Modern Robinson Crusoe
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Imagine: You are modern Robinson Crusoe stranded on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live. No communication possible (no, no you are not allowed to build a radio transmitter). You got a container full with PC hardware. Unfortunatelly you do not have any software. Like said all harddisks are formatted, nothing on them. Sure you got electricity because you could save a emergency generator and tons of gasoline. Also you could save a container full of computer literature. My question is. Can you get one of the PC's working writing an OS from scratch? I mean just having a BIOS? Sincerely Chris ;P -- modified at 23:23 Tuesday 17th January, 2006
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Imagine: You are modern Robinson Crusoe stranded on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live. No communication possible (no, no you are not allowed to build a radio transmitter). You got a container full with PC hardware. Unfortunatelly you do not have any software. Like said all harddisks are formatted, nothing on them. Sure you got electricity because you could save a emergency generator and tons of gasoline. Also you could save a container full of computer literature. My question is. Can you get one of the PC's working writing an OS from scratch? I mean just having a BIOS? Sincerely Chris ;P -- modified at 23:23 Tuesday 17th January, 2006
If you're on an island millions of miles from the next human life, you've clearly mastered interstellar travel, so getting a PC to work should be child's play...
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Imagine: You are modern Robinson Crusoe stranded on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live. No communication possible (no, no you are not allowed to build a radio transmitter). You got a container full with PC hardware. Unfortunatelly you do not have any software. Like said all harddisks are formatted, nothing on them. Sure you got electricity because you could save a emergency generator and tons of gasoline. Also you could save a container full of computer literature. My question is. Can you get one of the PC's working writing an OS from scratch? I mean just having a BIOS? Sincerely Chris ;P -- modified at 23:23 Tuesday 17th January, 2006
it sounds interesting ! The situation is similiar to the very beginning of life form on earth. There was just a large bowl of protein molecules soup which built up creatures later. Just think of each pc like a molecule, and if the pcs can be connected( transfering stuff/information by floppy disk), it seems possible that those connected PCs can form a networking OS similiar to life made up by protein molecules !
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Imagine: You are modern Robinson Crusoe stranded on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live. No communication possible (no, no you are not allowed to build a radio transmitter). You got a container full with PC hardware. Unfortunatelly you do not have any software. Like said all harddisks are formatted, nothing on them. Sure you got electricity because you could save a emergency generator and tons of gasoline. Also you could save a container full of computer literature. My question is. Can you get one of the PC's working writing an OS from scratch? I mean just having a BIOS? Sincerely Chris ;P -- modified at 23:23 Tuesday 17th January, 2006
What is the point if you are not allowed to build a radio transmitter ? You cant even surf for prOn to help you on the island. You really want to forget about the BIOS, work directly with the processor. Step 1: Build a circuit with 32 switches to represent a word. Step 2: Build a circuit to transfer the word corresponding to the switch position to RAM directly via the address & data bus. Step 3: Build a circuit to strobe the address and data by pushing a switch. Step 4: Transfer machine code like this to required addresses. Step 5: Reset processor pin to execute instructions from Program Counter 0.
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Imagine: You are modern Robinson Crusoe stranded on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live. No communication possible (no, no you are not allowed to build a radio transmitter). You got a container full with PC hardware. Unfortunatelly you do not have any software. Like said all harddisks are formatted, nothing on them. Sure you got electricity because you could save a emergency generator and tons of gasoline. Also you could save a container full of computer literature. My question is. Can you get one of the PC's working writing an OS from scratch? I mean just having a BIOS? Sincerely Chris ;P -- modified at 23:23 Tuesday 17th January, 2006
If it's a holywood movie, then it'd take about half an hour to knock together something that'd boot into an email client so that you could send for help (magically forgetting the fact that there's no way to get to the internet, but hey, this is hollywood!) In the real world, you'll need some kind of development system to be able to bootstrap the "blank" machine - some way to construct a basic boot block on the hard disk, or a floppy This is how it's always been. The first PC would've been programmed from a mainframe running a cross assembler. Only once you're OS is stable enough to be able to host its own development tools would you be able to develop the rest of the OS on the machine itself. -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit! Buzzwords!
