13 ms·

Collapse OS

226 points by kaycebasques 2y ago

pyuser583 2y ago
[flagged]
vdupras 2y ago
This link might be coming up in the context of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43481590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43481590 which went a bit under the HN radar. EDIT: oh, and in case the website goes over quota, try https://new.collapseos.org/ https://new.collapseos.org/ . I haven't thrown the DNS switch yet, but I expect my meager Fastmail hosting will bust today.
- lametti 2y ago
  It's a nice article from Wired in the linked thread. And from your website: > What made me turn to the "yup, we're fucked" camp was "Comment tout peut s'effondrer" by Pablo Servigne, Éditions du Seuil, 2015. That'll make for some light reading next time I head up north. Thanks for the recommendation.
palmotea 2y ago
If "our global supply chain [will] collapse before we reach 2030," why is having a some type of computer a priority? I feel these kinds of projects may be fun, but they're essentially just LARPing. Though this one seems to have a more reasonable concept than most (e.g. "My raspbery pi-based "cyberdeck" with offline wikipedia will help!" No, you need a fucking farming manual on paper.).
- stevenAthompson 2y ago
  Some people are afraid the world will end, others are afraid it won't. The latter type actively enjoy thinking about this sort of thing. I think we'll see more of it as the boomers continue to age. Some folks mistake their own looming end for the end of all things.
  - nomel 2y ago
    Doom is useful. The reason you stockpile food or grow a crop in spring is to avoid the doom that would come winter, if you didn't. Fearing a possible bad future is fairly fundamental for survival. I assume there's some significant hard-wiring for this type of emotion, with some people having a different baseline for their sensitivity to it. I also suspect the environment might push regional genetic population to have different sensitivities, depending on how harsh/unstable the environment is. I say "unstable" because I see doom as anxiety about the possibility. For example, in a region with a consistent harsh winter, doom has less use because piling food up is just routine, everyone does it, it's obvious. But, in an unstable environment, with a winter that's only sometimes harsh, you need to fear that possibility of a harsh winter. You're driven by the anxiety of what might be. You stockpile food even though you don't need it now: you're irrational in the instantaneous context, but rational for the long term context. It's a neat future looking emotion that probably evolved closely with intelligence.
- saturn8601 2y ago
  Did you read the entire post? >Some people doubt that computers will stay relevant after a civilizational collapse. I mostly agree. The drastic simplification of our society will mean that we have a lot less information to manage. We'll be a lot more busy with more pressing activities than processing data. >However, the goal of Collapse OS is not to save computing, but electronics. Managing electricity will stay immensely useful. I think thats a notable goal. We will conduct business with pen and paper but given that even in a collapse scenario there will be lots of remnants of the current era lying around might as well try and make use of it. Its one of the reason I really don't like the people collecting e-waste in bulk and then melting down the chips for tiny scraps of gold. So much effort went into making those chips there has got to be a better way to preserve these things for usage later.
  - ewzimm 2y ago
    Civilization doesn't even have to collapse for a project like this to be useful. Like you said, there's lots of e-waste. If you happened to live in a place that ended up with a lot of this stuff but didn't have a lot of infrastructure, you could possibly build up some convenient services with something like this. I like the idea of building software to make hardware less reliant on external resources in general. Over time, it could be useful to have more resilient electronics, because we seem to be designing machines to be more reliant on specific networked infrastructure every year.
    - nradov 2y ago
      What services? For most modern services the big cost inputs are things like human labor, utilities, and real estate. Reusing obsolete hardware doesn't gain anything. It's likely to be a net negative if it takes up more space, uses more electricity, and requires more maintenance.
      - ewzimm 2y ago
        A lot of functions of electronics don't require tons of processing power or efficiency. Microcontrollers can be used for just about anything. General purpose computing can be put to whatever purpose you can image. Things supported by this OS like the Z80, 8086, 6502 etc. use around 5-10W. Using simple parts to control complicated machines is a standard operation, and even advanced electronics tend to use a lot of parts using older manufacturing techniques because it's more efficient to keep the old processes running. Here's a fun article with some context about old processors like this still in production: https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/ask-hackaday-when-it-comes-to-processors-how-far-back-can-you-go/ https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/ask-hackaday-when-it-comes-t...
- pjc50 2y ago
  Whenever I read these kinds of collapse posts I wonder: where do the bodies go in this scenario? Because if that kind of collapse happens the management of seven billion corpses becomes pressing.
  - all2 2y ago
    Depending on the source of their un-aliveness you have a few options: 1. they rot on the face of the ground and the carrion eaters will take care of it 2. they are already cinder/charcoal and the plants will take care of it
  - vdupras 2y ago
    For french speaking people, I recommend "Ravage" by Barjavel. It's not realistic by any means, but it's a nice take on this very issue :) The serious take: live in the countryside. This is an urban problem.
  - WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
    I’m most likely going to be one of the corpses, so not my problem.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Given a land area of 510 million km², in the worst case, that's a sudden event producing 14 bodies per km², about 25 meters from one body to the next. If I were one of a small number of survivors in that situation, I'd dig a mass grave, dump 14 bodies into it, and enjoy my nice, sanitary square kilometer all by myself. Probably boil the water from the well. Until I die of starvation because I don't know how to hunt, or from an infected wound, or something. In more plausible cases, we're talking about a population collapse where the deaths are either concentrated in cities, spread out over several years, or both. If they're concentrated in cities, maybe avoid the cities for three to six months until they finish rotting. If they're spread out over several years, those who die later will be able to bury those who die earlier; it only takes a few man-hours of labor to dig a grave.
    - Jtsummers 2y ago
- redkoala 2y ago
  Solar powered micro-controllers might be the way to go that could hook up to crude automated farm machines. Depending on the life span of batteries, solar powered ebook readers to store those farming manuals and other guides, solar powered computers for spreadsheets and planning software, and solar powered cb ham radios for communications with built in encryption keys.
  - palmotea 2y ago
    In a societal collapse, the only thing that you list that I think would be worth the effort would be "solar powered cb ham radios for communications." Crude automated [solar powered] farm machines - would probably be useless. Animal power is probably the way to go. Or steam. Go to a threshing bee sometime: I've seen a tractor that runs on wood. Solar powered ebook readers to store those farming manuals and other guides - the life span of batteries would be short, get that shit on paper fast. Solar powered computers for spreadsheets and planning software - plan in your head or use a paper spreadsheet. Computers might be everywhere today, and you personally might not know how to do anything without a computer, but practically no one had a computer 40-45 years ago, and literally no one had a computer when society was last at a "collapse" level of technology. COMPUTERS ARE NOT NECESSARY.
    - vdupras 2y ago
      I 100% agree that computers are not necessary. But regardless of that, the ability to program microcontrollers is still a superpower and if you can have it, you have a hell of an edge.
      - palmotea 2y ago
        > But regardless of that, the ability to program microcontrollers is still a superpower and if you can have it, you have a hell of an edge. I really disagree with that. It will give practically no edge. It's a specialist skill that's only really useful in the context of an already computerized society for mass production or big one-offs. If you have a collapse, I think the assumption is there would little to no mass production of advanced goods (hence, the scavenging concept). Then you're left with big one-offs, which are things large organizations like governments build and not all the time.
- 0hijinks 2y ago
