thoughts on the people's permacomputer project.
the project has been preparing, and has had some success at making discrete transistor logic circuits.
a related but as-yet not discussed element of the permacomputer project is the creation of a discrete transistor computer.
the point of this project element is to explore and build a computer that would not require complex semiconductor fabrication processes.
the endeavour is not so much laborious, as the team finds soldering to be quite a relaxing.
the problem is that the result may be uninteresting or not at all useful. the most memory we may be able to manufacture at any one given time will very definitely be below one kilobyte.
it is imagined that the transistor computer that the project ends up with will probably end up having about the same amount of volatile memory as the atari 2600 -- 128 bytes.
ROM will be another issue. perhaps some mix of integration scales will be necessary--TTL EEPROMs combined with transistor logic.
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other avenues of research that may be possible to explore include:
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abandoning hardware for some period of time, and focusing merely on software, enacting a kind of 'bring your own computer' ethos to the project.
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closing the research phase on BASIC, as it has been proven to be an almost endless source of cultural wisdom and digital history.
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FORTH. because many have asked (repeatedly), and we have continued to put the topic of research off.
please continue the discussion below. where is the project heading?
what would be useful to the permacomputing community at this stage?