Re: Washing Machines no longer spinning
I came across this misleadingly titled YouTube piece:
How Putin uses washing machines to produce missiles: Russia’s neighbors help to bypass sanctions
Which whilst showing a step change increase in white goods consumption by a group of neighbouring countries, favourable to Putin, also notes Russia is in dire need of household appliances which could mean they are destined for consumers rather than salvage.
> One showed an early '90s vintage TI DSP chip
This the line of thinking I was favouring: whether early 1990s mil tech is broadly equivalent to recent white goods tech, thus permitting some level of reuse. We achieved a lot with 8 bit processors and FPAs and very limited amounts of memory. Given these were still largely discrete components and my pre 2010 white good also contain a lot of discrete components and modules it is not implausible that some components could be repurposed.
However, I am skeptical about the really modern stuff, given the amount of miniaturisation, integration and surface mounting in today’s electronics. However, I would not be surprised if discrete components have not been replaced by a more capable compute module that can be programmed to support internet and associated functionality: an Atmel AVR could run a washing machine or a missile.