  Beyond LARPing the feasibility of building new computers post societal collapse, the website's proposal for collapse being so imminent is... weakly justified? I'm not an optimist in today's societal climate, but the rationale [1] stems from peak oil and cultural bankruptcy. Peak oil is (was?) the concern of limited oil production in the face of static or increasing demand. The 2019 peak from big oil wasn't about declining production, but declining demand [2]. Which is good, if the ideal is long-lasting migration to renewables. I won't try to predict the future w/r/t what current societal trends mean for the long-term success of global supply chains, but I would be greatly surprised if cultural bankruptcy alone causes the complete collapse of society in the next 5-10 years. [1] http://collapseos.org/civ.html http://collapseos.org/civ.html [2] https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/energy-outlook/bp-energy-outlook-2023.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c...
  - er4hn 2y ago
    I think full scale collapse is unlikely. I'd rate balkanization / large scale internet disruptions as pretty likely to happen within the next few years due to a combination of: - lightly protected and globally reachable attack surface - increasing geopolitical tensions - the bizarre tendency to put everything possible online, i.e. IoT devices that always need internet, resources that rely on CDNs to function, other weird dependencies.
- schiffern 2y ago
  >you need a fucking farming manual on paper. With an adjustable hole punch, prong fasteners, (optionally) duct tape for the spine, and (optionally) sheet protectors for the front and back covers, you can crank out a survival library of (open-source) books as fast as pages come out your Brother laser. I never bothered with fancy acid-free paper. Modern paper has good longevity, but to be safe I use non-recycled, non-whitened (91 brightness) paper. Guide with prong fasteners (I prefer white tape, full-size pages, double/triple`inside a sheet protector as covers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnpnHWcE04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnpnHWcE04 A different technique with brad fasteners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD3vWZ0I85g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD3vWZ0I85g Lots of fancy book-binding tutorials out there, but I suspect most people don't realize how simple a paperback can actually be.
  - kylebenzle 2y ago
    I'm still WAY better off with my solar panels and ALL the books on an external hard drive. I can't think of ANY situation where a print out of Wikipedia would be better than a digital version.
    - schiffern 2y ago
      Wikipedia is an extreme example, since it's highly impractical to print the whole thing. OTOH printing your "Top 20" survival books is quick and affords a nice measure of system-level dissimilar redundancy (not to mention valuable barter goods :D).
    - echoangle 2y ago
      > I can't think of ANY situation where a print out of Wikipedia would be better than a digital version. An EMP destroys your electronics and makes accessing the digital version impossible?
      - kylebenzle 2y ago
        In this scenario we have the print version AND the digital version. You could also say in the middle of a house file with the paper on fire the digital version would be better but it's pointless to invent around the assumptions.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  I have a small farm, solar, a pond and a ton of farming/gardening books. I for one would LOVE a PipBoy-like cyberdeck with a snapshot of the internet from 2025 when I' hunkered down with my dogs, sheep and goats.
- cowfarts 2y ago
  [dead]
- trod1234 2y ago
  > why is having some type of computer a priority. Mechanization and Automation. It creates time you would normally have to spend actively on labor. Age of energy and all. The main inputs for this though would be quite difficult to bootstrap. I'm talking about magnet wire enamel and electrical isolation. You need that to make motors and actuators. You need computers for the control systems.
- nfriedly 2y ago
  I read the book "The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch", and to some extent that also felt like LARPing, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It also left me wanting more. It has pretty extensive references at the end, I wonder if anyone's put together a collection of all the referenced materials?
- tengwar2 2y ago
  You're thinking of a PC. This project doesn't address that type of computer at all. 8-bit computers programmed in Forth suggests very strongly that this is aimed at control engineering, and area where having a few computers makes a big difference to what you can do in an industrial process. It might also be useful for simple radio communication.
  - kjs3 2y ago
    In addition to a controller, being able to do non-trivial calculations will always be useful.
panarchy 2y ago
"By "scavenge-friendly electronic parts", I mean parts that can be assembled with low-tech tools. I mostly mean parts with a "through hole" mounting type (in opposition with "surface mount"). "But I do tons of hobbyist electronics with surface mount!", some could say. Yeah, sure, but how do you wire it? You order a PCB from OSH Park? That's not very scavenge-friendly. " - https://new.collapseos.org/why.html https://new.collapseos.org/why.html Not that I totally disagree with this but see clay PCBs, another post-supply-chain-collapse electronics project https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-clay-pcb#t=1689 https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-clay-pcb#t=1689
- vdupras 2y ago
  That looks really cool, but as we see from the size of the traces, I doubt you can fit a modern surface mount chip on that.
phendrenad2 2y ago
Does it run on an IBM 5100?
- UncleSlacky 2y ago
  You are John Titor and I claim my $5!
generalizations 2y ago
This misses the point entirely. If you want access to digital tools after a collapse, then you design a (resilient, hard to break, easy to repair) transformer that can convert ANY kind of electricity into e.g. 12v DC. Pair it with a paper manual that describes a few ways to generate power from raw materials (diy batteries, ways to use copper wire if you can get some, etc). Then keep some laptops in a waterproof box.
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  Old laptops or old boards with crts. Sure power is an issue but with your transformer (which is present in most 80s computers) and large, easy to replace and often even make components, you stand a lot more chance of that stuff surviving decades of use. No chance with laptops; maybe if you pack 100 x220 thinkpads? Those you can swap parts out. Still not robust as some of the 80s monsters I have which got wet (roof leak), too hot and had parts break but still work 40 years later. Some with no fixes at all. Those crt monitors are very robust as well, easy to repair-ish (you can use them even with a lot of damage). I have enough computers, diy and farming experience to probably be alive and kicking for a while if this happens, but I think I am not so interested to try.
  - generalizations 2y ago
    The point is that the computer is the easy part. It's the fun part to think about, but it's not important for achieving the goal. The hard part is powering it, when the infrastructure to generate clean electricity is gone. What will you plug your transformer into? So solve that, create robust sources for electric power, and the rest can be solved with a few bulk laptop purchases off ebay.
    - kjellsbells 2y ago
      Not just power generation but also the calorific and opportunity cost of working on that (or indeed anything that does not immediately pay off in energy terms). Or else you die before your compiler is done ;) If you have more than one survivor, you quickly need to learn to trade and cooperate to maximize your energy return, or else you all die, one by one.
foenix 2y ago
Very cool! I asked about something similar in 2010 on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396876 Funny to see how the comments haven't shifted (and have!) in the past 15 years.
barbequeer 2y ago
this line got me: > under what conditions do you believe the civilization you're living under will collapse? [...] Oh, you just haven't made that list yet? [...] Or you could take the question from the other side and list the conditions that are necessary for your civilization to continue to exist. That's an interesting list too. I've always dismissed collapse talk as "batshit crazy" as the author says. but he raises good points here. maybe I'm not batshit crazy enough.
- stevenAthompson 2y ago
  It still seems pretty crazy to me. In the wired article the author says he thinks climate change will disrupt trade routes, but obviously society would route around the damage as long as it remained profitable to do so. The only scenario in which this hypothetical makes sense would be mass causality events like pandemics or wars that prevent travel and trade. So we're talking about a hypothetical situation in which global trade has halted almost completely for some reason, and has been stopped for a very, very long time. This means that the majority of the worlds population are either dead or dying, which means that YOU will be either dead or dying as well. Even if we accept the premise (a tall ask) AND we assume you will happen to be one of the survivors because you're "special", wouldn't it make more sense to prep by building a cargo ship so trade can resume sooner than it does to build apocalypse proof micro-controller code?
