Decades of post-apocalyptic Hollywood movies have taught us that once all the trappings of our civilisation have been stripped away, it’s going to be kinda cool. We’re all going to wear slightly dusty looking 1980s motorcycling gear, and we’re going to drive really cool cars. Except of course Mad Max is fantasy, and the reality is likely to be unspeakbly grim. The future [Virgil Dupras] is anticipating is not a post-nuclear wasteland though, instead he’s trying to imagine what access to computing might look like in a world where the global supply chain has broken down. His solution is CollapseOS, an operating system designed for resilience and self-replication, that runs upon the minimal hardware of an 8-bit Z80.
It’s a pretty basic operating system so brace yourself if you are expecting a 64-bit fully multithreading kernel. Instead, you’re looking at a kernel, an assembler, and a text editor. One of the stated aims is that it can compile assembly language for a wide range of target CPUs, but it does not make it clear whether this means the OS itself will support those platforms. The self-replication is a fascinating feature though.
It’s an interesting question: what computing hardware would be available to the would-be hacker in a world in which all parts must be scavenged? The Z80 and other processors like it fit the bill admirably in one sense as it is possible to create a working computer using them with fairly minimal tools and knowledge, but we can’t help wondering whether the days when almost any electronic junk pile would contain one are now past. So what other easily accessible computing platforms might be created from post-apocalyptic junk in 2019? Remember, with no laptop and IDE you can’t just put an Arduino bootloader on that ATmega328 you desoldered from an old thermostat. As always the comments are open.
Image: Damicatz [CC BY 2.5].
