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‘Collapse OS’ Is An Open-Source Operating System For the Post-Apocalypse (vice.com) 20
Collapse OS will work with Z80 8-bit microprocessors. Though less common today than 16- and 32-bit components, the 8-bit Z80 can be found in desktop computers, cash registers, musical instruments, graphing calculators, and everything in between. In a Reddit Q&A, Dupras explained that the Z80 was chosen “because it’s been in production for so long and because it’s been used in so many machines, scavenger have good chances of getting their hands on it.” According to the product page, Collapse OS currently can run on a homebrew Z80-based computer called the RC2014, and on Reddit Dupras said it could theoretically run on a Sega Genesis console.
- by avandesande ( 143899 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @07:32PM (#59285884) JournalNews for Nerds!
- by msauve ( 701917 )“News for Nerds!”
Nerds call bullshit. You think a cell phone is going to be useful after a tech apocalypse? Useful for anything more than what a 50 year old TI calculator can do? Do you think cell towers will be working? Can this OS get you food, water, shelter, physical security?
“populations won’t be able to mass produce electronics anymore, but they’ll still be an enormous source of political and social power.”
Even more power will be held by those who know how to do long division on paper. QED.
- wonder what the best bootstrap setup would be… a game boy? those are basically indestructible.
- I’m sure FreeDOS will run on far more equipment likely to survive than a Z80 OS.
He’s aiming at the market for partially salvaged hardware; stuff you can’t boot FreeDOS on; like a completely shattered circuit board from a machine that used to be able to boot FreeDOS, but still has an intact Z80 chip soldered to it somewhere as part of the less-fragile, less-expensive connection logic.
IMO, in a world where you have to scrounge around to find Z80s on shattered circuit boards, you’re *really* unlikely to have anything like a multimeter to help you hook up your plundered IC and debug it. Not to mention, finding dead-tree data books for the processor and other ICs will be next to impossible. And to top it off, figuring out how to load this OS onto your MacGyver’d system is going to be a major chicken-and-egg dilemma.
As for me, I still have my first Timex/Sinclair ZX81 in the basement. I doub
Personally I would have thought there would be WAY more 6502 CPUs with all the Nintendo, Apple ][, Apple
Do we really need yet another 8-bit OS?
- Exactly what I was thinking! Now if I can just remember all the config.sys syntax I’ve forgotten in the past few decades….
- by TXJD ( 5534458 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @07:43PM (#59285938)I’m loving the premise…. perhaps instead of the OS, the author needs to focus on the storyline and write a novel. I would buy it!
And when you have 40 leven raspberry Pi computers, you can run a Z80 emulator to take advantage of this OS.
Silly choice (Score:5, Insightful)
by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @07:53PM (#59285968)No need to go back to the Z80. The microcontroller of choice in microwaves, dish washers, and washing machines is an ARM Cortex-M0+, M3, or M4. There are far more of those than there are cash registers or graphing calculators. Ten years on, a lot of the older ones that don’t have such things will have been replaced, and you basically can’t buy any of those things without one today. The ARM processor series has gotten so cheap and so easy to develop for that it’s muscling traditional microcontrollers out of the market, even when it’s vastly overpowered for the task at hand. Hell, even graphing calculators are ARM now. The Texas Instruments Nspire series (approved for use with college board standardized tests) are all ARM.
And in what world are cash registers a Z80? They’re friggin’ x86 PCs now, running some version of Windows, practically everywhere. My grocery has replaced their point of sale machines twice in the past 20 years. The Z80s went into the trash (in Africa)(yay for fake ‘recycling’) long ago.
And no, the global supply chain is not going to collapse in 11 years. Idiot.
—-
But if it did, it would be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
- I just found an old z80 chip in one of my junk boxes along with some I/O chips the other day. Waiting for meteor to hit…
- People have been predicting the End Times for over 1600 years, at the least.
Y1K was supposed to be it. Some thought Y2K for sure.
I’m not holding my breath.
- by PPH ( 736903 )
19 January 2038
- The year 2038 problem will not cause the “appoxy-clipse”. They said the same thing about the Y2K problem – and we developed and tested fixes that were put in place well before the millennium…and we’re still here without the need to cobble together mutant PCs.
They said the same about flying machines until somebody built one.
Maybe I’ll lose my Geek Card over this, but during the apocalypse I’ll be running around going “Aaaahhh!” instead of tinkering around in an OS.
Unless someone thinks we’ll be able to scavenge enough solar panels.
Oh yeah , and hold on to any capacitors you can get your hands on. Existing lithium ION batteries will be about as useful as a handful of AA’s.
Where can I get some of these fabled iPhones with Z80s so I can stockpile them for the coming zombie apocalypse?
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