In article , Bigelow103
@hotmail.com says...

In the movie Mission Impossible they use a scanner I think it is
either BC245 or BC220 next to a laptop and it is searching
frequencies. what are they doing there?? It's almost like they are
faking it and using the scanner as a counter? I was only half watching
it and didn't see what they were hoping to do but the frequencies were
running up from 30mhz to upper 40s and they mentioned that it was
picking up the hard drive operating frequencies too. What do computers
normally run at in mhz?

This sounds to me like typical RF-ignorant Hollywood "creative
license."

While all hard drives have a microprocessor on them, with a clock
oscillator, listening to whatever tiny amount of emission it produces
(even assuming you can pick it up without a preamp) is a waste of time.
If you hear anything at all, it'll be a blank carrier, perhaps with some
digital noise on it.

As for modern computers, they operate in multiples of GIGAhertz.
My own workstation, an AMD Athlon MP system, operates in excess of 2GHz.

Again, listening to whatever RF emissions come out of a computer
is an exercise in utter time-wasting. There's nothing there that the
human ear -- or even another computer -- can make any sense of.

Now, monitoring the emissions off Ethernet cables with another
computer, and some extremely sophisticated (and expensive) receiving
gear... that's another issue, one that I don't have enough knowledge on
to go any further than saying "yes, it's technically possible."

Keep the peace(es).

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