be a gold mine to someone else. Best example the Kazon or who I would like to call them garbage klingons. But socially they were after the replicators to the federation they're completely worthless. Sure they're useful tool for replicating food and replicating materials and even it's been speculated in theorized that industrial replicators can build replicators. But to the federation they can just hand these things out like water it doesn't really matter to them as long as they can keep constructing them but to a race like the. Kazon this was a gold mine this was like the holy Grail it was almost equivalent to Magic unlimited amount of water. So I'm pretty sure when Janeway was dealing with these chips she explained to the clients when they were trading and getting food. While selling these chips she probably explained how valuable they really were so that the merchants can get actual money for them. While they were traveling around the Delta quadrant so that they in turn could sell them to people who know what to do with them.

[@littlekong7685]

@@johnwang9914 I think the optronic processor on the chip would act as a kind of universal translator for other computers, taking handshakes and writing the isolinear data into a readable form based on what the other computer detailed as its data read requirement? Or they were used as standalone storage and processor nodes in larger systems, and the optronic processors acted the same as servers on the internet, you don;t so much use them as reference them. I also assumed Janeway gave out "Blanks", and with the optronics the species could then "format" the standard they use and have 100000x their usual storage and processing speeds once they programmed the chips.

[@JoacinoDaGona]

My take on iso-linear chips is, is that Starfleet cracked the secret to make optic semi-conductors that work with light instead of electrons.

[@pwnmeisterage]

A couple observations ... "Linear" chips (which have already been common for half a century) are chips with analog signal functions. They're fundamentally far more efficient at certain important things (like signal amplification and signal filtering) than any kind of digital logic. "Isolinear" suggests chips which operate or emulate like some sort of analog equivalent. The all-important advantage of analog vs digital (in some applications) is that analog circuitry is "lossless" and "unconstrained" by digital resolution limits - this might be an important parameter when dealing with data integrity in holographic data matrices (or whatever). Isolinear chips are shown to be more than passive data storage. A computer does different things when the same isolinear chips are rearranged. This suggests that chip contains active circuitry which processes instructions internally (independent of the computer it's plugged into). This seems more like today's GPU/SPU cards than like today's flash storage sticks, or rather more of a hybrid - imagine plugging a processor chip pre-programmed with an operating system, programs, and data into an empty slot or socket on your computer motherboard - imagine being able to plug this same chip into an empty slot or socket in your phone, your car, your tricorder, your replicator, your phaser, etc.

[@TacComControl]

Your mention of trinary code gives me a perfect time to mention that Hard Drives use a trinary code system as well... sort of. See, there are three states of any one bit of storage on a hard drive. Normally, we think of them as On or Off, but in reality, they're Positively charged, Neutral, and Negatively charged. The Binary state that is gleaned from this is not from the bit itself or its state, but its state relative to the bits around it. A Change is a 1. No change relative to the previous bit is a 0. But why three states? Well, as it turns out, if you were to line up a positive, then negative charge right after one another, well... they'd have a very high likelihood of corrupting and wiping each other out. If you only held positive(or negative) charges and neutral bits, well, suddenly you've got a temporary magnet for an entire platter, which creates its own problems. The big benefit of using this system is that you don't NEED a tiny sensor that can only see one bit. The magnetic head on your drive sees Several. All it has to do is measure the change on the group of bits it's specifically focused on. Doesn't need to be specific, and it's non-analog, so all it needs is a definite change. Which has the added benefit that if there's a voltage issue that causes a bit to be written with sliiiiightly less power than it normally should be written, well, it's still either a change, or it isn't, as far as the read system is concerned.

[@DavidChilson]

Imo, the Isolinear rods must have a bigger storage capacity (compared with the chips) as the DS9 episode "Meridian" implied that one rod could store an entire Holosuite program?

[@littlekong7685]

They probably have shortcuts that call on familiar assets for the program to essentially rebuild itself from a set start point each time. So instead of programming rocks and trees, just say use reference #7 from the standard library and extrapolate out, or some geographic location it can call up and generate from scans.

[@lewdwig]

Although it can survive the loss of any number of isolinear chips and bioneural gel packs, the entire Federation would fall apart within hours if it ever ran out of self-sealing stem bolts.

[@masterridley8593]

Its possible that Isolinear chips/rods serve as a more EFFICIENT storage medium, both for storing large amounts of complex data but also to have extremely high speed Read/Write capability. Some starship function require reading a large amount of data all at once, say, activating an EMH of any kind, or to make a quick database query to find results very fast among an array of countless entries each translating into hundreds of megabytes, and running a huge program involves long load times. If an EMH takes up like several hundred gigabytes if not whole terabytes it would theoretically take too long to load it up by most standards, perhaps isolinear chips are artificial crystals in order to allow optical lasers to read through astronomical amounts of data in nanoseconds. when on an exploratory mission to analyze an anomalous nebula for instance a few seconds would be permissible to get an comparison, but in battle military standards for efficiency must be met and with so many network devices on a starship local network everything must be able to always Read/Write massive amounts of data in any possible way. Keeping the astrometrics lab lab in the back of 1.5 km starship apace with the helm console, science station and engineering syncronous with massive data would require a lot of computing power. That's just my speculation on anyway, I'm surprised I had this much to say.

