The Real Story Behind Steins;Gate IBN 5100: Explained!

Рет қаралды 2,774

2 жыл бұрын

In Steins;Gate the cast is in search of a vintage computer called the IBN (IBM) 5100. But did they really need one? In this video I explain how you would deal with running or understanding computer code from Cassette or Tape archives. I also go in depth on the realism of the files found on SERNs network after the computer is up and running.
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@MrBenMcLean 10 ай бұрын

I was just overjoyed to even see a retro computer of such a vintage referenced in a work of popular culture, kind of like watching AMC's Halt and Catch Fire. But the problem with the information we're given in Steins;Gate is fundamental: the writers clearly do not understand what programming is and how programming code differs from other data on the computer. Admittedly, the line between code and data can get blurry sometimes, but absolutely not in this case. This is research notes, tables of experimental data and pictures, not programs. I believe the word the Steins;Gate writers or translators were looking for was "decryption." If we wanted to fix this story, then we'd need to theorize that the IBN 5100 contains proprietary hardware capable of feats of decryption that, while they are replicable in theory, are rendered impractical to replicate without access to the hardware either to use it directly or for the purposes of reverse-engineering it. We are assuming that some (fictional) unsung genius of mathematics created special hardware that shipped with the (fictional) IBN 5100 which the public hasn't replicated and that shortly after its release, CERN bought IBN out before the public got any other chance to receive this hardware. This is why the IBN 5100 release in the 1970s would be the only way to get the decryption hardware. Next, we assume that no one who is a private IBN 5100 owner on the Internet has shared the decryption key or method used by this hardware and that SERN adopted the IBN 5100 method for its internal use starting in the 1970s and has successfully managed to keep the methods used by the IBN 5100 decryption hardware a trade secret. The public could have reverse engineered it, if any of the very small number of IBN 5100 owners were willing to share, but none of them have been. Then we assume that SERN kept storing its essential data in this same old school encrypted format which the public has not had access to since the 1970s all the way up to 2010. They virtualized it and just kept using it as a virtual machine all this time. The internal format of the image file must have received extensions over the years to allow it to store more data over time, which is how you could realistically end up with JPGs and other anachronistic files being packaged inside an archaic format from the 1970s. So while the format is from the 1970s, the actual data could be from last week, just being stored in the old timey encrypted format. That would be why Daru needs a computer from the 1970s to read data from 2010. Encryption. Encryption is the only way this story can work. If you're at all familiar with how big business and government interacts with technology, it is quite often the case that they do not want to change anything they don't absolutely need to change and will keep using archaic file formats and protocols for as long as possible, so I find that part believable. So if, any time they say "programming code" we assume they mean "encrypted data" on top of all those other assumptions, I think it's possible to rescue this story from total implausibility. However, I'm working from what the English dub of the anime says. God only knows what the visual novel said in Japanese that could be completely impossible to mean anything.

@MrBenMcLean 6 ай бұрын

Perhaps a better way to look at it would be to ask the question: Is the computer information in Steins;Gate more or less plausible than the computer information in Disney's Tron?

@zestylem0n 4 ай бұрын

as someone who watched steins gate last week, I'm glad you made this video about an anime that came out over a decade ago haha.

@squirlmy Жыл бұрын

Firstly, you and everyone watching this should look up the actual John Titor 2001 hoax. Titor(Larry Haber) said he was a time-traveller who needed a IBM 5100 to debug various legacy computer programs in 2036 - a possible reference to the UNIX year 2038 problem(also real thing). In support of his story, he described unpublicized features of the 5100. When internet researchers started seriously researching who Titor was, they came across Larry Haber, whose brother worked on development of the 5100. Truly this was a bit clumsily adapted into Steins;Gate, but I think the plot point should be measured against faithfulness to the hoax, not realism. The Z-program may be a reference to "Z-machine", a virtual machine developed by Infocom, creators of the Zork adventure series. They made much of the series, and other text adventures, to run on the Z-machine (Z for Zork, their first hit) because they needed it to run on many different 8-bit computers. PCs did not yet dominate the game market, so the text games, after being developed on a PDP-10(11?), thanks to the Z-machine it could be ported to Apple II, Atari, Comodore64, and DOS PCs. Finally, I'm not sure if the creators were aware of Symbolics Lisp Machines. This advanced computer hardware, particularly suited to AI, ran a LISP operating system, Open Genera, on "Lisp Machines", whose CPUs hardcoded with LISP. As the hardware part of the business failed, they turned to the only 64-bit CPU available, the DEC(later Compaq) Alpha to Port Open Genera. But even this did not feel fast enough compared to the original hardware, so they used not just Alpha Assembly code to run Open Genera, but microcode. This made the whole system faster, but that microcode would be specific to one version of the Alpha CPU. While this is quite a bit of elaborate computer history to speculate about, it IS an example of specific code that only runs on a particular computer, for example as it was supposed to on the "IBN 5100". It is not so far fetched, after all, although I'm sure they didn't want to teach a lesson about, or make such vague references to, microcode, assembler, virtual machines, etc. Reference to BASIC and JPEG makes more sense to a general audience. Also, I dare you to find an easily available IBM 5100 software emulator! The Hercules emulator might be your best bet, but still. Even better, find or port a software Z-machine running ZIL language, that will run on that 5100 emulator! The 16-bit computer should be powerful enough to do it, and that would be pretty much the equivalent of what is supposed to be happening in Steins;Gate!

@jacksonmiller6609 Жыл бұрын

I’ve been looking all over for a video like this. It was pretty clear to me that there was no way the IBN 5100 was actually necessary, but I wasn’t totally sure why. Part of that is because I honestly didn’t even understand exactly what they used it for?? As far as I can tell, it’s just a means to the end of being able to use sern’s remote database? I’ve been trying to think of how they could have changed things to make the ibn 5100 actually necessary, but it seems pretty tough to figure out how access to a remote database could be confined to very specific hardware in a truly foolproof way… I feel like the easiest avenue would be to say that the stuff on the database was encrypted in some way that only the 5100 could decrypt, but with how much godly “hacking” ability Daru’s given, it seems hard to believe he wouldn’t be able to find a way it. I find encryption super boring, but generally human-readable things way easier to decrypt than things like keys that are just arbitrary bytes, right? Maybe the story could have been that the 5100 had a hardware-encoded key that was necessary for authenticating w the sern servers? I forget exactly why but I think that’s something google does w their phones? Even still tho, if Daru is such a good hacker then I feel like anime rules would allow him to get access to the database w out authentication anyway.

@squirlmy Жыл бұрын

"Microcode" is a technique that interposes an intermediate layer between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. Microcode is used in general-purpose central processing units, although in current desktop CPUs, it can be a fallback path for problems that the hardwired control unit cannot handle. Basically, when Assembly code (sometimes called Assembler) isn't fast enough, sometimes programmers resort to Microcode, which is often unique to a specific CPU, and a specific machine. Also, I'm not so sure Daru is a "god" of a hacker, after all he hangs out with Okabe, who wildly overestimates his own science abilities, even if he's competent. It was never clear to me that he wasn't just extremely lucky to get his time machine running, and how much future-SERN interfered. It would not have surprised me if EVERYTHING involving time travel was due to visitors in future timelines sending info and actual components to Okabe.

@jacksonmiller6609 Жыл бұрын

@@squirlmy oh well the idea of program that can only run on the ibm 5100 makes sense, but what exactly would such a program do that couldn’t be replicated on another computer?