  - vdupras 2y ago
    Trade routes as we know them today are made possible by Pax Americana, which is fading as we speak.
    - kragen 2y ago
      There was a lot of trade in the centuries up to WWII, though.
      - vdupras 2y ago
        Yes, but not of the sophistication required to produce a typical ARM CPU.
apitman 2y ago
Well they're certainly walking the walk by serving this website over plaintext HTTP/1.1
- prophesi 2y ago
  My way of securely accessing HTTP-only sites these days is to check if the site's been archived. Not sure if it's changed since, but here's a snapshot of the page on Jan 11th 2025[0]. [0] https://archive.md/Q207v https://archive.md/Q207v
  - apitman 2y ago
    That's actually a pretty good idea, thanks. FWIW I'm a bit torn on this. I think most websites should host both HTTP/2/3 with TLS, but also plaintext HTTP/1.1 as a fallback.
alnwlsn 2y ago
I've been meaning to give this a try for a while - I have several of the "supported" systems and I've designed a couple of my own simple Z80 computers over the past few years. Being able to program AVRs from a scavenged e-waste Z80 system seems strangely compelling to me. There's a LOT of AVRs in e-waste. But, if you absolutely needed to depend on it, I think that other technology might be better for the kinds of things we normally use microcontrollers for. If I need to control electronics where something that does this for a minute, then waits for that so it can do something else until this other thing, it's hard to imagine that a would-be apocalypse-ee would want to use a microcontroller rather than a more easily improvised mechanical cam timer [0] 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_timer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_timer
- kragen 2y ago
  I'm interested to hear what kinds of things you find AVRs in! Are they reflashable?
  - alnwlsn 2y ago
    Could be just about anything, from thermostats to CPAP machines to SFP fiber transceivers. Anything that needs to be just a little bit smart (but usually not internet connected) can have one. For hobbyists, the ATMega328P was the go-to for about 15 years, before ESP32 and Pi Pico took over more recently. I'm sure Arduino helped a lot with the AVR's proliferation. There are no one-time programmable versions of AVR as far as I know, so they can all have their internal Flash reprogrammed.
    - kragen 2y ago
      Awesome, thanks! I know them mostly from hobbyist contexts, and I noted that Atmel kind of stopped updating them after the ATMega328PU (and then failed as a company), so I wondered if they were kind of a failed product line, because there weren't enough hobbyists to sustain the product line. It's nice to hear I was wrong!
jeffchien 2y ago
Now I want a scavengers' guide to identify machines that might have a compatible microprocessor within them, because I haven't seen a Commodore or Apple II in a long time. Arcades with older cabinets obviously have them, but if most post-apocalyptic media are prophetic, they'll probably be occupied by a gang of young ne'er-do-wells. I suppose, thanks to the College Board, Ti-83s (Z80) are still quite common in the US. Are there toys, medical equipment, or vending machines that still use these chips? I wonder if ESP32s and Arduinos might be more commonly found, though I could see the argument that places with those newfangled chips may be more likely to become radioactive craters in some scenarios.
- nkali 2y ago
  I tried to do something like that in my free time. ARMs are everywhere, PICs are very common as well: https://github.com/ninakali/chip_scavenger/tree/main/src https://github.com/ninakali/chip_scavenger/tree/main/src
  - kragen 2y ago
    Hey, this is fantastic, thanks!
- thesuitonym 2y ago
  The Z80 is still an insanely popular microcontroller, that can be found it so, so many devices. Head down to your local Walmart's toy aisle open some of the electronics there (Post-collapse, of course) and you'll certainly find a few. That's not as easy as just dropping a full computer on your desk, but having a low power processor that's easy to find replacements for would be useful. That is, of course, if you spent the time pre-collapse to learn how to make a useful system out of those components, which I suspect is the real goal of Collapse OS.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Can you name two such devices? Because the only thing I've ever found a Z80 in is an S1 MP3 player. I've found ARMs, 8051s, and weird Epson microcontrollers they seem to have never published the instruction set for, but never a Z80.
glonq 2y ago
I find this to be less unhinged than say TempleOS, but it still seems unnecessary to focus on outdated languages and ancient CPU's. If/when civilization collapses, we will have zero problem scavenging for x86 CPUs.
2mlWQbCK 2y ago
I am not into this end-of-the-world collapse thing at all, but I like reading about the strong focus on simplicity and support for limited hardware. There is a lot of talk about keeping things simple in software, but very few act on it. I don't need the threat of a global disaster to be interested in running operating systems like that. Been doing some retro hobby (16-bit, real-mode, 80286) DOS development lately. It is refreshing to look at a system and be able to at least almost understand all the things going on. It might not be the simplest possible system, not the most elegant CPU design, but compared to the bloated monsters we use today it is very nice to work with. DOS is already stretching the limits of what I can keep in my head and reason about without getting completely lost in over-engineered (and leaky) abstraction layers.
0hijinks 2y ago
I think it's really cool to create minimalist OSes. Something about perfboard projects and old, slow CPUs tickles my buttons. But I'm struggling to come up with a use case for this project in the End Times. In theory, this allows me to flash a ROM connected to an old through-hole, 8/16-bit CPU like a Z80, 8086, 6809 and 6502. I guess my issue is why and how would I do that during the end of the world? I can't think of a way to come into possession of MPUs like that without intentionally buying them ahead of time. And if I'm going to stockpile those, I might as well stockpile a more capable MCU or MPU instead and flash it with something else. 99.9% of what I'd want to do with minimalist computers in the apocalyptic wasteland would be just fine without an OS. Bare-bones MCUs work spectacularly for control systems, wireless cryptosystems, data logging, etc. Maybe I didn't look hard enough in the README [1], but I don't see how I'd bootstrap a system like this without already having a much more capable system on standby. Which comes back to the issue of... why? [1] https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/collapseos https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/collapseos
- vdupras 2y ago
  Collapse OS is fully self-hosting. Once you have such a system, you can improve it and deploy it elsewhere from within. But yes, your initial deployment will come from a POSIX machine. This is why I talk about two stages of collapse.
  - 0hijinks 2y ago
    That's kind of a bummer, but still neat to have built-in self-hosting. I think I've seen videos of perfboard computers that allow manual data entry with pushbuttons and manual clocks. I could see that being extended to punch cards. (Not trying to be flippant; I think that could be an interesting extension to this sort of project. Have a bucket of parts, a perfboard, and some paper? Let's flash an operating system.)
aeblyve 2y ago
Targeting smartphones seems like a highly realistic way to make something like this work. The average westerner has like three of them lying around in desk drawers and they already have a number of useful peripherals attached. It is much less obvious, especially to the layman, how to turn the microcontroller in the coffee machine into something like a useful gate control device.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
mystified5016 2y ago
Breaking: hn commenters aghast and appalled that they aren't the target audience of a project.
nullpoint420 2y ago
Where are we going to find engineers that know Forth post-collapse?
dang 2y ago
Related. Others? Running CollapseOS on an Esp8266 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645124 - Dec 2023 (1 comment) DuskOS: Successor to CollapseOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36688676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36688676 - July 2023 (4 comments) Collapse OS – Why? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35672677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35672677 - April 2023 (1 comment) Collapse OS: Winter is coming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207852 - Oct 2022 (2 comments) Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340518 - May 2022 (8 comments) Collapse OS Status: Completed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26922146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26922146 - April 2021 (2 comments) Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25910108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25910108 - Jan 2021 (116 comments) Collapse OS Web Emulators - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24138496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24138496 - Aug 2020 (1 comment) Collapse OS, an OS for When the Unthinkable Happens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535720 - June 2020 (2 comments) Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453575 - June 2020 (15 comments) Collapse OS – Why Forth? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23450287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23450287 - June 2020 (166 comments) Collapse OS – Why? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901002 - April 2020 (3 comments) 'Collapse OS' Is an Open Source Operating System for the Post-Apocalypse - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21815588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21815588 - Dec 2019 (3 comments) Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 - Oct 2019 (303 comments)
