Collapse OS
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Bootstrap post-collapse technology

Winter is coming and Collapse OS aims to soften the blow. It is a Forth (why Forth?) operating system and a collection of tools and documentation with a single purpose: preserve the ability to program microcontrollers through civilizational collapse. It is designed to:

    Run on minimal and improvised machines.
    Interface through improvised means (serial, keyboard, display).
    Edit text and binary contents.
    Compile assembler source for a wide range of MCUs and CPUs.
    Read and write from a wide range of storage devices.
    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.
Status

The Collapse OS project is completed! It can be downloaded here:
https://collapseos.org/download.html
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Highlights:

    Can assemble Z80, AVR, 8086 and 6809 binaries.
    Can program AVR microcontrollers.
    Has a command line text editor similar to Forth's traditional editor as well as a visual text editor inspired by UNIX' VI.
    Has the full power of a reasonably well-featured Forth interpreter.
    Known to run and self host on very tight machines across multiple CPUs. See hardware support list. (https://collapseos.org/hardware.html)
    Exceedingly simple: Approximately 3 000 lines of "real" code (excludes extras, CVM, emulators, POSIX tools, doc, but includes everything a post-collapse computer would need to fullfill its purpose on all supported arches).
    Has mass storage support. Currently on:
        SD cards
        5 1/4" floppies
    Runs on any POSIX environment through a VM implemented in C.
    Built from a POSIX environment with minimal tooling: only cc, make and curses are needed.
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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" for instructions.

Alternatively, there's also Michael Schierl's JS Collapse OS emulator (https://schierlm.github.io/CollapseOS-Web-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!
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Discussion

The best place to discuss the project is on its private mailing list.

Collapse OS was previously hosted on Github and it has a few interesting discussions in its issues.

A lot of questions that you might have may already have been anwered in a big discussion about it occurred on Reddit (https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/dejmvz/collapse_os_bootstrap_postcollapse_technology/). I've answered many questions there.

There was also a nice conversation on Hacker News about Collapse OS (and then another one and another one), but I didn't participate because I don't have a HN account. Also, this community doesn't seem collapse-aware (although they did seem to warm up to the idea lately) so the idea of participation into this discussion seemed tedious to me. But the user "yellowapple" did a good job of answering many questions in a way that is similar to what I would have.

There is also r/collapseos on Reddit, but be aware that I'm not in there. I was a heavy redditor for nearly 10 years, but I've stopped.
Related efforts

Here is a list of related efforts that I find noteworthy:

    Public Domain Books to Restart Computer Technology: https://blogbyjoshcogliati.blogspot.com/2021/05/public-domain-books-to-restart-computer.html
    Civboot: a civilizational bootstrapper: https://github.com/civboot/civboot
    Simplifier: https://simplifier.neocities.org/
    Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ: https://www.repairfaq.org/


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