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Collapse OS

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Re: Collapse OS

#181

Post by Spooky23 »

agentultra wrote: post #55

A neat idea! I think we could also get started now. Not necessarily de-escalating tech, but realizing that the fundamental supply of newer, more powerful chips might not last even with a shift to more plentiful supplies of rare-earth metals due to our need to get off of fossil fuels, fast. I think it might be useful in the more immediate term to be able to lock-in the minimum set of features that make the web and Int…

I think there is a business model for different reasons.

As web client tech stabilizes and telecom regulatory rollback continues, there may be an opportunity for localized solutions to be landed for all sorts of different purposes.

Re: Collapse OS

#182

Post by sdegutis »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #177

Forth is the ideal language for bootstrapping a cobbled-together computer from whatever scraps you can find. Forth gives you a shell, an assembler, a disassembler, and a rich, extensible programming language in a few kilobytes. You can peek or poke hardware interactively, or use the REPL as a calculator. Forth-style assemblers also make cross-compilation very practical. If I was tasked with bootstrapping a post-apoca…

Sounds great! Can we get all that with a less confusing syntax? That’s my main difficulty with forth.

Re: Collapse OS

#183

Post by icedchai »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #117

I think some sort or retro low-performance OS should start with NeXTSTEP. Ryzen processors have 80MB of L3 cache! IIRC that may have been twice what was needed to run the colorized versions of NeXT. A lot of "man the old days were all we needed" recollections of Windows and DOS forget how crappy those OSes were... But NeXT? That was basically a modern OS, with a bit less anti-aliasing. XWindow systems STILL look horr…

Practically speaking, you'd be better off with a stripped down Linux or BSD. Linux from the NeXTStep era (early 90's) could also run in a few megs of RAM. My first Linux box had 4 megs. I worked at a few early ISP's that tried setting up operations on NeXT boxes. They all moved to Solaris, FreeBSD, or Linux because though NeXT looked pretty, many of the API's were a bit off and you'd have much better luck building open source code in other environments.

Re: Collapse OS

#184

Post by dharmab »

hutzlibu wrote: post #84
tiborsaas wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers could give you better chances of survival. In a shelter / bunker let's say you can have a control center where you can monitor sensors and manage databases. These tasks doesn't require a computer, but saves you massive time to do something else.

Or you manage to repair a advanced drone .. that can do scavenging in dangerous radiated areas for example (or just common drone, can scout for you). Solar panels will be valuable... But wind is easily to bild and generate as well. In general, the scenario is, that the whole world is broken down, but full of tech. So many machines to get back to working. Machines beat muscle on a scale

> that can do scavenging in dangerous radiated areas for example

Most robotics don't work in areas of heavy radiation, because radiation damages electronics.

Re: Collapse OS

#185

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

sdegutis wrote: post #182
RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #177

Forth is the ideal language for bootstrapping a cobbled-together computer from whatever scraps you can find. Forth gives you a shell, an assembler, a disassembler, and a rich, extensible programming language in a few kilobytes. You can peek or poke hardware interactively, or use the REPL as a calculator. Forth-style assemblers also make cross-compilation very practical. If I was tasked with bootstrapping a post-apoca…

Sounds great! Can we get all that with a less confusing syntax? That’s my main difficulty with forth.

The syntax is unfamiliar to most, but it's very consistent and learnable. The syntax is one of many aspects of the design that keeps the whole thing simple. The use of a stack to pass arguments between words makes the kind of "pipelines" which are common in CLI shells very natural. I can think of few, if any, other languages I would want to use interactively as a replacement shell without complex line-editing assistance.

For those curious as to what a modern machine using Forth on bare metal as an operating system might feel like, check out Open Firmware: https://www.openfirmware.info/Open_Firmware

(If you have an OLPC sitting around in a closet somewhere from the Give-One-Get-One program years ago, you already have a serviceable and physically robust Forth machine ready to roll! Same deal for some older Powerbooks and Sun workstations.)

Re: Collapse OS

#186

Post by boomlinde »

wailupe2k wrote: post #12

Lets 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

Something with a life expectancy of 3-5 years

Re: Collapse OS

#187

Post by vfclists »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #117

I think some sort or retro low-performance OS should start with NeXTSTEP. Ryzen processors have 80MB of L3 cache! IIRC that may have been twice what was needed to run the colorized versions of NeXT. A lot of "man the old days were all we needed" recollections of Windows and DOS forget how crappy those OSes were... But NeXT? That was basically a modern OS, with a bit less anti-aliasing. XWindow systems STILL look horr…

Isn't that what Haiku OS is doing?

Re: Collapse OS

#188

Post by ativzzz »

sien wrote: post #175
headcanon wrote: post #46

Why does the author think the global supply chain will collapse in the next ten years? What scenario do they envision? Climate change? Will cost trillions of dollars and billions of lives, but will likely be played out over course of several decades. We will be stressing out about it but its not going to be electronics-ending apocalyptic Nuclear war? Please. The countries that have the capability are also level-heade…

Imagine it's 1910. The same argument you make against nuclear war can be made happily against a large scale war then.

Nothing of the sort the OP describes happened as a result of WW1. Yes, some empires "collapsed", in the sense that the ruling parties changed, their governments got completely ripped out and replaced, or countries split up (e.g. Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany). Maybe people went through a few decades of economic hardships. Either way, these collapses were contained to local regions (with cascading global consequences), but resembled nothing of an apocalyptic scenario.

No large scale technology was lost. If anything, human civilization became more technologically advanced.

Re: Collapse OS

#189

Post by biztos »

mschaef wrote: post #56

In the event of a sufficiently large collapse, people will be so far down on Maslow's hierarchy of needs that an OS will be about the last thing on their minds.

I don't know, I'd say something like hyperinflation in Germany[0] was probably a collapse that, er, "adjusted for inflation" was as big (for the Germans anyway) as "no more chips" might be to us today. And people still adapted to it and tried to get on with their lives in altered circumstances.[1]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_R...

[1]: a charming novel about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Obelisk

Re: Collapse OS

#190

Post by marcinzm »

fernly wrote: post #90
rwmj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My novel idea (feel free to use it!) is about someone taking a 1980s computer back to the Second World War. It's used by the Allies to decrypt Ultra intelligence and is treated like a kind of holy relic - only a tiny set of "high priests" are allowed near it, fewer still can touch it, and because of its importance they go to extraordinary lengths to ensure it can never be damaged by anything from bombs to power glitc…

Yeah, no. I've handled parts of Whirlwind[1], a vacuum tube machine from just post-WWII, and the gap from that to a C-64 or any other circa-1980 machine is just too great. They were using discrete wiring, resistors and wires soldered to the bases of the vacuum tubes. The Whirlwind was the first machine to use core memory, and the 4K core memory unit is a box about the size of a phone booth. I don't know if PCBs exist…

They can probably figure out that the little plastic things either store data or perform computation. By process of elimination since wires, resistors, capacitors, PCBs can all be analyzed for their properties.

Given that knowledge they can try breaking those pieces of plastic apart to see that it's a housing over some sort of ceramic core. Using spectroscopy and chemistry you can figure out what that core is made out of. Now you know what mix of chemicals allows for really high density data storage and computation.

Using x-rays and microscopes they can figure out that the little ceramic die has some sort of structure etched on it. Maybe remove tiny pieces to see what different parts/layers are chemically composed of.

Now they know that there's something interesting about certain elements deposited on top of silicon using some sort of etching approach. Early transistor research was already well along (and had been patented already in the 20s) so it's likely they would have made the connection. Given all that you can start brute forcing industries and ideas around those materials.

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