I was just watching the episode 'Cause and Effect' from 1992, and there's a real close up of the Android Data's head with a plate removed, at just over 30 minutes in. I never noticed that inside Data's head, you can actually see ordinary looking 5% carbon resistors and solder. He has LEDs all over the place, and a bit of a rat's nest of wires too. Mounted on foam by the looks of it.

And in this episode LaForge attach's a futuristic PCB, and indeed there are 4 old style can transistors, some more ordinary resistors, some red ones, some big solder blobs, and some other stuff.

Over all it looks rather low quality, by real-world standards, if it was from a factory, it would be a "bodge" job.


I'm not complaining, I just never noticed how ordinary and low tech it actually looks, and I'm still pretty new to EE. I'd say it's also 1 of the tightest shots of Data's "skull", normally when his cover's are off you really only see the blinking LEDs.

LOL, great episode.


I'm trying to attach a 1.5MB png screenshot, doesn't seem to work

 

I just never noticed how ordinary and low tech it actually looks, and I'm still pretty new to EE. I'd say it's also 1 of the tightest shots of Data's "skull", normally when his cover's are off you really only see the blinking LEDs.

It's just a prop and most people wouldn't care or be able to differentiate between low and high tech.

 

The average person doesn't know a resistor from a chip. Let alone an SMT component. In a modern situation resistors would be as small as a single date digit on a dime. Those are the smallest I've worked with in my career. They're so small they don't even hardly show up in a photograph without magnification. Old style resistors and can transistors are visually more impressive. That along with LED's. But tell me - what purpose do all those LED's serve? Assuming this is a REAL and FUNCTIONING "Positronic" brain. Nope. People need to relate to something familiar. That's why Data's head is so 70's tech.