After seeing a post somewhere (probably here) about collapseos.org , an operating system written in Forth for MBC/SBCs made from z80/6502/6809/8086 processors to restart homebrew home computer technology, it got me thinking.
The goal of this project (and other similar projects like DuskOS) is to ensure that if our supply chain breaks down and economies of scale become impossible (or we get bombed "back to the stone age",) that we can restart civilization from 1989 rather than the Bronze Age.
in the event that the computer-savvy are salvaging parts to make electronic archives and communication infrastructures, it seems like the most difficult part to DIY without economies-of-scale will be the display output.
Potentially, with 4x4 alphanumeric characters, an 80x25 terminal can be made with 399x124 array of LEDs on a breadboard.
or would teleprinters made from old IBM Selectrics or dot matrix printers be more feasible?
This looks fun, but where do I get the source? The retard running the thing quit updating his git because his schizophrenia meds got too expensive
Ryder Mitchell
It's completely retarded. If society collapses there wont be a whole bunch of z80 cpus lying around in need of an OS but without a BASIC ROM already. And how are you going to program the ROM chips anyway without a working computer? Producing the hardware is the hard part. Shitty 8 bit software is easy. This is a stupid project idea to make clueless redditors like you go "wow that's cool maaaaan".
Ryder Jones
only completely reliable I/O is going to be banks of switches/LEDs in the minicomputer style. dump a byte at a time over the wire. serial protocols might still be viable but screens? bitmap screens? fuck no. second+ gen microcomputer tech like that is less helpful but some version of those 8bit chips are in use EVERYWHERE as microcontrollers and have been for decades. identifying them on random boards is less easy.
Henry Cox
oh and now that i read reddit link yeah they mention altair. rip.
>an 80x25 terminal can be made with 399x124 array of LEDs on a breadboard. thats 50,000 LEDs
Bentley Green
nah its only like 14000 bare LEDs with 7segment characters. those are sure to be alive but they're so antique they're probably getting rare.
Blake Roberts
how do you figure
John Powell
80 characters with 7 LEDs per character = 560 LEDs per line, x25=14k total LEDs to display 80x25 characters (to approximate 7segment LED single-character devices). even if you wire them up in massive spaghetti actually assembling such a thing would be a nightmare in itself requiring more controller(s). of course 80x25 is way overkill for that sort of thing, 2^n x2 lcd character displays are common enough displays for babby microcontroller projects BUT they're not very common or standardized or robust or even cheap.
in terms of time and components VGA is plenty easy to bitbang on common microcontrollers but those are all probably way bigger than z80/6502 tier.
Jose Rodriguez
*assembling & addressing them as in you'll want to dump to a couple bytes of ram (lol where you gonna ram dips?) or other controllers' memory and have them actually light that shit.
Xavier Lewis
The whole "post collapse Z80" thing seems pretty silly to me. In the event of a major manufacturing failure, the computers we would be stuck making do with are crappy low-budget android phones and laptops with broken hinges, not a Jupiter Ace restored from a museum exhibit.
If you want to get into retrocomputing, bootstrapping, or low-level programming, just do those things. There's no need to construct elaborate narratives about how your hobby is going to be essential after the apocalypse.
Liam Taylor
yeah or like shitty ARM cortex pulled from washing machines
James Wood
arm bootloader world is completely fucked though
Christian Clark
if there's an apocalypse it will be caused by computers and modernity and your retared ass is trying to restart those things
Christopher Flores
You can make a tv using a spinning disk of cardboard with holes poked in it and a lightbulb. Or just find an existing tv. Most houses have at least 1
Logan Nguyen
There won't be any power to run these things anyway.
Hudson Brooks
this is why I keep talking about the need of a linux like os but that doesn't need internet to distribute software, but retarded zoomers keep arguing against thinking that internet is something that just exists by itself just because they grow up with it
Bentley Diaz
can you? what protocol does it take?
Ryan Garcia
i think someone got an 8bit arduino something to output VGA. power is pretty easy at the low end. a miliamp 3.3v/5v supply ain't really a problem. of course that could charge a phone instead of running all this stuff.
Hunter Howard
what does that even mean? how are you going to distribute software without internet? going back to cds (not robust) and shit?
Kevin Anderson
oh, but why not save our progress and restart from the 70s-80s? the part where computers went wrong and the computer-based collapse would be caused by lowest common denominator mass appeal, and social media centralization.
it would be based to at least attempt a savepoint to where computers were for the nerds. At least to start educating our kids/grandchildren with zettelkasten software that presents as an interactive brain/library, automate calculations and tasks.
>linux too high level
check out this guy youtube.com/c/SamZeloof who started taking a shot at making micro processors in his garage, he's up to the 2nd prototype which appears to be something like a 6502(?). not to mention even microprocessors salvaged from cheap mass produced alibaba disposable-grade bluetooth speakers are sufficient to run this "OS" to start somewhere.
yeah it sucks the original guy bailed (if it's the reason suggested, he should have tried meditating) and noone took up the torch. But we can still reach out to their mailing list here: collapseos.org/discuss.html
