[Worldbuilding] Divergent, retro and other 'not of this world' Computers and Software

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

So my scheme with urgent real-time replacement of micro-tubes isn't legit?

You seemed to be talking about having built-in redundancy, so that single failures could be tolerated? The problem is heat. A computer that has redundancy to handle such things contains more than twice as many components, so there's more to go wrong, and you're generating more heat. Heat is always bad for the life of a machine, especially one that's soldered together.

You say this is "space opera", but really, it is more "science fantasy". Try being less specific, it creates fewer disbelief-triggers.