[@Revan2908]

I'd say you're pretty close, if not dead on, the mark. That's what they always push for in computer technology anyway: increased speed, capacity and efficiency. Using the EMH and combat conditions are two very good examples of why this speculation is likely the case.

[@BlueSatoshi]

I like the idea of having a personal isolinear chip as a glorified flash drive.

[@tparadox88]

I think we see some people carry an isolinear chip to hold their encryption protocols, which is basically the same thing as how some information security systems require you to insert a flash drive with your credentials to prove you're authorized to access stuff.

[@BlueSatoshi]

@@tparadox88 Starfleet probably uses a combination of combadges and passive biometrics for that.

[@tparadox88]

Also a whole lot of reliance on voice print that can easily be faked and passcodes you say out loud in front of everybody. And thumbprints for signatures.

[@valor1omega]

In Battletech (it prdated TNG by a couple of years) they had holo-cubes which acted a lot like these chips. They was crystal and could fit in the palm of your hand and one could hold an equivalent of a terabyte of information. It was Star league technology so it was lost tech. Never knew how they worked but my guess is it's like these chips.

[@Marvin_R]

nowadays a terabyte in the palm of your hand is nothing. just a few days ago I put 1TB of storage the size of a fingernail in my Nintendo switch.

[@valor1omega]

@@Marvin_R True but I am talking about something that was written back in the 80s.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@Marvin_R oh, that’s a thing now? Last year I put 512GB in mine. In another comment I first wrote “we have 1TB SD cards” but then changed it to half a TB bc I wasn’t sure if we’d quite got to doubling it again yet.

[@acarrillo8277]

I am pretty sure each chip included extensive optronic processing capabilities and there was some form of distributed processing scheme in use.

[@stanislavkostarnov2157]

these are much closer, in shown use, to a 3d program-diskette (pre-programed command Floppy), a physical method of programing input common to early IBMs, this basically was a system somewhat reminiscent of punch-cards, but using a magnetically-readable medium to hold vast (for the period) quantity of data... the fact that they were lines that formed elements of a program meant by entering them in different physical sequences you could make a fairly complex code... even the color marking for different function types is reminiscent.

[@onidaaitsubasa4177]

Hmmm from other references mentioned in TNG, I think a Quad is short for one quadrillion bits of information, so 12 gigaquads would be quite a lot of memory.

[@GraceSerenityK]

One of my favorite parts of rewatching old Trek episodes is seeing what they got right and what they got wrong about tech! I loved the episode of Voyager when Seven was getting Echib ready for his exams and handed him a stack of PADDs! The writers got the idea of a tablet, but then thought it would be like a single book for each one.

[@littlekong7685]

Yeah, I could see double padds for cross referencing, because small screens. But the stacks of padds from crew reports and study material was rough to see now. In some cases it worked how we know today, like Harry downloading multiple works for Tom in Voyager, but I doubt seven would give him tens of thousands of books to read requiring that many padds. =p

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@littlekong7685 Seven giving him every book on each subject instead of just the required reading would be kind of in-character for her!

[@littlekong7685]

@@kaitlyn__L Fair, she might actually be the one to fill up the PADDs capacity for him =p

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@littlekong7685 I’m also reminded of how that prisoner told her he liked stargazing, and so she brought him… not pictures, but just lots of numbers in the form of statistical data about said stars! She sure can forget that not everybody else can absorb and understand information like she can. (Though if anyone can, Icheb probably can.) That being said, the idea of downloading them locally instead of just streaming them from the ship’s central computer is a bit odd viewed from today. Though given they get stuck planetside a lot maybe it’s habitual just in case.

[@johnn.ritter7060]

The original crystal memory/logic system goes back to HAL 9000. But HAL was, in essence an IBM mainframe computer.

[@MisterChips]

Star Trek writers: Spaceships that can fly three thousand times the speed of light? "Yep." Artificial gravity? "OK." Transporters and replicators? "You bet!" A computer that can fit in your hand and will respond to voice command?" "Pff don't be silly, nobody will believe that!"

[@greenaum]

Your parents' generation (or possibly grandparents) used to laugh at the (much older, even then) Flash Gordon serials, where they'd fly to different galaxies, then contact home on a radio that was the size of a cereal packet.

[@leonnobles545]

Fascinating.

[@christopherg2347]

Some remarks: - TOS gave use the idea of Flip Phones, which by now are a last century technology. And we managed transparent allumininum by now. - TNG put the the bug about Touchscreens and Tablets into our ear - of course it also did USB sticks :) - more often then not, it seems like the Code execution part of the chip was dominant. When they needed to overcome some security or another, swapping all but one chip to a idle position often did the trick

[@CathrineMacNiel]

So in essence: Have you tried turning it off and on again?

[@christopherg2347]

@@CathrineMacNiel??? This is one scenario where it does not apply. The systems stayed online while they moved around the chips.

[@CathrineMacNiel]

@@christopherg2347 The System stays online yes, but the program you are pulling and reinserting does not, ergo rebooting the program.

