Winter is coming and Collapse OS aims to soften the blow. It is a Forth (why Forth?) operating system and a collection of tools and documentation with a single purpose: preserve the ability to program microcontrollers through civilizational collapse. It is designed to:
- Run on minimal and improvised machines.
- Interface through improvised means (serial, keyboard, display).
- Edit text and binary contents.
- Compile assembler source for a wide range of MCUs and CPUs.
- Read and write from a wide range of storage devices.
- Assemble itself and deploy to another machine.
Additionally, the goal of this project is to be as self-contained as possible. With a copy of this project, a capable and creative person should be able to manage to build and install Collapse OS without external resources (i.e. internet) on a machine of her design, built from scavenged parts with low-tech tools.
This isnt any different from just finding the documentation for assembly on a chip. If windows or macos is gone and unfindable. So will this be. No way you will be able to fix up even an early 90's machine. Parts arent even manufactured anymore. Legacy systems are emulated in software environments because of this.
You sound knowledgeable about the topic, what skills might you suggest people learn as an alternative then or along with it, or what would you think people might consider doing?
I see they have a "skills to develop" page which looked interesting: https://collapseos.org/skills.html
Honestly if the world goes to sheet, and you want to do anything with computers, assembly would be good to know. But that's assuming there's still a reliable source of power, and you have pre-stored all the tools/documents to work this way.
yeah, while this is focusing on creating software, really that's only one part of the discussion of maintaining tech throughout such a period of time
This is true, it may not be viable to waste time in such a time trying to create a room-sized device to fix a blown circuit board chip that you can't salvage elsewhere. It may in fact be better to learn how to build farm tools, farm, raise farm animals, etc.
Its a large topic, i would say browse a few Ben Eater youtubes https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU Every chip has its own assembly language. So really if you can find the document you can use it in whatever manor you like within its capability. My big hobby was building a flight sim. I was in training to be a simtech but i couldnt live off the pay. My stupid ass tried to move up the ladder now ive been unemployed for a month coz of mandates..
ok thx it looks like he has a website to follow along with that links to the videos as well, for example this came up when searching for "Ben Eater": https://eater.net/6502
Thats if it goes into utter DEVESTATION. hopefully we can hang onto windows linux MacOs and even that OS. Because of planned obsolescance we may have issues. Well kept machines could run up to about 7 to 10 years. But when capacitors etc need to be replaced we best hope we have stock.