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Virgil Dupras 475caf35f4 Make KEY non-blocking
... and rename it to KEY?. Then, add KEY from KEY? for its blocking
version.

I need this for an upcoming Remote Shell feature. If a Collapse OS
system remotely controls another shell, it needs to be able to poll
both the remote system and the local keyboard at the same time. A
blocking KEY is incompatible with this.

In some places, the polling mechanism doesn't make sense, so this
new KEY? always returns a character. In some places, I just haven't
implemented the mechanism yet, so I kept the old blocking code and
added a "always 1" flag as a temporary shim.

I have probably broken something, but in emulators, Collapse OS runs
fine. It's an important reminder of what will be lost with the new
"dogfooding" approach (see recent mailing list message): without
emulators, it's much harder to to sweeping changes like this without
breaking stuff.

It's fine, I don't expect many more of these core changes to the
system. It's nearly feature-complete.
2021-01-01 08:23:59 -05:00
arch Make KEY non-blocking 2021-01-01 08:23:59 -05:00
cvm Make KEY non-blocking 2021-01-01 08:23:59 -05:00
doc Make KEY non-blocking 2021-01-01 08:23:59 -05:00
emul Make KEY non-blocking 2021-01-01 08:23:59 -05:00
tests Add word ROT> 2020-10-29 12:41:08 -04:00
tools VE: don't emit chars higher than 0x7f 2020-12-22 18:34:03 -05:00
.build.yml Replace Travis CI with Sourcehut CI 2020-06-23 20:53:38 -04:00
.gitignore recipes/ti84: move recipe blocks into local overlay 2020-09-20 20:24:09 -04:00
blk.fs Make KEY non-blocking 2021-01-01 08:23:59 -05:00
CONTRIBUTING.md Complete overhaul of recipes 2020-10-30 20:39:39 -04:00
COPYING
README.md Transform "blk/" folders into "blk.fs" text files 2020-11-14 18:34:15 -05:00
runtests.sh cvm: split stage and forth xcomp units 2020-11-14 15:00:03 -05:00

Collapse OS

Bootstrap post-collapse technology

Collapse OS is a Forth operating system and a collection of tools and documentation with a single purpose: preserve the ability to program micro- controllers through civilizational collapse.

It it designed to:

  1. Run on minimal and improvised machines.
  2. Interface through improvised means (serial, keyboard, display).
  3. Edit text files.
  4. Compile assembler source files for a wide range of MCUs and CPUs.
  5. Read and write from a wide range of storage devices.
  6. Assemble itself and deploy to another machine.

Additionally, the goal of this project is to be as self-contained as possible. With a copy of this project, a capable and creative person should be able to manage to build and install Collapse OS without external resources (i.e. internet) on a machine of her design, built from scavenged parts with low-tech tools.

Getting started

Documentation is in text files in doc/. Begin with intro.txt.

Collapse OS can run on any POSIX platform and builds easily. See /cvm/README.md for instructions.

Alternatively, there's also Michael Schierl's JS Collapse OS emulator which is awesome and allows you to run Collapse OS from your browser, but it isn't always up to date. The "Javascript Forth" version is especially awesome: it's not a z80 emulator, but a javascript port of Collapse OS!

Organisation of this repository

  • blk.fs: Collapse OS filesystem's content. See below.
  • cvm: A C implementation of Collapse OS, allowing it to run natively on any POSIX platform.
  • doc: Documentation.
  • arch: collection of makefiles that assemble Collapse OS on different machines.
  • tools: Tools for working with Collapse OS from "modern" environments. For example, tools for facilitating data upload to a Collapse OS machine through a serial port.
  • emul: Tools for running Collapse OS in an emulated environment.
  • tests: Automated test suite for the whole project.

blk.fs

This file is a big text file containing the "real deal", that is, the contents of Collapse OS' filesystem. That filesystem contains everything that a post-collapse computer would manage, that is, all Forth and assembler source code for the tools it needs to fulfill its goals.

The Collapse OS filesystem is a simple sequence of 1024 bytes blocks. That is not very workable in the text editor of a modern system. blk.fs represents an "unpacked" view of that block system. Each block (16 lines max per block, 64 chars max per line) begins with a marker indicating the block number of the contents that follow.

Blocks must be in ascending order.

That file can be "packed" to a real blkfs with /tools/blkpack. A real blkfs can be "unpacked" to its text file form with /tools/blkunpack.

Status

The project unfinished but is progressing well! See Collapse OS' website for more information.

Looking for the assembler version?

The Forth-based Collapse OS is the second incarnation of the concept. The first one was entirely written in z80 assembly. If you're interested in that incarnation, checkout the z80asm branch.