boricj 2y ago
In the past couple of years I've worked on a Ghidra extension that can export any subset of a program as a relocatable object file. I built that because I tried to reverse-engineer/decompile a video game and had unconventional opinions on how to proceed about it. I didn't design it for a post-collapse scenario, but one can salvage program parts from binary artifacts and create new programs with it, just like how a mechanic in a Mad Max world can scavenge car parts from a scrapyard and create new contraptions. It deconstructs the classical compile-assemble-link workflow in a manner that tends to cause migraines to sane persons. I've even managed to slightly bend the rules around ABI and sling binary code across similar-ish platforms (PlayStation to Linux MIPS and Linux x86 to Windows x86), but to really take this to its logical conclusion I'd need a way to glue together incompatible ABIs or even ISAs, in order to create program chimeras from just about any random set of binaries.
- dgellow 2y ago
  Is that extension publicly available?
  - boricj 2y ago
    You can find it here: https://github.com/boricj/ghidra-delinker-extension https://github.com/boricj/ghidra-delinker-extension I've demonstrated a bunch of use-cases on my blog, ranging from porting software to pervasive binary patching and pilfering application code into libraries, all done on artifacts without source code available. I have one user in particular who successfully used it on a huge (7 MiB) program in a span of a couple of weeks, most of them spent fixing bugs on my end. They then proceeded to crank up the insanity to 11 by splitting that link-time optimized artifact into pieces and swapping parts out willy-nilly. That is theoretically impossible because LTO turns the entire program into a single translation unit subject to inter-procedure optimizations, so functions will exhibit nonstandard calling conventions you can't replicate with freshly built source code, but I guess anything's possible when you binary patch __usercall into MSVC. I should get back to it once work is less hectic. Delinking is an exquisitely intricate puzzle to solve algorithmically and I've managed to make that esoteric but powerful reverse-engineering technique not only scalable to megabytes worth of code, but also within reach of everyday reverse-engineers.
perrygeo 2y ago
The problem with claims of imminent societal collapse is they treat "collapse" like an event, with the world neatly divided into before and after. Historically, societal collapse is much more fuzzy. No neat single cause. No single moment when things flipped. You can only truly know the collapse has happened well in retrospect. In terms of computing, this means that any strategy looking at a before/after collapse framing is missing the entire interesting middle part - how do we transition from this high-tech to low-tech world over the course of decades. I seriously doubt it can happen by anticipating what computing we might need and just leapfrogging there.
- wibbily 2y ago
  Same author has a sort of "missing link" version that is better suited to modern PCs. Doesn't answer your philosophical questions about civilizations etc. but the goal isn't to start building Z80s out of transistors anytime soon. I think the vision here is more likely to play out, if any were to. Not many fabs that can make modern chips, and the biggest one is under the business end of Chinese artillery so. Gotta make do with whatever we have even if new supply dries up. https://duskos.org/ https://duskos.org/
  - anthk 2y ago
    Its's the same author. Uh, wait, I've properly read your comment now. Still, I miss a ZMachine interpreter for DuskOS. And networking. Gopher, IRC and email (among maybe some NNTP client) are a must.
- cowfarts 2y ago
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- wat10000 2y ago
  I don’t think it’s the focus of this, but we do now live in a time where the collapse could potentially happen in an hour.
  - borntoolate 2y ago
tamimio 2y ago
> Bandwidth Restricted >The page you have tried to access is not available because the owner of the file you are trying to access has exceeded our short term bandwidth limits. Please try again shortly. It seems it collapsed!
- trod1234 2y ago
  Well the load balancer is still up, but its just doing a redirect loop now. I can't imagine a single 302 request getting redirected 10x in a loop to the redirect limit per visitor is good for bandwidth.
  - vdupras 2y ago
    Sorry about the mess, I didn't anticipate the load. The website has been moved, but DNS propagation must occur. https://new.collapseos.org/ https://new.collapseos.org/ might work if your DNS still points to the old server.
    - nickpsecurity 2y ago
      Check out BunnyCDN. I got a few, no-frills sites running on it. They're cheap. They also have a paid, permanent cache. It's absorbing both burst and AI crawler traffic for me right now.
sb057 2y ago
Appropriately enough, the website is no longer accessible due to rate limiting, and the Internet Archive is down due to a power outage. https://x.com/internetarchive/status/1905030204357214335 https://x.com/internetarchive/status/1905030204357214335
Felger 2y ago
Will it run on my Pip-Boy 3000 ?
system7rocks 2y ago
Wow. I love this. Yes, it's kind of a LARP situation, but imagine a future scenario where some hacker (who also is physically resilient and well-protected in the face of apocalypse) has to figure out how to boot or get some system operating that might control solar panels. Not knowing the architecture - can you boot it up? Can you analyze existing binaries, ports, and other features and get it crudely operating? This sounds like a helluva of a video game.
- johnsillings 2y ago
  you might enjoy Caves of Qud
revskill 2y ago
This is genius. https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/doc/design/simple.txt https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/doc/de...
curtisszmania 2y ago
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ninalanyon 2y ago
Surely the easiest way to get a useful OS running on 8 bit CPUs would be to start with an existing one like CP/M that already has an ecosystem of applications and hardware designs including networking. Perhaps I should drag my Osborne out of the cellar and see if the floppies still work.
gizajob 2y ago
I always knew FORTH would be the chosen one when all else fails.
heavymetalpoizn 2y ago
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anthk 2y ago
Also, I forgot. The CollapseOS author and kragen might love it: https://magic-1.org https://magic-1.org
- kragen 2y ago
  Thanks! I don't remember if I've seen it before. In case it's down for others: https://web.archive.org/web/20250221070009/http://magic-1.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250221070009/http://magic-1.or... "This web page is being served by a completely home-built computer: Bill Buzbee's Magic-1 HomebrewCPU. Magic-1 doesn't use an off-the-shelf CPU. Instead, its custom CPU is built out of ~200 74 series TTL chips." "Magic-1 is running a new port of Minix 2.0.4, compiled with a retargeted LCC portable C compiler. The physical connection to the internet is done using a native interface based on Wiznet's w5300 TCP/IP stack." While I hate to condone using TTL rather than CMOS, this is extremely cool! The CPU is documented at https://homebrewcpu.com/ https://homebrewcpu.com/. Unfortunately the TCP/IP information was only posted on Google Plus, which has now been memory-holed by Google. There's a clone by Aidil Jazmi documented at https://www.aidilj.com/homemadecpu/ https://www.aidilj.com/homemadecpu/.
K0balt 2y ago
It seems like any serious endeavor on this front would focus on arm-m0 , risc-v, and Xtensa ESP cores. Those are the ones that can be recovered by the billions. You can recover tens of 1980s era level computers out of most any consumer device these days, even lightbulbs often have one. For $0.1 I can buy an MCU that can bit bang a keyboard , mouse, sound, VGA, with 2x the memory and 96 times the processing power as my old 6502 based computer. An esp32 is much, much more capable, like better than an old pentium machine and has wifi, usb, Bluetooth, etc…. And costs 0.7-2$ on a module. They can be found in home automation lightbulbs, among other things. Espressos has shipped over a billion esp32 chips since the platform launched. Sure, we should have a 6502 based solution, as it has a lot of software out there and a minimal transistor count, making it possible to hand-build. But for a long time we will be digging up esp32s and they are much more useful.
jaybro867 2y ago
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226 points by kaycebasques 2y ago

