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fantacy computer inc.
Let's try to 'design' a fantacy computer.
Disclaimer: I'm not really a hardware person, please bear with me while I ramble about my fantacy machine.
I can only hope that one day someone out there will produce, perhaps handcraft a true durable computer that could outlast me. I think the tech is already here, at least on the hardware side. Tantalum capacitor, leaded solder, MEMS oscillator, ceramic PCB, gold PCB trace, some detuned CPU that will be running at a some what low frequency. As to the casing there is titanium or SS904. the entire package will be hermetically sealed with fluorine rubber or perhaps even copper O-Ring.
Feb 27 · 3 months ago
IO will be done by some glass to metal sealed connectors. Let's call this computer fantacy machine 01 or FM01. Package size would be somewhat small, you could carry it around and plug in to somekind of console stations in different form factors. In this imaginary world, this is likely to be your only computer for life. I don't know much about long term storage, would eSLC chips paired with a conservatively configured nand controller last say, 50 years? what other pitfalls will cause FM01 to fail before its owner expires?
add-ons or plug ins (literal) will be available to extend the capabilities of the FM01, using MIL-DTL-38999 connectors you can add one or two peripherals such as the Pentax WG6v camera or the Optokon LMIPT-46 personalized handheld communicator.
this reminds me of those fantasy console things i see on itch. they are pretty fun to play with.
How do you power your FM1 if it is sealed? Humanity already has invented a cool durable medium that exists for ages and do not require any power. A paper book. I know one hacker who understands this wery well, so he publish his hacking articles on his very own paper magazine.
A low power computer could be powered by induction, like with wireless cell chargers.
In fact you may also want to consider making the interface component replaceable. If there was a built-in SDR radio component that was a little over-specced, you would have a relatively future-proof radio that could be adapted to different protocols as advances are made. Then you could have a replaceable docking station for peripherals since those may change over time and connectors are wear parts.
What I mean by this is that the computer would connect to the docking station wirelessly. If you use an SDR, later software upgrades could allow for connecting to later more advanced docking peripherals. When a docking station wears out you repair or replace it, but the computer remans intact and untouched.
Yeah, SDR is really nice to have. Normally you use it as a FM radio and maybe wifi. When shit hits the fan you could ham radio other survivers. Since the case is fully sealed and metalic, it might be good to add a small but thick sapphire window. This window would permit a small internal antenna and a moisture sticker. This kind of sticker would turn red upon contact with water indicating water ingress. As to power source, I think we can you a few pins from one of the DTL-38999 connector. It would be easy to jury rig an external PSU if the need arises.
Consider some audio speaker, it is easier to implement. I am dreaming about a device that I can use without stearing at the screen all the time. Thus the fantasy computer may not require display at all.
this reminds me if this article
gemini://rawtext.club/~ploum/the-computer-built-to-last-50-years/index.gmi
Yes, the great ploum's essay is what gives me the idea. Electronic failure is somewhat probabilistic. You could have an old amiga or VAX working today while a lot of the machine of the same model had failed. At this stage I would like to identify as many key vulnerabilities of computers as possible. There are of course, shock, water and dust ingress. leaky capacitors, moisture collecting in between fiber glass sheets of regular PCB boards, oxidation of traces, lead whiskers, low temp solder melting due to excessive heat. silicon aging. crystal oscillator losing vacuum etc. Each one of these weak points is a topic of its own, I hope I will write something about each of the weak points, in due time.
I think internal speakers/beeper is nice to have. I fantasize about somekind of click wheel/knob based UI, perhaps the speaker could act as feedback for the action of the knob. It could even readout the filename of the selected file. I bet you could read gemini article with this setup!
Consider AVR atmega chips, those are my favorite MCUs, they can be scavanged from trashed washing-machines or hue lightbulbs, they will be available in the future for sure. Instruction set is human friendly and pretty powerful.
Consider collapse-OS - an operating system made to run on many lo-tech chips. It has some documentation in pdf.
(1/3) The photonic modules are black rhombi, set suspended in a transparent "chassis", a tall hexagonal prism clearer than lucite. Advances in nanocrystaline manufacture allow the components to be grown from "pattern seeds"; nanomachines dumbly build up from these protochips in a manner resembling mitosis. The crystaline base materials are designed to optimise optical qualities, along with thermo-expansive, harmonic, and such considerations - to atomic precision. Extremely tight timings thus facilitate extremely high HZ clocks, esp. with minimial "hot" circuitry.
(2/3) Each black module has IO at the outer edge, like today's silicon dies. The border is also where non-purely-photonic componentry are located, such as photoelectric interfaces, radios etc. Lastly, the edges of each rhombus are striped with hash signatures of each physical design; adjacent modules may reference the signatures in an independent database; a structure may be fully "light-swept" and hashed as a sort of physical checksum. As such, they are "immutable hardware."
(3/3) One "machine" approximates a jumbo pencil in size and shape. As the entire surface of a long columnar face is available for IO, many configurations are facilitated. A personal machine may be carried about as we do with phones today, placed into various docks, peripheral housings, surfaces and so-on. Furthermore, multiple machines may be physically clustered, arranged like basalt in Giant's Causeway. As before, extremely tight tolerances preclude much additional overhead/latancy between physically 'separate' stacks, compared against a sealed assembly.
I do not know what they are called.
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