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Mine the resources (assuming the island has enough, and that you have enough gasoline and stuff), and build yourself a CD creation factory. Then figure out the exact sequence of pits to recreate a Windows XP install disk, and burn it onto the disk. Then die of old age. :) Debugging - The high art and magic of cussing errors into 'features'
I have a feeling the order of your instructions is a bit wonky.
Software Zen:
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Imagine: You are modern Robinson Crusoe stranded on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live. No communication possible (no, no you are not allowed to build a radio transmitter). You got a container full with PC hardware. Unfortunatelly you do not have any software. Like said all harddisks are formatted, nothing on them. Sure you got electricity because you could save a emergency generator and tons of gasoline. Also you could save a container full of computer literature. My question is. Can you get one of the PC's working writing an OS from scratch? I mean just having a BIOS? Sincerely Chris ;P -- modified at 23:23 Tuesday 17th January, 2006
dl4gbe wrote:
on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live.
To answer your question, yes, but I'd be more concerned with building a rocket ship to get back to earth. Marc Pensieve
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dl4gbe wrote:
on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live.
To answer your question, yes, but I'd be more concerned with building a rocket ship to get back to earth. Marc Pensieve
Marc Clifton wrote:
To answer your question, yes, but I'd be more concerned with building a rocket ship to get back to earth.
Top answer Sir :laugh: Rhys [Lotus Notes] is death by a thousand tiny annoyances—the digital equivalent of being kicked in the groin upon arrival at work every day. Jeff Atwater In the 60s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
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Imagine: You are modern Robinson Crusoe stranded on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live. No communication possible (no, no you are not allowed to build a radio transmitter). You got a container full with PC hardware. Unfortunatelly you do not have any software. Like said all harddisks are formatted, nothing on them. Sure you got electricity because you could save a emergency generator and tons of gasoline. Also you could save a container full of computer literature. My question is. Can you get one of the PC's working writing an OS from scratch? I mean just having a BIOS? Sincerely Chris ;P -- modified at 23:23 Tuesday 17th January, 2006
I would be more inclined to build a boat. All of the fans from the power supplies could be connected in tandem and powered by the generator. That's probably not any more far-fetched than writing an OS from scratch.
"The words of God are not like the oak leaf which dies and falls to the earth, but like the pine tree which stays green forever." - Native American Proverb
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What is the point if you are not allowed to build a radio transmitter ? You cant even surf for prOn to help you on the island. You really want to forget about the BIOS, work directly with the processor. Step 1: Build a circuit with 32 switches to represent a word. Step 2: Build a circuit to transfer the word corresponding to the switch position to RAM directly via the address & data bus. Step 3: Build a circuit to strobe the address and data by pushing a switch. Step 4: Transfer machine code like this to required addresses. Step 5: Reset processor pin to execute instructions from Program Counter 0.
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dl4gbe wrote:
on a uninhabited island millions of miles from next human live.
To answer your question, yes, but I'd be more concerned with building a rocket ship to get back to earth. Marc Pensieve
Sorry Marc, You do not know modern Robinson personally. He is a programmer. He is happy in the situation he is just now. He does not need women, beer e.t.c. Just food, water, cigarettes and sure a computer with an OS. You know, he worked as a consultant all his live. He is used to fight alone. ;) He can create all the software by himself. He just needs a way to start the supid machine. Sincerely Chris ;) P.S.: I stayed on a lonesome island for over a year. Only one small fishing village. We had a shortwave link using SSB. No internet, no mail. But the weather was nice, the food was good , the inhabitants , a view hundred , nice and friendly (Sea Gypsies) We got beer and smoke. ;P Tons of Coconats. And I had a laptop. Including an operating system. In case I got bored I programmed. ;) We had to send a boat every view days to a neighbouring island to charge my car batteries, which fed my computer and the shortwave. The neighboring island did not have electricity either. But the shop in the village had a generator. ;)