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Recipes contain bits and pieces of hardware-related knowledge, but these bits feel sparse. I've been wanting to consolidate hardware- related documentation for a while, but always fell at odds with the recipes organisation. We don't have recipes anymore, just a /doc/hw section that contains hardware-related documentation which often translate to precise instructions to run Collapse OS on a specific machine. With this new organisation, I hope to end up with a better, more solid documentation.
55 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
55 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
# Introduction to Collapse OS
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Collapse OS is a minimal operating system created to preserve
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the ability to program microcontrollers through civilizational
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collapse. Its author expects the collapse of the global supply
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chain means the loss of our computer production capability. Many
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microcontrollers require a computer to program them.
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Collapse OS innovates by self-hosting on extremely tight resour-
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ces and is thus (theoretically thus far) able to operate and be
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improved in a world without modern computers.
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# Forth
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This OS is a Forth. It doesn't adhere to any pre-collapse stand-
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ard, but is pretty close to the Forth described in Starting
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Forth by Leo Brodie. It is therefore the recommended introduct-
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ory material to learn Forth in the context of Collapse OS.
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If you don't have access to this book and don't know anything
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about Forth, learning Collapse OS could be a rough ride, but
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don't despair. There's a Forth primer in primer.txt.
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# Documentation and self-hosting
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Collapse OS is self-hosting, its documentation is not, that is,
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Collapse OS cannot read this document you're reading. Text
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blocks could, of course, be part of Collapse OS' blocks, but
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doing so needlessly uses blocks and make the system heavier than
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it should.
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This documentation is expected to be printed before the last
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modern computer of your community dies.
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# Where to begin?
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If you're reading this and don't know where to begin, you're
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likely to have access to a modern computer. The best place to
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begin is to build the C VM of Collapse OS in /cvm. You can then
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begin playing with it with the help of usage.txt and impl.txt.
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When you're ready to move to real hardware, read hw/intro.txt.
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# Other topics in this documentation
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* Frequently asked questions (faq.txt)
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* Dictionary of core Forth words (dict.txt)
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* Editing text (ed.txt)
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* Assembling binaries (asm.txt)
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* Programming AVR chips (avr.txt)
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* Bootstrap Collapse OS to a new system (bootstrap.txt)
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* Cross-compilation mechanisms (cross.txt)
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* Protocols (protocol.txt)
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