Sci fi scenario question, what type of computer would I use?

Factual Questions
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The only value to any of the means of using obscure hardware or software is in keeping the aliens from being immediatly familiar with commonly used technology. Take any machine with you and they’ll learn how it works. But that wouldn’t give them knowledge of someone’s PC or Enterprise server works. Presumably that might slow them down a little in their galactic credit card scam is.

The OP requires a computer as modern as possible, so the aliens will understand the level of technology no matter what hardware is used. If speed doesn’t matter, there are plenty of old CPUs that weren’t used in large numbers, and certainly aren’t used now for in a way that would help dominate mankind.

The software has to be customized to keep the aliens from learning anything about computer languages, tools, or common applications. But if only object code is present, it simply has to be obfuscated to remove patterns that would reveal the operation of a compiler. But they will still be able to learn how the code works.

So the only thing that matters is using a CPU with a general purpose instruction set, and custom software.

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[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Sounds like a modern System Z Mainframe would work. Quite different, but already existing & working, much faster & more powerful, and a much more secure system.
[/QUOTE]

If your hypothetical aliens get anywhere near a bank, we’re sunk. We (the bank I work for) have dozens of Z9 and Z10 mainframes.

And, as **Derleth **notes, IBM is big on backwards-compatability, and pretty much any existing OS can be run on a virtual machine on a Z, especially if it runs on x86 architechure.

There’s really no real-world point in it, but you can run Mac OS X on a Z. IIRC, you have to install a VM client such as Z/VOS, then once you’ve got Windows up, install OS X via a Windows VM such as Parallels. So many places to stop up the plumbing, but it does work.

But, would it be useful to mask the hardware like that?

If you want to limit communications, go back to something like Windows 3.1 and lay Norton Desktop on it. NDD helped make Win3 useful, but at the same time, Win3 didn’t communicate with much natively and needed some tinkering and futzing to do so.