[flagged]

This link might be coming up in the context of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43481590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43481590 which went a bit under the HN radar. EDIT: oh, and in case the website goes over quota, try https://new.collapseos.org/ https://new.collapseos.org/ . I haven't thrown the DNS switch yet, but I expect my meager Fastmail hosting will bust today.

lametti 2y ago
It's a nice article from Wired in the linked thread. And from your website: > What made me turn to the "yup, we're fucked" camp was "Comment tout peut s'effondrer" by Pablo Servigne, Éditions du Seuil, 2015. That'll make for some light reading next time I head up north. Thanks for the recommendation.

palmotea 2y ago

If "our global supply chain [will] collapse before we reach 2030," why is having a some type of computer a priority? I feel these kinds of projects may be fun, but they're essentially just LARPing. Though this one seems to have a more reasonable concept than most (e.g. "My raspbery pi-based "cyberdeck" with offline wikipedia will help!" No, you need a fucking farming manual on paper.).

stevenAthompson 2y ago
Some people are afraid the world will end, others are afraid it won't. The latter type actively enjoy thinking about this sort of thing. I think we'll see more of it as the boomers continue to age. Some folks mistake their own looming end for the end of all things.
- nomel 2y ago
  Doom is useful. The reason you stockpile food or grow a crop in spring is to avoid the doom that would come winter, if you didn't. Fearing a possible bad future is fairly fundamental for survival. I assume there's some significant hard-wiring for this type of emotion, with some people having a different baseline for their sensitivity to it. I also suspect the environment might push regional genetic population to have different sensitivities, depending on how harsh/unstable the environment is. I say "unstable" because I see doom as anxiety about the possibility. For example, in a region with a consistent harsh winter, doom has less use because piling food up is just routine, everyone does it, it's obvious. But, in an unstable environment, with a winter that's only sometimes harsh, you need to fear that possibility of a harsh winter. You're driven by the anxiety of what might be. You stockpile food even though you don't need it now: you're irrational in the instantaneous context, but rational for the long term context. It's a neat future looking emotion that probably evolved closely with intelligence.
saturn8601 2y ago
Did you read the entire post? >Some people doubt that computers will stay relevant after a civilizational collapse. I mostly agree. The drastic simplification of our society will mean that we have a lot less information to manage. We'll be a lot more busy with more pressing activities than processing data. >However, the goal of Collapse OS is not to save computing, but electronics. Managing electricity will stay immensely useful. I think thats a notable goal. We will conduct business with pen and paper but given that even in a collapse scenario there will be lots of remnants of the current era lying around might as well try and make use of it. Its one of the reason I really don't like the people collecting e-waste in bulk and then melting down the chips for tiny scraps of gold. So much effort went into making those chips there has got to be a better way to preserve these things for usage later.
- ewzimm 2y ago
  Civilization doesn't even have to collapse for a project like this to be useful. Like you said, there's lots of e-waste. If you happened to live in a place that ended up with a lot of this stuff but didn't have a lot of infrastructure, you could possibly build up some convenient services with something like this. I like the idea of building software to make hardware less reliant on external resources in general. Over time, it could be useful to have more resilient electronics, because we seem to be designing machines to be more reliant on specific networked infrastructure every year.
  - nradov 2y ago
    What services? For most modern services the big cost inputs are things like human labor, utilities, and real estate. Reusing obsolete hardware doesn't gain anything. It's likely to be a net negative if it takes up more space, uses more electricity, and requires more maintenance.
    - ewzimm 2y ago
      A lot of functions of electronics don't require tons of processing power or efficiency. Microcontrollers can be used for just about anything. General purpose computing can be put to whatever purpose you can image. Things supported by this OS like the Z80, 8086, 6502 etc. use around 5-10W. Using simple parts to control complicated machines is a standard operation, and even advanced electronics tend to use a lot of parts using older manufacturing techniques because it's more efficient to keep the old processes running. Here's a fun article with some context about old processors like this still in production: https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/ask-hackaday-when-it-comes-to-processors-how-far-back-can-you-go/ https://hackaday.com/2022/12/01/ask-hackaday-when-it-comes-t...
pjc50 2y ago
Whenever I read these kinds of collapse posts I wonder: where do the bodies go in this scenario? Because if that kind of collapse happens the management of seven billion corpses becomes pressing.
- all2 2y ago
  Depending on the source of their un-aliveness you have a few options: 1. they rot on the face of the ground and the carrion eaters will take care of it 2. they are already cinder/charcoal and the plants will take care of it
- vdupras 2y ago
  For french speaking people, I recommend "Ravage" by Barjavel. It's not realistic by any means, but it's a nice take on this very issue :) The serious take: live in the countryside. This is an urban problem.
- WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
  I’m most likely going to be one of the corpses, so not my problem.
- kragen 2y ago
  Given a land area of 510 million km², in the worst case, that's a sudden event producing 14 bodies per km², about 25 meters from one body to the next. If I were one of a small number of survivors in that situation, I'd dig a mass grave, dump 14 bodies into it, and enjoy my nice, sanitary square kilometer all by myself. Probably boil the water from the well. Until I die of starvation because I don't know how to hunt, or from an infected wound, or something. In more plausible cases, we're talking about a population collapse where the deaths are either concentrated in cities, spread out over several years, or both. If they're concentrated in cities, maybe avoid the cities for three to six months until they finish rotting. If they're spread out over several years, those who die later will be able to bury those who die earlier; it only takes a few man-hours of labor to dig a grave.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
redkoala 2y ago
Solar powered micro-controllers might be the way to go that could hook up to crude automated farm machines. Depending on the life span of batteries, solar powered ebook readers to store those farming manuals and other guides, solar powered computers for spreadsheets and planning software, and solar powered cb ham radios for communications with built in encryption keys.
- palmotea 2y ago
  In a societal collapse, the only thing that you list that I think would be worth the effort would be "solar powered cb ham radios for communications." Crude automated [solar powered] farm machines - would probably be useless. Animal power is probably the way to go. Or steam. Go to a threshing bee sometime: I've seen a tractor that runs on wood. Solar powered ebook readers to store those farming manuals and other guides - the life span of batteries would be short, get that shit on paper fast. Solar powered computers for spreadsheets and planning software - plan in your head or use a paper spreadsheet. Computers might be everywhere today, and you personally might not know how to do anything without a computer, but practically no one had a computer 40-45 years ago, and literally no one had a computer when society was last at a "collapse" level of technology. COMPUTERS ARE NOT NECESSARY.
  - vdupras 2y ago
    I 100% agree that computers are not necessary. But regardless of that, the ability to program microcontrollers is still a superpower and if you can have it, you have a hell of an edge.
    - palmotea 2y ago
      > But regardless of that, the ability to program microcontrollers is still a superpower and if you can have it, you have a hell of an edge. I really disagree with that. It will give practically no edge. It's a specialist skill that's only really useful in the context of an already computerized society for mass production or big one-offs. If you have a collapse, I think the assumption is there would little to no mass production of advanced goods (hence, the scavenging concept). Then you're left with big one-offs, which are things large organizations like governments build and not all the time.
0hijinks 2y ago
Beyond LARPing the feasibility of building new computers post societal collapse, the website's proposal for collapse being so imminent is... weakly justified? I'm not an optimist in today's societal climate, but the rationale [1] stems from peak oil and cultural bankruptcy. Peak oil is (was?) the concern of limited oil production in the face of static or increasing demand. The 2019 peak from big oil wasn't about declining production, but declining demand [2]. Which is good, if the ideal is long-lasting migration to renewables. I won't try to predict the future w/r/t what current societal trends mean for the long-term success of global supply chains, but I would be greatly surprised if cultural bankruptcy alone causes the complete collapse of society in the next 5-10 years. [1] http://collapseos.org/civ.html http://collapseos.org/civ.html [2] https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/energy-outlook/bp-energy-outlook-2023.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c...
- er4hn 2y ago
  I think full scale collapse is unlikely. I'd rate balkanization / large scale internet disruptions as pretty likely to happen within the next few years due to a combination of: - lightly protected and globally reachable attack surface - increasing geopolitical tensions - the bizarre tendency to put everything possible online, i.e. IoT devices that always need internet, resources that rely on CDNs to function, other weird dependencies.
schiffern 2y ago
>you need a fucking farming manual on paper. With an adjustable hole punch, prong fasteners, (optionally) duct tape for the spine, and (optionally) sheet protectors for the front and back covers, you can crank out a survival library of (open-source) books as fast as pages come out your Brother laser. I never bothered with fancy acid-free paper. Modern paper has good longevity, but to be safe I use non-recycled, non-whitened (91 brightness) paper. Guide with prong fasteners (I prefer white tape, full-size pages, double/triple`inside a sheet protector as covers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnpnHWcE04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnpnHWcE04 A different technique with brad fasteners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD3vWZ0I85g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD3vWZ0I85g Lots of fancy book-binding tutorials out there, but I suspect most people don't realize how simple a paperback can actually be.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  I'm still WAY better off with my solar panels and ALL the books on an external hard drive. I can't think of ANY situation where a print out of Wikipedia would be better than a digital version.
  - schiffern 2y ago
    Wikipedia is an extreme example, since it's highly impractical to print the whole thing. OTOH printing your "Top 20" survival books is quick and affords a nice measure of system-level dissimilar redundancy (not to mention valuable barter goods :D).
  - echoangle 2y ago
    > I can't think of ANY situation where a print out of Wikipedia would be better than a digital version. An EMP destroys your electronics and makes accessing the digital version impossible?
    - kylebenzle 2y ago
      In this scenario we have the print version AND the digital version. You could also say in the middle of a house file with the paper on fire the digital version would be better but it's pointless to invent around the assumptions.
kylebenzle 2y ago
I have a small farm, solar, a pond and a ton of farming/gardening books. I for one would LOVE a PipBoy-like cyberdeck with a snapshot of the internet from 2025 when I' hunkered down with my dogs, sheep and goats.
cowfarts 2y ago
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trod1234 2y ago
> why is having some type of computer a priority. Mechanization and Automation. It creates time you would normally have to spend actively on labor. Age of energy and all. The main inputs for this though would be quite difficult to bootstrap. I'm talking about magnet wire enamel and electrical isolation. You need that to make motors and actuators. You need computers for the control systems.
nfriedly 2y ago
I read the book "The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch", and to some extent that also felt like LARPing, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It also left me wanting more. It has pretty extensive references at the end, I wonder if anyone's put together a collection of all the referenced materials?
tengwar2 2y ago
You're thinking of a PC. This project doesn't address that type of computer at all. 8-bit computers programmed in Forth suggests very strongly that this is aimed at control engineering, and area where having a few computers makes a big difference to what you can do in an industrial process. It might also be useful for simple radio communication.
- kjs3 2y ago
  In addition to a controller, being able to do non-trivial calculations will always be useful.

