The Zone's riddle

A few months ago, twenty mysterious chips appeared in the Zone. Nobody seems to know where they came from or why they appeared. Miner feels there must be a good reason for this. You should collect all of them.
== Walkthrough ==
=== Sidorovich ===
Visit Sidorovich and talk to him about the chips. He tells you that the scientists analyzed those chips and came to the conclusion that the material they're made of is not found on Earth.
After talking with Sidorovich, many NPCs open up their chain quests.
=== Collecting the chips ===
This quest is the infamous "hoarding" part of OP-2.2. Chips can be obtained at the end of various NPC's chain quests, which require ridiculous amount of items. Most of the required items are rather generic, but some are unique and locked behind various quests up to the mid-late game. The last chip is given for Artifacts for Dragunov, which is the exception and doesn't belong to chain quests.
There are 20 chips total. Here's the list of the quests that have a chip as a reward:
# Sidorovich's chain
# Barkeep's chain
# Sakharov's chain
# Lukash's chain
# Petrenko's chain
# Adrenaline's chain
# Winsor's chain
# Vasily's chain
# Doctor's chain
# Kalmyk's chain
# Cross's chain
# Mole's chain
# Kuznetsov's chain
# Skinflint's chain
# Garik's chain
# Docent Zagorsky's chain
# Captain Ivantsov's chain
# Fistful's chain
# Freebie's chain
# Artifacts for Dragunov
=== Handing in the chips ===
Dialogue will trigger after holding all 20 chips in your inventory at once, implying that Klyonov will know more about the chips' purpose. Bring all of them along with the Chip reader obtained in Stash of the "Monolith" to Warlab to further the storyline. Arnie will call you to start Old friend.
== Notes ==
== Bugs ==
* Since this is an umbrella quest that includes quite a few NPC chain quests, some bugs of these NPCs can prevent you from advancing this storyline:
** Docent Zagorsky can easily die to nearby pseudodogs since he's not marked as an Essential NPC.
** Freebie can fail to arrive to the Swamps after Bad deal (see that page) and be lost in the process.
** Fistful can get stuck on his route to Cross' campfire, never starting his dialogue (he starts talking in a couple days after arriving to the campfire).