Why couldn't House just write a new update code for his army?

[vg97]

Maybe there's something I'm missing. But House is supposed to be a tech genius, right? The chip holds the data that upgrades the Securitrons to Mark II. Now, Mark II is an operating system, so it should be a lot harder to write that. But House already designed the chip before the war, so I assume he knows how to do that.
We know House started sending his Securitrons around New Vegas in 2274, but he was already awake 136 years before that, in 2138.

Why couldn't a tech genius write a new operating system for his army, instead of looking for a chip that he wasn't even sure still existed? He literally had more than 100 years to write that. And sure, he needed the chip to open the doors and update his new army in the Weather monitoring station, where Caesar's fort is. So he couldn't have found a new way to open that door, even if that means hacking his own tech before someone like Caesar arrived?

But even if that was impossible, wouldn't it be easier to locate the chip and then upgrade his army in the monitoring station if his Securitrons from the Lucky 38 already had a new OS that he could have written? I mean, he had time to code Jane and couldn't do that? Am I missing something?

 

[Hardboiled Android]

There's never really any explanation offered, and since we can't look at House's source code we can't really speculate.

The best inference is that the operating system House was trying to design was so complex that the hardware to re-create it literally does not exist anymore, and cannot be recreated without first having kickstarted industrial civilization, posing something of a chicken-egg dilemna.

Also it's not inconceiveable that House designed his system to be encrypted such that, without the Platinum Chip, even he couldn't access it to make changes. Presumably whatever changes he made to Jane were very superficial and didn't require the same level of access as updating other securitrons to have actual functional change.

 

[Zvezda]

Maybe there's something I'm missing. But House is supposed to be a tech genius, right? The chip holds the data that upgrades the Securitrons to Mark II. Now, Mark II is an operating system, so it should be a lot harder to write that. But House already designed the chip before the war, so I assume he knows how to do that.

House designed the chip (apparently) but I'd assume he didn't literally write the entire OS. More likely he laid out the outlines and the programming was done at an industrial scale. Operating systems today take thousands of workers to write, let alone whatever House needed, and I don't think many people in the Mojave specialise in software engineering.

 

[Atomic Postman]

Hardware on the chip was special, one of a kind, we're told this. State of the art stuff.

In the Fallout world, computers work far differently to our own. Assumedly, this OS required something as complex and unique as the chip to actually function.

Basing your assumptions for how tech/programming work when Fallout is an entirely different world with different technology is somewhat of a fool's errand.

 

[vg97]

Hardware on the chip was special, one of a kind, we're told this. State of the art stuff.

I remember we're told is proprietary and that you need special hardware to read it.

Basing your assumptions for how tech/programming work when Fallout is an entirely different world with different technology is somewhat of a fool's errand.

Is it? Is it a stretch to ask why couldn't House reverse-engineer his own technology? Tech is different in Fallout, but I think there's more than enough elements throughout the series for us to assume some vraisemblance.

House designed the chip (apparently) but I'd assume he didn't literally write the entire OS.

I guess that makes sense, maybe he wouldn't be able to reuse code from the old OS and would have to start from scratch.

The best inference is that the operating system House was trying to design was so complex that the hardware to re-create it literally does not exist anymore, and cannot be recreated without first having kickstarted industrial civilization, posing something of a chicken-egg dilemna.

This also makes sense, maybe he didn't have the tools to recreate the data needed.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

Is it? Is it a stretch to ask why couldn't House reverse-engineer his own technology? Tech is different in Fallout, but I think there's more than enough elements throughout the series for us to assume some vraisemblance.

I think it's possible. The underlying hardware is obviously very different, and in terms of programming or coding a lot of the conventions and principles behind it are somewhat arbitray. Slightly different choices at the beginning of the history of computing could cascade into things that are basically incomprehensible to our understanding of computer science by 2077.

 

[laclongquan]

By any definition an os upgrade is a beast of a code writing. Millions of line of code. All concerning different aspects and eritten by different people.

So.even if house is able to code, he still cant code it all.

And by all data house is not a genius about coding. Its like asking einstein to code.

 

[Morgan_]

Because MacGuffin.

Really though, I feel Android puts it as good as it can be here. Gonna need to get your hands on some state of the art facilities and talent to recreate what seems to be one of the most advanced pieces of tech from the prewar world. Since it's a small computer chip made out of silicon/platinum, etc you're going to need something like this to recreate it, or anything that could approximate it's function:

Spoiler

House is smart and has a lot of resources at his disposal, but nothing like this. otherwise he wouldn't need the courier, or atleast not as much as he did.

 

[Walpknut]

The Platinum chip is a custom made piece of hardware manufactured on specialized facilities with complex code. He made the Bunker so it could only be openned with his propietary hardware and spent millions creating it. Now he is in the Post apocalypse and none of the people or infrastructure used to manufacture it are around. He kinda lucked out on the Chip even being recoverable to begin with.

 

[Kaptin]

Because from what's been said in New Vegas, that chip contains hardware which he cannot replicate anymore.

 

[laclongquan]

Yeah, theres that too. And its much harder to overcome.

 

[PsychoSniper]

I suspect the main issue was time.

House hadn't been awake but for so long before the game took place.

He would have needed more time than he had to fix the OS issue, the platnum chip was presumably a permament readonly storage device that the final code was installed on.

So yeah, vitally important because without it House would have likely had to end up accepting some kind of deal with the NCR to keep the Legion from overrunning Vegas.