[deleted]
Collapse OS
151–160 of 323 posts
Re: Collapse OS
#152I like the Collapse OS concept. I once typed Fig Forth from a booklet I ordered from America into a Sharp Z80 computer. Society was in the main computer free at the time. It was like the post collapse era. To restart the software industry from scratch; I recommend etching a modern version of that Fig Forth booklet onto stone tablets; perhaps provide a scheme interpreter written in forth as well. They will never need…
I was also thinking that if I had to start from scratch, Forth would be a great way to do it. I'm not familiar with Fig Forth, but I just ran across these assembly sources for various early CPU architectures: http://www.forth.org/fig-forth/contents.html but they look really long. I wonder if that booklet you had was simpler than these. (Any idea if it's available online?) I was thinking something like jones forth https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10187248 which has a minimal assembly part (which is mostly comments explaining how it all works) and then quickly moves to implementing Forth in Forth itself.
Re: Collapse OS
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the current size of the world's population - is dependent on a lot of programmable devices. Not to mention the energy supply chain. If the supply chain required to make electronics collapses, that probably also means the energy supply chain has collapsed, or has at least been severely disrupted. That seems far more likely to be damaging and far more quickly that a lack of ability to keep a microcontroller running.…
Electricity generation does not require a global supply chain. Modern computer manufacturing does.
True as far as it goes, but a couple comments:
* I was referring to the energy supply chain, not just electricity. Energy as a whole is very much a global supply chain. (And even more than that, it's very globally interconnected in terms of pricing, etc.)
* As a thought experiment, consider completely shutting down the computer manufacturing supply for two weeks. Then consider the same for the energy supply chain. Which of those has more immediate and profound impact?
Keep in mind that I'm not saying that either of these domains is unimportant. Just that society would and has felt the importance of one a lot more acutely and a lot more suddenly.
Re: Collapse OS
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry if this is a naive question, but if the assumption is "doomsday", how would one know how to access vault and that it even exists?
The vault will have a fingerprint sensor, which will be stuck on an incomplete online firmware update.
And people are baffled that the 2fa SMS to reset it can not be delivered.
Re: Collapse OS
#155I don't think just developing a Z80 operating system is enough. The whole ecosystem needs to be preserved. In agriculture, we have the doomsday seed vault [0] just for this purpose. If we anticipate collapse of the current economic system or society, I think we should build a doomsday computer vault, that keeps everything we need to rebuild the computing industry in a underground bunker. It keeps everything we need i…
Bad news on that seed vault. [1] 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-s...
Oh, no. I can’t believe it’s gotten this bad. I’m amazed we haven’t done much in the way of climate change control. It’s going to be too late very, very soon.
Re: Collapse OS
#156I don't think just developing a Z80 operating system is enough. The whole ecosystem needs to be preserved. In agriculture, we have the doomsday seed vault [0] just for this purpose. If we anticipate collapse of the current economic system or society, I think we should build a doomsday computer vault, that keeps everything we need to rebuild the computing industry in a underground bunker. It keeps everything we need i…
Bad news on that seed vault. [1] 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-s...
> “A lot of water went into the start of the tunnel and then it froze to ice, so it was like a glacier when you went in,” she told the Guardian. Fortunately, the meltwater did not reach the vault itself, the ice has been hacked out, and the precious seeds remain safe for now at the required storage temperature of -18C.
Re: Collapse OS
#157I don't think just developing a Z80 operating system is enough. The whole ecosystem needs to be preserved. In agriculture, we have the doomsday seed vault [0] just for this purpose. If we anticipate collapse of the current economic system or society, I think we should build a doomsday computer vault, that keeps everything we need to rebuild the computing industry in a underground bunker. It keeps everything we need i…
I'd like to see a log being kept in orbit. Like every 10 years it's rotated (FIFO, oldest comes down, new one is launched) with a large delta so that it might survive our current civilization in case of global / climate craziness.
How would we get at the information if we don't have the technology to launch a rocket/spaceship to retrieve it?
Re: Collapse OS
#158Why z80 and not x86 or AArch, which are both more readily accessible today? This whole idea reeks of someone trying to reconcile their love of old computers with their poorly considered death-cult Malthusianism.
Z80 chips are way more common than even x86, by merit of them having proliferated in embedded microcontrollers.
By accessibility I didn't really mean "commonality in terms of numbers," I mean that they are generally more easier to configure and work with (on top of being readily available). x86 PCs and ARM-powered mobile devices are very plentiful, are fairly modular without requiring more sophisticated tools, and avoid a high barrier of entry (i.e. deeper EE experience).
The author thinks that when their imagined Mad Max society comes to be, they're going to be picking up a soldering iron against old Segas and TI-84s. If for some reason that you need to use computers in a developmental capacity (since the author's OS has an assembler and an `ed` clone) in a "post-collapse society," I don't think it would be that hard to find some discarded HP desktop or laptop to work on.
Re: Collapse OS
#159A bit of a tangent but in the novel "The Windup Girl" they live in a post oil world which essentially ended up more of a total societal restructuring that pretty much resembled what we'd consider a collapse. Nations fell and in some places companies took over. Cities collapsed as the population shrank and technology shifted to focus more on bio engineering to make up for the loss of all the mechanical/electrical technology that ran our world since powering it all got a lot more expensive after the oil was gone.
In one part a high security government installation was described with "ancient" PC's. They couldn't make new ones so they kept whatever they could running and the narrators mind was blown thinking about how much energy they wasted.
I think one of the top priorities for a project like this should be making it easy to implement considering practically everything you would use now days to get help getting it working won't exist. No websites or forums or anything like that.
Re: Collapse OS
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to see a log being kept in orbit. Like every 10 years it's rotated (FIFO, oldest comes down, new one is launched) with a large delta so that it might survive our current civilization in case of global / climate craziness.
How would we get at the information if we don't have the technology to launch a rocket/spaceship to retrieve it?
Apparently they would fall, and as long as we still have the required technology and resource, we would send updated versions regularly.