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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]
by bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
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 in a controlled environment, such as 8080, Z80, m68k, motherboards, logic chips, I/O controllers, ROM/RAM, generic electronic parts, soldering irons, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, schematics, documentation, textbooks, software. We also keep some complete, standalone computer systems such as desktops and laptops, and all the parts that need to service them. We also need to preserve the old semiconductor production lines around the world, although probably not in the same bunker. Even if we fail to build better systems, 8080s are already useful enough!
Meanwhile in peace time, we need to form a team of experts that makes a roadmap to rebootstrap the computing technology for the future using parts from the bunker, with a step-by-step plan, that can be easily followed and executed.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoI like the idea. But I ask (not being annoying), do we really need it? Seems like having all of that more distributed in the hands of users would be a better protection against unavailability.
- mathgeek 7y agoUsually the idea behind a doomsday vault is that you're keeping everything securely in one place in case there is widespread disaster that sufficiently wipes out the distributed knowledge. They're not mutually exclusive.
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoGotcha. Thank you for clarifying.
- yellowapple 7y agoAnd to expand on this: ideally we wouldn't have just one repository of hardware and knowledge of how to use/recreate that hardware, just like how ideally we wouldn't have just one repository of seeds and knowledge of how to plant/cultivate those seeds. We should be aiming to have as many redundant Svalbard-style doomsday vaults as possible, for all sorts of things (seeds, computers, medicine, you name it).
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoAnd generators (or maybe solar cells). For that vault to be useful, you have to be able to generate electricity.
- rapind 7y agoI'd like to see a log being kept in orbit. Like every 10 years it's rotated (FIFO, oldest comes down, new one is launched) with a large delta so that it might survive our current civilization in case of global / climate craziness.
- rabidrat 7y agoHow would we get at the information if we don't have the technology to launch a rocket/spaceship to retrieve it?
- ElFitz 7y agoApparently they would fall, and as long as we still have the required technology and resource, we would send updated versions regularly.
- undersuit 7y agoHam Radio.
- JimmyAustin 7y agoThe satellites orbit would naturally decay to the point of reentry. I'm not sure of the engineering, but it might be possible to do a controlled descent to a specific place for survivors to rendezvous with.
- cpuguy83 7y agoThrusters with some sort of controlled decent if it doesn't receive a signal in some period of time?
- daveslash 7y agoI could see that causing a huge poo-storm. If our supply chains collapse and all this knowledge is lost... but, we know when and where the knowledge will be returned to the Earth.... then that location is going to be ground zero for a lot of turmoil. Everyone will know that whoever gets that returned knowledge will have dominion.
- pankajdoharey 7y agodont we have many programs on archieve org
- undersuit 7y agohttps://www.opensourceecology.org/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/ This website got posted to HN in the past, definitely something that should be part of the attempt.
- alexeichemenda 7y agoSorry if this is a naive question, but if the assumption is "doomsday", how would one know how to access vault and that it even exists?
- harikb 7y agoThe vault will have a fingerprint sensor, which will be stuck on an incomplete online firmware update.
- WanderPanda 7y agoAnd people are baffled that the 2fa SMS to reset it can not be delivered.
- illys 7y agoAnd what about the opposite issue: too many people know and enter in a greedy and bloody competition? It reminds me an 80's cartoon where Spanish, aliens and 3 children run after a golden city and destroy it out of greed when they find it.
- gdubs 7y agoBad news on that seed vault. [1] 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-s...
- applecrazy 7y agoOh, no. I can’t believe it’s gotten this bad. I’m amazed we haven’t done much in the way of climate change control. It’s going to be too late very, very soon.
- numlock86 7y ago> It’s going to be too late very, very soon. Sorry to ruin this for you, but it is already too late. We are already in the process of damage control.
- jug 7y agoDue to delayed effects, we aren't even feeling current escalations but CO2 we let out while watching The Terminator.
- protastus 7y agoClimate models indicate it's not too late to avoid a 2°C average temperature increase by 2100 if our energy matrix and heavy industries (concrete, steel and fertilizers) move away from fossil fuels. This takes political conviction and government policy, which in turn requires correct understanding of the situation. "it's too late" is a dangerous statement because it suggests actions no longer matter. And if no action is taken, several climate models project >4 °C average warming. The majority of the planet will be become uninhabitable at the current human density levels, with billions of people having to relocate and/or die.
- splintercell 7y agoIsn't our best course of action to achieve technological progress and fix the situation instead of 'preventing' it? Like build dikes around low lying areas rather than trying to coordinate a worldwide slowdown of economic activity which faces the worst outcome of prisoner's dilemma.
- mellosouls 7y agoThis is already being done in some places, eg libraries and museums, it's called Digital Preservation, although it's for normal curatorial purposes rather than Doomsday scenarios. While the focus is on the data, it also necessarily involves access to original hardware at times, which is additionally also often stored for curatorial purposes in its own right. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation
- 7thaccount 7y agoI'm pretty sure the internet, PDFs...etc fail heavily next to the printed form in the case of a complete collapse. As long as people can read, books should be good for this purpose.
- Koshkin 7y agoThe thing is, in the case of the complete collapse "the printed form" will be likely the last thing we will be worrying about.
