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

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.

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.