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Lets say your region becomes isolated for some reason: How'd you build computers in that situation?
If I understand correctly there's plenty of factories around the world capable of manufacturing 1980s-era microchips. And if your region doesn't have one, projectors can with some effort be repurposed to write microscopic circuits onto photosensitive silicon.
You'd still need to find somewhere to get the materials... And purify them... I don't feel qualified to comment on that!
1/3?
Perhaps the main thing we do with our computers is to store data on them, so what's a relatively low-tech way to store non-trivial amounts of data?
Fragile wires is an attractive way to create write-once (PROM) microchips. Though in some way or other we'd probably use magnetism again to store data. A grid of wires, with the columns using thicker wires & being wrapped around the rows is an attractive approach that was quickly overshadowed in our history.
Tapes are another good option!
2/3?
For human-interaction...
Modern cost-reduced keyboards require little more than molds & silkscreens. Though we can't have modern "optical" mice with 1980s-era compute, so it seems reasonable to go back to ball-mice.
For output... I think we should be able to manage speakers & (even if incandescent) lights. Black & white CRT-monitors may well become a value-add. I'm assuming that if we can manufacture microchips we can draw a vacuum.
Any further thoughts?
3/3 Fin!
@alcinnz @permacomputer was a little project i started a while ago to answer this question!
i seem to remember you can make gallium-arsenide transistors by hand
i personally would not be opposed to going back to 70s/80s microcomputer technology, it was very educational and promoted literacy