Is there a rad-hardened version of z80?
Collapse OS
11–20 of 323 posts
Re: Collapse OS
#12Lets think about what technologies are most likely to be around after an apocalyptic event... Probably something that everyone has, that there are millions of.. something with a screen and a keyboard... very light and easy to transport.... maybe even something with a battery, and signals processing chips.... na screw it, lets just use a desktop. :P
Re: Collapse OS
#13A fascinating thought experiment.
As the author points out, probably useless, but still fascinating.
Re: Collapse OS
#14I like the concept, but I'm not sure that the Z-80 is the best implementation substrate -- it's got a lot of oddball properties and special case instruction encodings (due in part to the way things were squeezed in around the base 8080 instruction set).
A PDP-8 can be implemented in fewer transistors (original DEC wiring diagrams are on bitsavers, and github has source for several clones in Verilog), and DEC already shipped a moderately full software suite for it.
Re: Collapse OS
#15Lets think about what technologies are most likely to be around after an apocalyptic event... Probably something that everyone has, that there are millions of.. something with a screen and a keyboard... very light and easy to transport.... maybe even something with a battery, and signals processing chips.... na screw it, lets just use a desktop. :P
To be fair, the scope of a project that would require the ability to jailbreak / root arbitrary mobile devices running arbitrary OS versions would be massive, much less creating an OS that would run on all of them.
Smart phones are a lot of things, but general purpose computers are not one of them.
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#16I really like this idea!
Makes me wonder what possibilities become, er, possible if we up the computing power a few orders of magnitude to a Pi Zero W or Pi 4.
From what I understand it’s fairly easy to use a Pi as an LTE Router for longer ranges and WiFi for shorter ranges. I wonder if the right microsd cards and were stockpiled one would be able to reconnect several communities in a mesh.
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#17Why Z80? Is it like the 2nd most common processor type or something? Where would one find a Z80 when scavenging?
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#18I like the concept, but I'm not sure that the Z-80 is the best implementation substrate -- it's got a lot of oddball properties and special case instruction encodings (due in part to the way things were squeezed in around the base 8080 instruction set). A PDP-8 can be implemented in fewer transistors (original DEC wiring diagrams are on bitsavers, and github has source for several clones in Verilog), and DEC already…
I think the point is in that there are so many z80 chips out there for scavenging and that there are plenty of consumer devices that can be used (like TI calculators). Even if they stop making them today, the supply will last long.
Re: Collapse OS
#19This is a fun idea. I often think about hoarding a collection of software and media for an end of the world scenario. Then another year goes by and the world is still here.
No law against updating the software collection and the media ...that's what I do.
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#20So, let me see if I understand this correctly: this is supposed to run on z80-based computers after an armageddon comes and all the other "modern" computers are out of business, so people start building them by scavenging parts. Ok. So, first of all, how are you supposed to download this thing onto your homebrew computer, given that internet will most likely be down? "But if the collapse magnitude is right, then this…
It's just a few thousand Z80 instructions in assembly notation. You can print it on paper, store the listings somewhere safe and type the code in by hand just like in the old days.
Why is that possible in this fictional reality but stockpiling an RPi isn't?