Correct. Read the intro/history in the SR3 main book. In 2005 (IIRC), optical chips were introduced that were immune to EMP.

As far as SR is concerned, modern equipment is immune to EMP.

There's areas where it should be bothered, like wireless systems, but the general tone is that it doesn't matter.

Start thinking in terms of "synthetic muscles" and your need for motors will become obsolete. Biological muscles and nervous systems are pretty much immune to EMP. The same could be true for synthetic muscles.
And yes, superconductivity (at room temperature and above *as in SR*) would most certainly have impact on EMP behaviour, because EMP-effects are based on immense, short term currents created to field flux in the electromagnetic spectrum. One important variable when it comes to currents is the resistance of the conducting material. Since superconducters have a resistance near zero, there will be some differences (That doesn't mean however that a superconductors can take infinite currents) ...

And of course there are possibilities for shielding systems like cyberlimbs, due to fact that normally they don't have the need to posses things like antennas to communicate externally. Good old Faraday can help there ...

And now expand that idea onto the reduction of KEs with advancing cyberware grades ...

And consider this: It's possible to implant things like Cyberweapons into meat limbs. Those weapons also do have a certain KE requirement when installed into cyber limbs. So the use of motors and the subsequent lowered space requirements works only as partial explaination

1)no, the main problem is different. say my amd microprocessor at the moment at home iirc takes 2.2 volts
at 2.5 v it wouldnt operate correctly.
at anything beyond a few volt above that it will be fried, literally, much in the same manner you wil fry an expensive RAM chip if you touch it while loaded with static.
magnetically stored media will probably be a thing of the past by 2060 anyway if current trends continue.

optical, as they dont have any long wires, cant build a big current through them directly, unless the field is tremendous.

2)Mybad on ares, I thought they had been hired to deal with the issue.

in any case, `urban area`as a reason not to use emps is not good enough, reasonable EMP bombs have variable ranges from few metres to about 200m in real life. carpetbombing the arcology woudnt have caused any major issues outside it. or any major non-electronical damage to it. also dont forget there are <already, in rl> ways to generate emp`s in a direction <microwaves, uw waves,e tc.>

as for hardening.. could be, whole arcology could be considered a cage of faraday, or near enough to nullify most non nuke-level EMPs, but still.. this makes it more difficult campaignwise as emp devices might/would be used a lot.
I dont like the concept of hardening in game as in RL hardening is not an exact science. basically hardening is building cages to nullify the fields and relays for any huge excess power to drain to, but little things like dirt, humidity etc can make it easy for current to literally jump to where you dont want it to go, frying the chips

note: super conductors in themselves can easily channel anything an emp pulse can produce over their length, their motive force might be supercharged for a bit, but an emp pulse is so short-lived that it likely wouldnt do much.<assuming they are based on the rl experiments of floating superconducting magnets>

currently I dotn allow emps in my game to do anything much more than severely disrupt the power lines & get gridnet guys mad at you but am looking at other options..

DS