[@shaggycan]

Crystal storage goes back at least 70 years. But then it was considered to be science fiction.

[@johnwang9914]

Well Holographic storage goes back almost 70 years as the IBM patent is 1956 but it has been basically a photographic film of holographic diffraction patterns, basically a two dimensional surface. Obviously anything can be laser imprinted into a crystal but even Microsoft's Project Silica is a two dimensional image lasered at various depths in a sheet of quartz glass. The question is what do you mean by crystal storage? Is it storage in three dimensions and how would this be better than many two dimensional layers?

[@maarkaus48]

This is excellent to cover, but what about Self Sealing Stem-bolts? Could we have a breakdown of those?

[@sunspot42]

I always thought they were the successors to those little colored squares they used in TOS. If Isolinear chips presaged the arrival of USB sticks, those little squares in TOS were like the precursors to 3.5” floppy discs.

[@johnwang9914]

The pre-cursors to 3.5" floppies were 5.25" floppies, the precursor to 5.25" floppies were 8" floppies...

[@sunspot42]

@@johnwang9914 Thank you Mr. Pedantic for taking something literally when it clearly wasn’t intended that way. 🙄

[@kaitlyn__L]

They were also inspired by the various tape cartridge/cassette systems of their day :D at that time tape formulations were improving so much that you needed half the width and could run the tape at a quarter of the speed, compared to a reel to reel tape of a decade prior. So various futurists were imagining what we might do with tape if we kept getting it better and better.

[@James-lh7rj]

could you put together a video on Biomimetic gel and why it's exclusively controlled by the federation as a future Star Trek lore video please

[@keiyakins]

this just make me wonder why holo-janeway thought she'd fit on a single isolinear chip in the first place. Maybe her plan was to store only the delta against a stock holo-janeway, and be reassembled later?

[@toriasdax2166]

Im a little surprised you didn’t mention those colorful cartridges form TOS era.

[@CrimsonRegalia]

They're basically space 3D NAND NVME SSD's from what I heard

[@JosephAlanMeador]

Those genuine Cardassian optolithic data rods though! I wonder if they developed a re-writeable version? =)

[@MarvelX42]

Seems like those solid colored slabs that they would put into computers in TOS were an early form of Isolinear Chip.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Indeed, though they weren’t translucent. Though in Enterprise and Discovery they have a similar form factor to the TOS ones and _are_ translucent. TOS in dialogue called them tapes, but one can easily presuppose a 3D holographic tape instead of a 1D (like our audio tapes) tape. In fact, one could imagine the two coexisting, just as tape is used for server backups today. Spooling the surface up allows for a greatly increased surface area, at the expense of slower access time. So they might use the tapes for bulk backup but the slabs for faster access and sharing smaller files

[@kaseyboles30]

IF kiloquad is short for thousand quadrillion bytes, then 4 kiloquads is 4 exabytes . Or about 2 million high capacity (20tb)hard drives. Sot at least they have enough storage for a few AAA video games with the hires texture pack.

[@Sam-rk6wo]

Theres an episode where O'Brien teaches Jake what each of the DS9 Isolinear Rod colours mean

[@Blasted2Oblivion]

I would love to see how this compares to the Gould crystal tech that we see in SG-1.

[@garypalmer997]

Another example of how star trek has predicted, shaped the future.

[@Revan2908]

I do love the look of shock or even amazement you get from people who take some things for granted when you mention things that were inspired by Star Trek. One friend of mine looked absolutely floored when I told her about Uhura's earpiece and pointed to the girl's Bluetooth device for her phone lol

[@nemesis2445]

i always assumed that a "quad" was essentially just what we know as "bits/bytes" but instead of our known binary system of 0-1, they are using some system that stores a number between 0-3. Considering how we use something similar to increase storage capacity in NAND flash (multiple voltage levels instead of off/on) it might be that we end up with some way of computing data using more than 2 states as well. although considering our NAND flash again a quad could refer to multiple bits or bytes in the same way.

[@greenaum]

Using multiple levels in flash is one thing, the storage cells store multiple levels, then the reader circuits have to distinguish those, and convert the result into binary. In a processor, though, you'd need to use analogue circuits for everything. Transistors are OK in analogue mode one at a time, like in a music amplifier. But they run a LOT hotter, since, say, if a transistor is powered by 5V and is outputting 1V, the extra 4V have to dissipate as heat inside the transistor's body. Whereas with binary, there's either no current, so no heat, or else the transistor is fully on, dissipating nothing (well, very little). On / off (called "saturated") operation is the most efficient. And even so, a modern CPU can put out 100W of heat, which is about the most a heatsink could imaginably get rid of, without using liquid cooling. Even with liquid cooling, first the heat has to travel through the silicon to get to the heatsink, and each transistor, out of the billions in a CPU. Some GPUs contain 54 billion little transistors on one chip! Because the cells in flash mostly just sit there all day, rarely changing state, or even powered up, they're OK using varying voltage levels, only the interface circuits need to dissipate anything, and they're not too complicated, nothing like the scale of a CPU. In a CPU a big proportion of the transistors change state at every clock tick, 3 billion or so times a second.