!Ship of Theseus
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agk's phlog
29 July 2021 @ 0012
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written on Pinebook Pro in kitchen
when I should be doing schoolwork or sleeping
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I look forward to Steve Lord's next update on his
ZX20 research heirloom computer. I like its long-
term maintainability, extendability, minimal power
requirements, and likely low cost. It's a new
bicycle for the mind. I daydream a similar ship of
Theseus, inspired by:
* information appliances: Canon Cat and Psion
* forth and CP/M systems: Uxn, RetroZer0, RC2014
* Netbooks with transflective displays (Pixel Qi)
* Plan9: rc, Acme, plumber
* HyperCard and Gopher
* Store-and-forward: FidoNet, UUCPNet, EarthStar
* Public-access unix: sdf, circumlunar, tildes
On 30 April I wrote about a possible Raspberry Pi
Zero W-based BSD or Linux netbook. What about an
even simpler machine? Imagine an ESP32 computer in
Psion or netbook form with transflective display
and SD cards that boot small operating systems:
* Uxn or CollapseOS
* RetroZer0 CP/M 3 Plus
* Canon Cat
* Plan9
SD cards could be like the RetroZer0's:
partition 1: core system files
partition 2: local software repository
partition 3: home
Each SD card OS should have good documentation:
printed manual, quickstart guide, reference card.
To operate this imagined ship:
1 Insert SD card. Connect computer to palmtop,
netbook, or desktop peripherals. Optionally
connect or enable networking.
2 Plug computer into power: mains, inverter, or
power brick. It powers on.
3 Do computer things.
4 Run shutdown utility if supported by system.
Otherwise unplug from power.
It would be cool if:
* common operations on any OS had <0.7 seconds
of latency.
* the Canon Cat OS picked up where you left off.
* display was clearer in full sun than basement.
* a forum, mailing list, newsgroup, or bulletin
board hosting programs and community could be
participated in with the ship using the OS
under discussion.
Make the ship cooler:
* Pair via serial or telnet with OpenWRT or BSD
host, or Plan9 cpu server: let it be a term-
inal to a more powerful system.
* Network without an internet gateway via LoRa,
HAMWAN, 802.11 mesh, or self-hosted cellular.
* Pair with cheap thermal printer to print docs
or display teletype.
* Make Canon Cat-style keyboard with 'leap' and
'use front' keys.
* Make chorded braille keyboard and text-to-
speech peripheral. Adapt hardware and OSes.
* Transfer docs like AlphaSmart Dana: "typed out"
to a host via serial, USB, or telnet.
* Port or develop PalmOS or a feature phone RTOS
with basic messaging, calculator, calendar.
Support a directional arrow pad, multi-tap
numpad, and 1" screen.
