BOFH: You just can't go around killing people

What do you mean why? 'Cause you can't

By Simon Travaglia • Get more from this author

Posted in BOFH, 5th November 2010 12:00 GMT

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Episode 15

Bot Wars IV - The Screenplay

[Black Screen]

Several screens of multi-coloured static flash by before the words:

INITIAL TESTS INDICATE

UNIT OK

appear in large tasteless block letters on the screen. Another burst of static crowds the screen before a Camera image appears with the top half of the PFY’s upside-down face blocking the screen...

Stephen: There, that’s got it.

Cut to shot of a large shared office space, walls adorned with flat-screen monitors showing everything from the outside temperature and humidity to a screen entirely devoted to a countdown to the release date of Duke Nukem Forever in large red cheque-font letters. Two men stand beside two small robots, one in the process of powering up, the other dormant.

Simon: It’s not going to work...

Stephen: It is. I’ve rebuilt them from the ground up! They’ve got complete building maps, including the locations of all power & network outlets as well as coffee and vending machines...

Simon: Not going to work...

Stephen: They know how to plug themselves in to recharge when the battery is low...

Simon: Still not going to work...

Stephen: They’ve got high torque drive motors, full 360 degree cameras – including up and down - GPS locational awareness and completely new, and vastly improved advanced neural learning AI capable of ...

Simon: Starting to sound like Terminator...

Stephen: (excitedly) It knows about that!

Simon: It knows about what?

Stephen: Terminator. See, in order to make the AI more aware I ran through the footage of all its past mistakes – the stairwells, the lift shafts, etc. Then I played it Robocop and all the Terminators except Salvation. Oh, and I loaded the defender MAME rom – for the noises.

Simon: Defender? Wh... Doesn’t matter, still not going to work....

Stephen: It will! The AI is state-of-the art and the on-board processor turned out to be a quad core...

Simon: Still won’t work. Watch...

Stephen: Watch what? (looking up from the desktop monitor) Hey, the code’s just reverted!

As we watch we see a multitude of LEDs on the front of the powering-up robot flash simultaneously, then three words – ‘booting alternate ROM’ – appear on the LCD panel. A red lamp beside the panel starts glowing.

Simon: Yep, did the same to me yesterday when I tried to make it do deliveries. It ran for a couple of minutes before some watchdog circuit reloaded memory from a secondary ROM.

Stephen: Bugger!

Simon: You can restart it but that just gives you another few minutes. I think the bot company did it so they can only be used ‘for good’.

Stephen: Where’s the fun in that?!

Simon: Indeedy. That said though, it occurred to me late last night that we could clip the Vcc pin of the backup ROM and it wouldn’t be able to load from it.

Stephen: So which chip is the backup ROM?

Simon: You mean which of the 30 or so unlabelled and seemingly identical chips is the secondary ROM? No idea – But I suspect we can find out with a simple soldering iron.

Stephen: Ah, desolder the Vcc pin of each chip in turn until the reset no longer works!

Simon: I was thinking more of holding the soldering iron on a chip till it stops working, but we can go with your idea if you like.

Stephen: Nah, I haven’t got any desoldering braid – and besides it’s a multilayer board.

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