Does this work for the T80 FPGA core?
Collapse OS
21–30 of 323 posts
Re: Collapse OS
#22So, 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…
He specifically speaks of a "distribution" phase as imminent collapse seems apparent, before "blackout". So everyone who knows about it would hypothetically get a copy, and perhaps begin stockpiling some relevant hardware.
(SD cards seem like a good commodity to stockpile here, as he supports them, but they're likely incredibly hard to manufacture post-collapse.)
Re: Collapse OS
#23I was pontificating about my 401k fund and what I should do if I find it no longer exists when I need to start using it. The older gentleman who was polite enough to listen to me said, "It's ok guy, if that 401k doesn't exist, then neither will you". And so I think I will not stockpile any computers for later. I do like the engineering spirit of this however.
"It's ok guy, if that 401k doesn't exist, then neither will you".
There are a number of ways that can not be true without a large scale societal collapse. Fraud involving pension funds has happened many times in the past (Bernie Madoff, Robert Maxwell being two high profile examples). The last financial crisis brought a bit more attention to the topic of counterparty risk - the idea that your "safe" investment is only as safe as the institutions that are backing it in many cases. It's not necessarily a high priority concern but I think it's worth at least considering splitting your retirement savings across more than one account with different institutions.
There are also lots of conceivable larger scale crises with historical precedent (many in the 20th Century) that would render your retirement savings largely worthless without leaving you dead. In many of those you would have more pressing concerns than your 401K but it still seems like not a bad idea to have some physical things of value that you keep somewhere secure but accessible (cash, perhaps gold and/or silver).
Re: Collapse OS
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Because it doesn't fit the given narrative: it's all about scavenging/recycling.
Your reality does make better sense, but doesn't make a good story.
Re: Collapse OS
#25The digital version of prep-er style hoarding for the not-far-off-inevitable apocalypse. Love the idea to make it run on simple 8-bit CPUs that will be scavenged Fallout-style, but seems to presume that no 'newer' technology would survive and be functional. Wonderful to see, none the less.
His idea presumes not that you can't scavenge newer technology, but that we can't replicate, repair, and manufacture more of it. Computers are built with computers. Advanced computers were built with less advanced ones. Sure, we can try to use some of what we found that survived, but will we be able to build manufacturing to build a modern processor with what we find that still works and the expertise we still have?
If we can't manufacture new smartphones, we need to have a baseline of computer to develop new computers that can eventually develop computers that can develop smartphones. Essentially he's proposing that if we lose our societal ability to compute advanced things, that we be able to fall back to the Z80 rather than the abacus.
Not sure I'm totally sold on it here, but it's an interesting topic to say the least.
Re: Collapse OS
#26I've been sort of half-assed working on a novel about a post-tech future (100+ years after apocalypse), where a handful of people retained some technology by virtue of having stored information about it in a manner that survived and a tradition of scavenging and trading and a sort of religion based on maintaining it in a working state. So, this is a fun read and thought experiment, even if an 8-bit computer is probably not my highest priority when thinking of "when the shit hits the fan, as seems more likely today than it did five years ago, what do I want to have in my survival kit?"
One of the questions I keep coming back to for such a scenario, and still haven't come up with a great answer for, is how does someone living in a world without the ability to manufacture a computer still have computers that work 100+ years after the last one was made? Even manufacturing transistors without modern methods is non-trivial. Will a Z80 last 100+ years? I mean, maybe, if it's kept dry and not exposed to anything corrosive. I've got a Commodore 64 that's ~40 years old and still works...so, 100 years seems reachable, but there have to be extenuating circumstances to get to that "post-tech" world (though I guess in a post apocalyptic world, the value of computers would be seen as minimal for a few years while survival is the only concern, so just forgetting could be enough).
Re: Collapse OS
#27Lets 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.
https://www.kingoapp.com/android-root/devices.htm , I think there will be a few orders of magnitude more devices laying around that are easily jail broken than z80s.
Re: Collapse OS
#28Why Z80? Is it like the 2nd most common processor type or something? Where would one find a Z80 when scavenging?
TI calculator. Old school game boy.
Re: Collapse OS
#29I 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.
They are also the cochroach equivalent of a processor, tough as hell, functional on a ropey power supply and can be used to make a simple 8 bit machine with very few ancillary chips - the reason they ended up in the sinclair zx's.
Re: Collapse OS
#30Long Tien Nguyen and Alan Kay's Cuneiform Tablets seem relevant: https://archive.org/details/tr2015004_cuneiform