Re: How would you Nuclear Hardened Your Apple?

[mikew50@aol.com (MikeW50)]

>     It seems like wrapping the motherboard, KB card, and each slot card in
2-3
>seperate layers of aluminum foil should work.

I trust this is an academic excercise. If not, you need to find another Apple
II nerd to help, because it takes two to make a pair-o-noids.

OK, that was bad. But it felt good. :)

How close the conductor is to the thing it is protecting isn't that important
for a Faraday cage. All you need is a perfect conductor that forms a completely
unbroken membrane around the thing it is protecting. The conducting layer
should not touch conducting parts of the thing you are protecting.

You can't find a perfect conductor, but as has been suggested, aluminum foil is
probably as good as you can get for a cost-effective solution. You might as
well wrap the whole GS, though. That protects the machine and its internal
parts in a single package. For more protection, you could wrap the whole thing
in a layer of nonconductive paper, bubblewrap or foam for insulation, then add
another layer. That gives you a Faraday cage inside a Faraday cage, so any
leakage from the outside cage due to holes or the imperfect nature of the
conductor are picked up by the inner cage.

Will it work? There's only one way to find out, and that's to try it. That's a
big part of what Phillips Labs, formerly (and more appropriately named) the Air
Force Weapons Lab, here in Albuquerque. They use big EMP machines to literally
try out various systems. Someone there could probably tell you if this would
work... but then they'd have to kill you. ;)

Mike Westerfield