Collapse OS

Bootstrap post-collapse technology

Collapse OS is a z80 kernel and a collection of programs, tools and documentation that allows you to assemble an OS that, when completed, will be able 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. Replicate itself.

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.

Forth reboot in process

You are currently looking at the forth branch of the project, which is a Forth reboot of Collapse OS. You can see why I'm doing this in the related github issue.

Documentation is lacking, it's not ready yet, this is a WIP branch.

Getting started

Usage documentation is in-system, so access to documentation requires you to run Collapse OS. Fortunately, doing so in an emulator is easy.

See /emul/README.md for getting an emulated system running.

Then, run 0 LIST for an introduction, follow instructions from there.

Organisation of this repository

• blk: Collapse OS filesystem's content. That's actually where Collapse OS’ source code is located. Everything else is peripheral.
• recipes: collection of recipes that assemble Collapse OS on a specific machine.
• 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.

Status

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

Discussion

For a general discussion of Collapse OS and the ecosystem of technologies and ideas that may develop around it refer to r/collapseos

A more traditional mailing list and IRC (#collapseos on freenode) channels are also maintained.