Just build your own infrastructure, bro
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First thing you'll need to make a computer is the microchip, and that requires silicon. Jerri Ellsworth made her own microprocessor at home using a toaster oven, a tea kettle, toilet bowl rust cleaner and silicon that she bought off eBay to make thousands of her own transistors (called N-MOS transistors) for her Commodore 64 30-in-1 Direct-to-TV joystick remote computer, but that would only be useful for retro computing. You could use BBS because BBS communication is mostly just serial input/output with a terminal program. But don't expect it to be stable since modern BBSs often use telnet over IP rather than analog phone lines. You’d need a network interface, which may require additional hardware. Homemade transistors are not always as reliable as commercial ICs — long BBS sessions may be prone to errors or crashes.
Next major obstacle is - how the fuck do you access internet without commercial infrastructure (ISP, fiber/copper lines or satellite/cellular)? There are experimental alternatives that exist, like black fiber (which is used by the military), using diamonds and lasers as an alternative to fiber optics and acoustic communication, however only the last one would be feasible for a DIY setup in where digital bits (0/1) are converted into sound patterns. OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) is one of the best things that happened to acoustic communication, because it takes a medium that’s usually really bad for data (air or water full of echoes, noise, and interference) and makes it a lot more robust. But still, typical speeds are 100 bps 20 kbps, depending on distance (e.g. 1 km link at 100 bps, or short-range diver comms at several kbps).
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Last: 9/12/2025, 10:25:05 PM