- 7thaccount 7y agoI think about this all the time. A technology vault to take people from the water wheel to the Z80 would be smart. Expensive and I hope never needed, but there is a lot at risk.
- maire 7y agoIf you like Unix, Cromix was built on the z80.
- boomlinde 7y agoI recommend also checking out Fuzix, a modern small-platform UNIX-like which targets Z80 among others
- pjc50 7y ago> The whole ecosystem needs to be preserved. Indeed. It takes a civilisation to build an iPhone. I don't think people appreciate that even within the highest-tech manufacturing industries there is a lot of tacit knowledge. People shake their fists about "technology transfer" to China, and before that Japan; but that's taken decades for them to reach parity. And that's with running, copyable examples and all the parts of an existing supply chain widely available. Similarly the process for making a nuclear bomb can be written in a short paper, but few countries have successfully replicated it. "Post-collapse recovery" and "technology transfer" are the same problem, except that post-collapse recovery is cribbing from a dead example rather than a live one and in much worse circumstances. Collapse recovery is a fun little competence fantasy to play out in your own head. Like "the rapture" for atheists. But within our lifetimes, we have to put in the work to avoid the collapse.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago> It takes a civilisation to build an iPhone. The point here is that we don't need to build an iPhone, we only need a radio. Building a 8080 is much simpler, the USSR did it, the East Germany did it, China did it, all around the same time without too much difficulty. It's certainly would be much more difficult if the current civilization collapsed, but I think the author doesn't anticipate a total collapse, just a breakdown of the current economic system, thus it should be doable. > Similarly the process for making a nuclear bomb can be written in a short paper, but few countries have successfully replicated it. My understanding is that the physics of achieving the nuclear explosion itself is relatively straightforward. The real difficulties are to produce the weapon-grade materials needed, and to transform the explosion to an useful weapon, all under external sanctions, and even sabotage. Taiwan had a nuclear weapon project in 1970s, significant progress was made in the beginning, if the U.S. didn't discover it and dismantle everything, it would be interesting to see how it turned out to be.
- flohofwoe 7y ago> ...East Germany did it Not sure about the Soviet Union, but East Germany had to "import" complete production lines from Western Germany in order to bootstrap their chip production. Of course the West prohibited exporting such sensible technology to the East, and there's some wild stories around involving the secret service, setting up a proxy chip manufacturing company in Western Germany, shutting this down, and "losing" the production lines, which showed up a few months later in East Germany. But there will be plenty of Z80 and other 8-bit chips to scavenge after a civilizational collapse, and those chips are simple and slow enough to be used in computers built from breadboards and wires.
- kdtsh 7y agoThe embryo of this idea is in Software Heritage [0]. It's a great project, well worth supporting. Of course this doesn't include the requirement to store and maintain hardware, and even though we can store well-written documents detailing how to build these sorts of machines from scratch, it might not be feasible for post-disaster societies to do this. [0] https://www.softwareheritage.org/ https://www.softwareheritage.org/
- illys 7y agoYes I agree, a Z80 is not enough. Especially that the people who will restart from a Z80 will face technological edges when their skills and needs grow. We faced the same in the 80's: going from 8 bit to 16, then 32, having memory addressing problems, being pushed to new and hardly compatible architectures, having programs to rewrite... Then why not leaving behind us a technology, still simple, but that will save them most of these issues? I feel an 8-bit data bus and 32-bit address bus would be a good way to make long-live programs, edge-free when extending memories, and still not so complex processors and main boards. The address bus does not need to be fully wired in the first processor versions, so it can scale over time with more complex processors when skills and needs grow. Besides, it would be smart to leave in a vault a kind of FPGA technology with sources to flash the FPGA components. So no need to create a production line for many different integrated components: only one output, and the components are specialized by flashing them. Indeed even microprocessors can be flashed on an FPGA. Well, just ideas... FPGA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array Low tech CPU to support 32 bit code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68008 (8 lines data bus, 20 lines of address bus, 32 bit programs, 70 000 transistors) Microprocessor on an FPGA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_microprocessor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_microprocessor
- Jaruzel 7y ago> The whole ecosystem needs to be preserved. I disagree. If humanity collapses, and a new fledgling civilisation grows out of the ashes, then maybe we should let them follow their own path, and make their own discoveries and mistakes. It's massive hubris to assume that future generations can only survive if they have access to our knowledge. Many civilisations have fallen only to be replaced by newer betters ones, even when they've had no previous records to refer to. We're just a stepping stone along the path of human evolution, we are no greater or lesser than the stones before us, or the stones that come after us.
- otakucode 7y agoThis is one of my concerns. If there is a large-scale collapse, that is a very concrete statement of "what you tried did not work." Preserving as much of that past as possible would be a mistake. Any large collapse should be an opportunity for rebirth. We already drag along old mistakes in the technology industry after many repeated attempts at a fresh start always failing to a competitor offering to hack in backwards-compatibility making the initial deployment easier. A collapse would be the perfect and likely sole opportunity to ditch the mistakes of the past and forge something completely new with the benefit of a "foresight" forged from hindsight.
- PastaMonster 7y agoTechnology evolves so fast that a tech vault would become obsolete very fast. People in the future may not know how to deal with such obsolete technology. Technology also degrades over time. Unlike seeds you cant "freeze" technology to keep it from degrading. At least I dont know how.