panarchy 2y ago

"By "scavenge-friendly electronic parts", I mean parts that can be assembled with low-tech tools. I mostly mean parts with a "through hole" mounting type (in opposition with "surface mount"). "But I do tons of hobbyist electronics with surface mount!", some could say. Yeah, sure, but how do you wire it? You order a PCB from OSH Park? That's not very scavenge-friendly. " - https://new.collapseos.org/why.html https://new.collapseos.org/why.html Not that I totally disagree with this but see clay PCBs, another post-supply-chain-collapse electronics project https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-clay-pcb#t=1689 https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-clay-pcb#t=1689

vdupras 2y ago
That looks really cool, but as we see from the size of the traces, I doubt you can fit a modern surface mount chip on that.

phendrenad2 2y ago

Does it run on an IBM 5100?

UncleSlacky 2y ago
You are John Titor and I claim my $5!

generalizations 2y ago

This misses the point entirely. If you want access to digital tools after a collapse, then you design a (resilient, hard to break, easy to repair) transformer that can convert ANY kind of electricity into e.g. 12v DC. Pair it with a paper manual that describes a few ways to generate power from raw materials (diy batteries, ways to use copper wire if you can get some, etc). Then keep some laptops in a waterproof box.

anonzzzies 2y ago
Old laptops or old boards with crts. Sure power is an issue but with your transformer (which is present in most 80s computers) and large, easy to replace and often even make components, you stand a lot more chance of that stuff surviving decades of use. No chance with laptops; maybe if you pack 100 x220 thinkpads? Those you can swap parts out. Still not robust as some of the 80s monsters I have which got wet (roof leak), too hot and had parts break but still work 40 years later. Some with no fixes at all. Those crt monitors are very robust as well, easy to repair-ish (you can use them even with a lot of damage). I have enough computers, diy and farming experience to probably be alive and kicking for a while if this happens, but I think I am not so interested to try.
- generalizations 2y ago
  The point is that the computer is the easy part. It's the fun part to think about, but it's not important for achieving the goal. The hard part is powering it, when the infrastructure to generate clean electricity is gone. What will you plug your transformer into? So solve that, create robust sources for electric power, and the rest can be solved with a few bulk laptop purchases off ebay.
  - kjellsbells 2y ago
    Not just power generation but also the calorific and opportunity cost of working on that (or indeed anything that does not immediately pay off in energy terms). Or else you die before your compiler is done ;) If you have more than one survivor, you quickly need to learn to trade and cooperate to maximize your energy return, or else you all die, one by one.

foenix 2y ago

Very cool! I asked about something similar in 2010 on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396876 Funny to see how the comments haven't shifted (and have!) in the past 15 years.

barbequeer 2y ago

this line got me: > under what conditions do you believe the civilization you're living under will collapse? [...] Oh, you just haven't made that list yet? [...] Or you could take the question from the other side and list the conditions that are necessary for your civilization to continue to exist. That's an interesting list too. I've always dismissed collapse talk as "batshit crazy" as the author says. but he raises good points here. maybe I'm not batshit crazy enough.

stevenAthompson 2y ago
It still seems pretty crazy to me. In the wired article the author says he thinks climate change will disrupt trade routes, but obviously society would route around the damage as long as it remained profitable to do so. The only scenario in which this hypothetical makes sense would be mass causality events like pandemics or wars that prevent travel and trade. So we're talking about a hypothetical situation in which global trade has halted almost completely for some reason, and has been stopped for a very, very long time. This means that the majority of the worlds population are either dead or dying, which means that YOU will be either dead or dying as well. Even if we accept the premise (a tall ask) AND we assume you will happen to be one of the survivors because you're "special", wouldn't it make more sense to prep by building a cargo ship so trade can resume sooner than it does to build apocalypse proof micro-controller code?
- vdupras 2y ago
  Trade routes as we know them today are made possible by Pax Americana, which is fading as we speak.
  - kragen 2y ago
    There was a lot of trade in the centuries up to WWII, though.
    - vdupras 2y ago
      Yes, but not of the sophistication required to produce a typical ARM CPU.

