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Comment by PeaceTed | Hacker News Reader

Congratulations, welcome to the dev team of Collapse OS. https://collapseos.org/

Now they are more focused on supply chain break down but your scenario would also be valid.

When I think of what's out there I think of cheapy ARMs, maybe STM32 knock offs. Honestly the F103C8T6 is so prolific that's probably a solid chunk of all processors in existence. And then things like ESP32s. So to not see ARM or Tenscillica on there is a bit weird. But maybe I'm reading too much into it and it's more of a thought experiment

Looking at that list, collapse OS seems to cater to 8-bit only. It’s also aimes at “ built from scavenged parts” boards. I’ve often come across Hitachi h8, Blackfin, PIC, avr, the occasional ARM and other controllers in the wild. But they all have one thing in common: the flash is locked and inaccessible without some jtag tools. The only times you’ll see external flash (winbond & co) is with an fpga or a controller who’s had his otp memory configured with a bootloader.

I often re-purpose scavenged board because of their useful layout, but only after swapping the controller for a programmable one. The notion of scavenging the controllers themselves… far less practical as you think.

I mean there are countless examples of IoT devices getting hacked because they didn't do that but I guess

The iot devices are hacked on the application layer. You have a controller running some linux distro and you work your way in over tty/telnet/eth. That’s an entirely different ballgame than repurposing 8-bit avr or 32-bit STM microcontrollers.

My first time seeing Collapse OS as well, but I'm guessing the decision is based in attempting to contain complexity.

Seems like the author has a related projected Dusk OS that is more portable:

https://duskos.org/

The future is Forth? We're... Forthed!

My dad used to write Forth ... for fun.

I find it ironic that post-apocalypse we must rely on a language that is post-apocalypse.

Like monkeys gathering at the monolith…

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