The People’s Permacomputer Project[edit]

The People’s Permacomputer (henceforth known as “the people’s computer”, or “the permacomputer”) is a project dedicated to resourcing the specification, and then construction of a ‘permacomputer’.

Who?[edit]

“The Committee”

Yes you can join the committee.

What is a permacomputer?[edit]

A permacomputer is a computer which attempts to embody the virtues of permacomputing.

Foundationally, permacomputing itself is set of community practices and traditions which shares a set of social and ecological values inspired by the land management and settlement design of permaculture.

Project results[edit]

First phase. COMPLETE
- Hardware exploration.
- CHIP-8 virtual machine.
- MC6809 CPU platform.
- DREAM6800 SBC.
Second phase. COMPLETE
- Settled on hardware.
- Basic 6502 setup.
- Microcontroller-based video.
Third phase. ACTIVE
- Paradigmatic microcomputer BASIC operating environment.
- Distribute operating system as printed code listings.
  - Text editors sourced.
  - Telnet client not yet sourced.
  - Gopher client not yet sourced.

Project logs[edit]

2025-06-22 - Project Refresh.
2024-12-04 - Microcontroller Video Out.
2024-11-28 - Project Start Phase 2.

What is the point of this project?[edit]

There are many different dialectical approaches to making an introduction to the people’s permacomputer. One thought experiment that has proved especially popular and easy to grasp sums up the mindset behind which we are functioning:

Industrial society has collapsed. All semiconductor fabrication has ceased, society-wide electrification is no longer guaranteed. There is no longer any internet. Computing as it was once known in the early 21st century is impossible. You need a computer for a task. What do you do?

This project is a response to the challenge posed by the above problem. The purpose of this project is to design and then construct computers that will be able to survive a societal collapse.

Mutual exclusion[edit]

There are many influential projects which attempt to address the same set of values driving the people’s permacomputer project. Some worthy of note can be listed in no particular order:

Collapse OS.
uxn.
The RC2014 computer kit.
Ben Eater’s 6502 project video series.

All of these projects are concerned with some subset of the principles the permacomputer project holds dear. Collapse OS is software that aims to be system agnostic, and assumes the previous acquisition of some supported hardware.

Adventures in the traditions of computation[edit]

We seem to take it for granted that a computer in everyone’s hand just is democratic computing. Indeed, the ubiquity of contemporary computation has been confused for ‘democracy’.

As quickly as we marched towards computing for the masses, we marched just as swiftly away.

OUR INSPIRATION