apitman 2y ago

Well they're certainly walking the walk by serving this website over plaintext HTTP/1.1

prophesi 2y ago
My way of securely accessing HTTP-only sites these days is to check if the site's been archived. Not sure if it's changed since, but here's a snapshot of the page on Jan 11th 2025[0]. [0] https://archive.md/Q207v https://archive.md/Q207v
- apitman 2y ago
  That's actually a pretty good idea, thanks. FWIW I'm a bit torn on this. I think most websites should host both HTTP/2/3 with TLS, but also plaintext HTTP/1.1 as a fallback.

alnwlsn 2y ago

I've been meaning to give this a try for a while - I have several of the "supported" systems and I've designed a couple of my own simple Z80 computers over the past few years. Being able to program AVRs from a scavenged e-waste Z80 system seems strangely compelling to me. There's a LOT of AVRs in e-waste. But, if you absolutely needed to depend on it, I think that other technology might be better for the kinds of things we normally use microcontrollers for. If I need to control electronics where something that does this for a minute, then waits for that so it can do something else until this other thing, it's hard to imagine that a would-be apocalypse-ee would want to use a microcontroller rather than a more easily improvised mechanical cam timer [0] 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_timer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_timer

kragen 2y ago
I'm interested to hear what kinds of things you find AVRs in! Are they reflashable?
- alnwlsn 2y ago
  Could be just about anything, from thermostats to CPAP machines to SFP fiber transceivers. Anything that needs to be just a little bit smart (but usually not internet connected) can have one. For hobbyists, the ATMega328P was the go-to for about 15 years, before ESP32 and Pi Pico took over more recently. I'm sure Arduino helped a lot with the AVR's proliferation. There are no one-time programmable versions of AVR as far as I know, so they can all have their internal Flash reprogrammed.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Awesome, thanks! I know them mostly from hobbyist contexts, and I noted that Atmel kind of stopped updating them after the ATMega328PU (and then failed as a company), so I wondered if they were kind of a failed product line, because there weren't enough hobbyists to sustain the product line. It's nice to hear I was wrong!

jeffchien 2y ago

Now I want a scavengers' guide to identify machines that might have a compatible microprocessor within them, because I haven't seen a Commodore or Apple II in a long time. Arcades with older cabinets obviously have them, but if most post-apocalyptic media are prophetic, they'll probably be occupied by a gang of young ne'er-do-wells. I suppose, thanks to the College Board, Ti-83s (Z80) are still quite common in the US. Are there toys, medical equipment, or vending machines that still use these chips? I wonder if ESP32s and Arduinos might be more commonly found, though I could see the argument that places with those newfangled chips may be more likely to become radioactive craters in some scenarios.

nkali 2y ago
I tried to do something like that in my free time. ARMs are everywhere, PICs are very common as well: https://github.com/ninakali/chip_scavenger/tree/main/src https://github.com/ninakali/chip_scavenger/tree/main/src
- kragen 2y ago
  Hey, this is fantastic, thanks!
thesuitonym 2y ago
The Z80 is still an insanely popular microcontroller, that can be found it so, so many devices. Head down to your local Walmart's toy aisle open some of the electronics there (Post-collapse, of course) and you'll certainly find a few. That's not as easy as just dropping a full computer on your desk, but having a low power processor that's easy to find replacements for would be useful. That is, of course, if you spent the time pre-collapse to learn how to make a useful system out of those components, which I suspect is the real goal of Collapse OS.
- kragen 2y ago
  Can you name two such devices? Because the only thing I've ever found a Z80 in is an S1 MP3 player. I've found ARMs, 8051s, and weird Epson microcontrollers they seem to have never published the instruction set for, but never a Z80.

glonq 2y ago

I find this to be less unhinged than say TempleOS, but it still seems unnecessary to focus on outdated languages and ancient CPU's. If/when civilization collapses, we will have zero problem scavenging for x86 CPUs.

2mlWQbCK 2y ago

I am not into this end-of-the-world collapse thing at all, but I like reading about the strong focus on simplicity and support for limited hardware. There is a lot of talk about keeping things simple in software, but very few act on it. I don't need the threat of a global disaster to be interested in running operating systems like that. Been doing some retro hobby (16-bit, real-mode, 80286) DOS development lately. It is refreshing to look at a system and be able to at least almost understand all the things going on. It might not be the simplest possible system, not the most elegant CPU design, but compared to the bloated monsters we use today it is very nice to work with. DOS is already stretching the limits of what I can keep in my head and reason about without getting completely lost in over-engineered (and leaky) abstraction layers.

0hijinks 2y ago

I think it's really cool to create minimalist OSes. Something about perfboard projects and old, slow CPUs tickles my buttons. But I'm struggling to come up with a use case for this project in the End Times. In theory, this allows me to flash a ROM connected to an old through-hole, 8/16-bit CPU like a Z80, 8086, 6809 and 6502. I guess my issue is why and how would I do that during the end of the world? I can't think of a way to come into possession of MPUs like that without intentionally buying them ahead of time. And if I'm going to stockpile those, I might as well stockpile a more capable MCU or MPU instead and flash it with something else. 99.9% of what I'd want to do with minimalist computers in the apocalyptic wasteland would be just fine without an OS. Bare-bones MCUs work spectacularly for control systems, wireless cryptosystems, data logging, etc. Maybe I didn't look hard enough in the README [1], but I don't see how I'd bootstrap a system like this without already having a much more capable system on standby. Which comes back to the issue of... why? [1] https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/collapseos https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/collapseos

vdupras 2y ago
Collapse OS is fully self-hosting. Once you have such a system, you can improve it and deploy it elsewhere from within. But yes, your initial deployment will come from a POSIX machine. This is why I talk about two stages of collapse.
- 0hijinks 2y ago
  That's kind of a bummer, but still neat to have built-in self-hosting. I think I've seen videos of perfboard computers that allow manual data entry with pushbuttons and manual clocks. I could see that being extended to punch cards. (Not trying to be flippant; I think that could be an interesting extension to this sort of project. Have a bucket of parts, a perfboard, and some paper? Let's flash an operating system.)

aeblyve 2y ago

Targeting smartphones seems like a highly realistic way to make something like this work. The average westerner has like three of them lying around in desk drawers and they already have a number of useful peripherals attached. It is much less obvious, especially to the layman, how to turn the microcontroller in the coffee machine into something like a useful gate control device.

deleted 2y ago
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mystified5016 2y ago

Breaking: hn commenters aghast and appalled that they aren't the target audience of a project.

nullpoint420 2y ago

Where are we going to find engineers that know Forth post-collapse?

