Collapse OS • Hacker News Board

Re: Collapse OS

#201

Post by zamadatix » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:19 AM UTC

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…

> Ryzen processors have 80MB of L3 cache

The new Ryzen "only" has 64 MB L3 cache but it's split into 16 MB chunks per 4 cores. You can add in the L2 cache since it's exclusive (at the cost of more access fragmentation) to get 18 MB/72 MB depending on how you want to count it.

The new Epyc is the same design, just more cores so you get 256 MB. Still "only" 16 MB accessible per group of 4 cores though.

Re: Collapse OS

#202

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:20 AM UTC

Seems strange to go for something like Z80 from the 8-Bit home computer age, when the goal is simple manufacturing. Should go with the PDP-11 line instead which had a long history spanning different technologies, going across large and simple to manufacture to more integrated and miniaturized, faster, with more memory, with a standardized set of peripherals and instruction set architecture.

Re: Collapse OS

#203

Post by Ericson2314 » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:28 AM UTC

Eh, our current ecosystem is such a mess I wouldn't miss it. I worked on cross stuff for Nixpkgs in part due to a more optimistic take: Let's bootstrap all the good stuff en masse onto freer hardware.

Re: Collapse OS

#204

Post by cmrdporcupine » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:30 AM UTC

java-man wrote: post #11

Is there a rad-hardened version of z80?

Fairchild F8 was common as a rad-hardened 8-bit CPU in space and military tech. That's simpler than a Z80, and potentially more flexible.

Re: Collapse OS

#205

Post by maire » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:35 AM UTC

bcaa7f3a8bbc wrote: post #54

I 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…

If you like Unix, Cromix was built on the z80.

Re: Collapse OS

#206

Post by d0gsg0w00f » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:41 AM UTC

Best thing you and I can do to prevent climate change is to not have kids.

Re: Collapse OS

#207

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #206

Best thing you and I can do to prevent climate change is to not have kids.

This suggestion is stupid as suggesting killing yourself. Giving offsprings, taking care of them and enjoying them growing up is the reason to live first place.

Re: Collapse OS

#208

Post by yellowapple » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:51 AM UTC

mschaef wrote: post #153

_xnmw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Wh…

I think the point of GP's comment, though, is that it's arguably straightforward to bootstrap some degree of electricity generation without there necessarily being a working energy supply chain (e.g. building one's own dynamo with a magnet and some wire and hooking that dynamo to a windmill or watermill or steam engine or other turbine, or salvaging bits and pieces of broken solar cells to build a new one from almost-scratch; then it's just a matter of building capacitors or batteries or flywheels or elevated weights or whatever to store that electricity). Yes, it'll be absolutely painful (and will offer nowhere near the energy production/distribution capability to which we're accustomed as a society), but it's survivable.

It's also possible to bootstrap some degree of computing power without an electronics supply chain, but it's also much easier to cannibalize from existing devices (whereas for the current energy supply chain there are fewer things to be cannibalized, besides perhaps electric motors to turn into impromptu dynamos).

Realistically, both will probably go hand-in-hand: we'll use primitive, cobbled-together generators to power primitive, cobbled-together computers; which we'll use to control more sophisticated generators to power more sophisticated computers (and the more sophisticated processes for repairing/building those computers); and so on until we're eventually back to where we started.

Re: Collapse OS

#209

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:51 AM UTC

skykooler wrote: post #64

jolmg wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect the argument against modern Intel chips is just their complexity. Well that, and the fact that we already have plenty of OSes to run on x86(-64). Looking at arch/ in linux's source: alpha avr32 frv Kconfig microblaze openrisc score um arc blackfin h8300 m32r mips parisc sh unicore32 arm c6x hexagon m68k mn10300 powerpc sparc x86 arm64 cris ia64 metag nios2 s390 tile xtensa I'm surprised that it doesn't ha…

The Z80 can't run Linux due to the lack of an MMU. (Though it's possible to get around that through emulation: see http://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit for example.)

There is Fuzix.

[1] http://www.fuzix.org/

And Symbos.

[2] http://www.symbos.de/

I wonder if he knows about them?

Re: Collapse OS

#210

Post by godDLL » Tue, Oct 08, 2019, 12:53 AM UTC

cable2600 wrote: post #172

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…

NeXTSTEP basically became MacOSX when Apple merged MacOS with it. AROS is the next best OS to use as it has a low memory footprint and can run on X86 systems: http://aros.sourceforge.net/ If you want Windows try ReactOS: https://reactos.org/ OS/2 try OSFree: http://osfree.org/ BeOS try HaikuOS: https://www.haiku-os.org/ All are low memory OSes.

Couldn't get ReactOS to boot on any hardware that I own. HaikuOS boots with GFX disabled, but is not anywhere near stable.

Will try the other two, I guess. Not holding my hopes up.