dang 2y ago

Related. Others? Running CollapseOS on an Esp8266 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645124 - Dec 2023 (1 comment) DuskOS: Successor to CollapseOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36688676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36688676 - July 2023 (4 comments) Collapse OS – Why? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35672677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35672677 - April 2023 (1 comment) Collapse OS: Winter is coming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207852 - Oct 2022 (2 comments) Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340518 - May 2022 (8 comments) Collapse OS Status: Completed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26922146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26922146 - April 2021 (2 comments) Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25910108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25910108 - Jan 2021 (116 comments) Collapse OS Web Emulators - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24138496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24138496 - Aug 2020 (1 comment) Collapse OS, an OS for When the Unthinkable Happens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535720 - June 2020 (2 comments) Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453575 - June 2020 (15 comments) Collapse OS – Why Forth? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23450287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23450287 - June 2020 (166 comments) Collapse OS – Why? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901002 - April 2020 (3 comments) 'Collapse OS' Is an Open Source Operating System for the Post-Apocalypse - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21815588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21815588 - Dec 2019 (3 comments) Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 - Oct 2019 (303 comments)

boricj 2y ago

In the past couple of years I've worked on a Ghidra extension that can export any subset of a program as a relocatable object file. I built that because I tried to reverse-engineer/decompile a video game and had unconventional opinions on how to proceed about it. I didn't design it for a post-collapse scenario, but one can salvage program parts from binary artifacts and create new programs with it, just like how a mechanic in a Mad Max world can scavenge car parts from a scrapyard and create new contraptions. It deconstructs the classical compile-assemble-link workflow in a manner that tends to cause migraines to sane persons. I've even managed to slightly bend the rules around ABI and sling binary code across similar-ish platforms (PlayStation to Linux MIPS and Linux x86 to Windows x86), but to really take this to its logical conclusion I'd need a way to glue together incompatible ABIs or even ISAs, in order to create program chimeras from just about any random set of binaries.

dgellow 2y ago
Is that extension publicly available?
- boricj 2y ago
  You can find it here: https://github.com/boricj/ghidra-delinker-extension https://github.com/boricj/ghidra-delinker-extension I've demonstrated a bunch of use-cases on my blog, ranging from porting software to pervasive binary patching and pilfering application code into libraries, all done on artifacts without source code available. I have one user in particular who successfully used it on a huge (7 MiB) program in a span of a couple of weeks, most of them spent fixing bugs on my end. They then proceeded to crank up the insanity to 11 by splitting that link-time optimized artifact into pieces and swapping parts out willy-nilly. That is theoretically impossible because LTO turns the entire program into a single translation unit subject to inter-procedure optimizations, so functions will exhibit nonstandard calling conventions you can't replicate with freshly built source code, but I guess anything's possible when you binary patch __usercall into MSVC. I should get back to it once work is less hectic. Delinking is an exquisitely intricate puzzle to solve algorithmically and I've managed to make that esoteric but powerful reverse-engineering technique not only scalable to megabytes worth of code, but also within reach of everyday reverse-engineers.

perrygeo 2y ago

The problem with claims of imminent societal collapse is they treat "collapse" like an event, with the world neatly divided into before and after. Historically, societal collapse is much more fuzzy. No neat single cause. No single moment when things flipped. You can only truly know the collapse has happened well in retrospect. In terms of computing, this means that any strategy looking at a before/after collapse framing is missing the entire interesting middle part - how do we transition from this high-tech to low-tech world over the course of decades. I seriously doubt it can happen by anticipating what computing we might need and just leapfrogging there.

wibbily 2y ago
Same author has a sort of "missing link" version that is better suited to modern PCs. Doesn't answer your philosophical questions about civilizations etc. but the goal isn't to start building Z80s out of transistors anytime soon. I think the vision here is more likely to play out, if any were to. Not many fabs that can make modern chips, and the biggest one is under the business end of Chinese artillery so. Gotta make do with whatever we have even if new supply dries up. https://duskos.org/ https://duskos.org/
- anthk 2y ago
  Its's the same author. Uh, wait, I've properly read your comment now. Still, I miss a ZMachine interpreter for DuskOS. And networking. Gopher, IRC and email (among maybe some NNTP client) are a must.
cowfarts 2y ago
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wat10000 2y ago
I don’t think it’s the focus of this, but we do now live in a time where the collapse could potentially happen in an hour.
- borntoolate 2y ago

tamimio 2y ago

> Bandwidth Restricted >The page you have tried to access is not available because the owner of the file you are trying to access has exceeded our short term bandwidth limits. Please try again shortly. It seems it collapsed!

trod1234 2y ago
Well the load balancer is still up, but its just doing a redirect loop now. I can't imagine a single 302 request getting redirected 10x in a loop to the redirect limit per visitor is good for bandwidth.
- vdupras 2y ago
  Sorry about the mess, I didn't anticipate the load. The website has been moved, but DNS propagation must occur. https://new.collapseos.org/ https://new.collapseos.org/ might work if your DNS still points to the old server.
  - nickpsecurity 2y ago
    Check out BunnyCDN. I got a few, no-frills sites running on it. They're cheap. They also have a paid, permanent cache. It's absorbing both burst and AI crawler traffic for me right now.

sb057 2y ago

Appropriately enough, the website is no longer accessible due to rate limiting, and the Internet Archive is down due to a power outage. https://x.com/internetarchive/status/1905030204357214335 https://x.com/internetarchive/status/1905030204357214335

Felger 2y ago

Will it run on my Pip-Boy 3000 ?

system7rocks 2y ago

Wow. I love this. Yes, it's kind of a LARP situation, but imagine a future scenario where some hacker (who also is physically resilient and well-protected in the face of apocalypse) has to figure out how to boot or get some system operating that might control solar panels. Not knowing the architecture - can you boot it up? Can you analyze existing binaries, ports, and other features and get it crudely operating? This sounds like a helluva of a video game.

johnsillings 2y ago
you might enjoy Caves of Qud

revskill 2y ago

This is genius. https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/doc/design/simple.txt https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/doc/de...

curtisszmania 2y ago

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ninalanyon 2y ago

Surely the easiest way to get a useful OS running on 8 bit CPUs would be to start with an existing one like CP/M that already has an ecosystem of applications and hardware designs including networking. Perhaps I should drag my Osborne out of the cellar and see if the floppies still work.

gizajob 2y ago

I always knew FORTH would be the chosen one when all else fails.

heavymetalpoizn 2y ago

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anthk 2y ago

Also, I forgot. The CollapseOS author and kragen might love it: https://magic-1.org https://magic-1.org

kragen 2y ago
Thanks! I don't remember if I've seen it before. In case it's down for others: https://web.archive.org/web/20250221070009/http://magic-1.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250221070009/http://magic-1.or... "This web page is being served by a completely home-built computer: Bill Buzbee's Magic-1 HomebrewCPU. Magic-1 doesn't use an off-the-shelf CPU. Instead, its custom CPU is built out of ~200 74 series TTL chips." "Magic-1 is running a new port of Minix 2.0.4, compiled with a retargeted LCC portable C compiler. The physical connection to the internet is done using a native interface based on Wiznet's w5300 TCP/IP stack." While I hate to condone using TTL rather than CMOS, this is extremely cool! The CPU is documented at https://homebrewcpu.com/ https://homebrewcpu.com/. Unfortunately the TCP/IP information was only posted on Google Plus, which has now been memory-holed by Google. There's a clone by Aidil Jazmi documented at https://www.aidilj.com/homemadecpu/ https://www.aidilj.com/homemadecpu/.

K0balt 2y ago

It seems like any serious endeavor on this front would focus on arm-m0 , risc-v, and Xtensa ESP cores. Those are the ones that can be recovered by the billions. You can recover tens of 1980s era level computers out of most any consumer device these days, even lightbulbs often have one. For $0.1 I can buy an MCU that can bit bang a keyboard , mouse, sound, VGA, with 2x the memory and 96 times the processing power as my old 6502 based computer. An esp32 is much, much more capable, like better than an old pentium machine and has wifi, usb, Bluetooth, etc…. And costs 0.7-2$ on a module. They can be found in home automation lightbulbs, among other things. Espressos has shipped over a billion esp32 chips since the platform launched. Sure, we should have a 6502 based solution, as it has a lot of software out there and a minimal transistor count, making it possible to hand-build. But for a long time we will be digging up esp32s and they are much more useful.

jaybro867 2y ago

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