!The future of consumer high tech in Kentucky --- agk's diary 19 March 2026 @ 05:26 UTC updated 24 March --- written on GPD MicroPC when I should be asleep --- "It was hard to focus, hard to write a good paper or computer program on a machine built to spy on users and feed their compulsions," Ryleigh said. "By the early 2020s, schools put the old type of computer at the center of education starting in kindergarten. The student wasn't the one who benefited." Ryleigh is the curator of the Rochester Electronics computer museum in Paducah, Kentucky. The museum's open to the public on weekdays or by arrangement. The old computers he described were built overseas, usually in China. They needed to be replaced every few years, when they became "too slow" and "no longer supported." A new, supposedly better computer always needed to be bought to do the same things. What happened to old computers ------------------------------ In the late 2020s, a raft of legislation in Kentucky was enacted to protect children on then-ubiquitous computers. Computers augmented or replaced reality. They structured play, socialization, sexuality, learning, identity, health care, navigation, creat- ivity, shopping, and banking. Computers were private worlds in which abuse, exploitation, extortion, theft, bullying, and academic dishonesty were poss- ible, and for many children inescapable. Lobbyists for multinational "social media" surveill- ance, advertising, and augmented reality firms wrote the child-safety laws. They displaced liability for software that knowingly put children at risk onto computer users and operating system maintainers. New regulatory burdens destroyed small businesses and open source projects. Invasive surveillance of children increased -- more data collected, stored, sold, hacked, and misused. The new laws changed nothing fundamental. Supply chain shocks created conditions to re-shore manufacturing -- giving us simpler, safer, humbler educational and business computers. Two things drove imported computer component scarcity and price hyperinflation: a boom in const- ruction of massive data centers to process surveill- ance data, and a war. RAM (memory), GPUs (graphics processors), and CPUs (processors) were made with single-digit nanometer extreme ultraviolet lithography processes on unbelievably complex and expensive equipment in only two countries. Everything electronic -- phones and military radars, cars and data centers -- depended entirely on a few lithography machines. The machines depended entirely on helium for cooling and sulfuric acid to etch. First, components were hoarded and speculatively traded by big data center firms. Then the war's opening missile and drone salvos destroyed much of the world's natural gas production, and the supply of irreplaceable helium and sulfuric acid. Power to operate chip foundries, and bunker ship fuel and trucking diesel to move raw materials and finished products also ran high for a few years. Many people held on to older, supposedly "less secure," devices. In many places in Kentucky, they were the only way to pay for food, get help in an emergency, bank, navigate, and clock in to work. Schools required students to use them, and communic- ated with children and parents exclusively by them. The final shock was a new threat to child safety. After the war resulted in Israel's "temporary exile" in Argentina, the Israeli government spokeswoman officially claimed responsibility for the spate of retaliatory political assassinations and terrorist attacks against public figures, military officers, and civilian populations in the U.S. and other countries she claimed betrayed Israel in the war. "Let me be very clear," she said. "Any device with a camera, any device connected to the internet, is our eyes. Every security camera, every phone or tablet. We have many hands. If you wronged us, you cannot escape our justice. Our friends who stood by us have nothing to fear." Computers long maligned for distraction, cheating, and child exploitation, long resented for invasive surveillance, were now the eyes and hands of terror- ist revenge. Before the terror threats, schools in Kentucky already required cellphones left at home. Assign- ments already often had to be hand- or typewritten. These rules were to promote focus, prevent distract- ion, promote child safety, prevent cheating. Shortly after the Israeli spokeswoman's speech, internet-capable phones, tablets, computers, and security cameras were banned on the grounds of Kentucky schools. The ban was immediately a problem for administrators and instructors, and quickly became a problem for students who needed statistical inference, computer science, finance and accounting, computer-aided design, industrial control, and data- base applications. Kentucky computers ------------------ After a big bond issue and all-of-government research, development, and business-readiness effort in partnership with industry, a domestically- produced 32-bit educational computer was greenlit in Kentucky. It could be powered by a time-tested 80386 or Xtensa LX, or new RISC-V processor.[^1] [^1]:A Kentucky computer needed one of these three: - 80386 processor (designed 1985, made for 22 years, 1 micrometer process node, 275,000-850,000 trans- istors, 33MHz clock speed @ 4.5-5.5 volts, memory management unit (MMU), new chips made in Paducah by Rochester Electronics or old stock), - Xtensa LX RISC processor (designed 2008, made for more than 20 years, 40 nm process node, >100 million transistors, 240 MHz @ 3.3 volts, no MMU, old stock only), - US-produced RISC-V processor (newly designed for domestic production of computing devices with process nodes initially achieved in 2001 and 2004, 180, 130, or 90 nm process node, >20 million transistors, 100 MHz @ 5.5 or 3.3 volts, has MMU, made in Illinois by Honeywell) Rochester Electronics established a $20 million 80386 fabrication facility in Paducah, together with an "innovation hub" to prepare workers for the highly-automated assembly line and management, engineering, quality control, and process control jobs. Circuit boards are printed and assembled in Lexington. Keyboards are also made there in a plant that once made IBM Selectric and Model M keyboards. Final assembly is in Owensboro and Winchester. Bowling Green makes PC cards with ROMs, network hard- ware, data storage, camera/audio/display controllers, and other expansions. There's a small domestic soft- ware industry. Production had a rocky start. The LCD display panel factory planned for Louisville ran into problems and was delayed more than five years.[^2] Old stock panels sourced from multiple vendors had frequent quality control problems needing repair or replaced. [^2]:The Louisville plant makes monochrome and RGB (red, green, blue) displays with reflective, passive matrix, super twisted nematic LCD technology. The technology was developed in the 1980s. It's very low cost and ultra power-efficient. Re-shoring it was unexpectedly difficult. The "Kentucky computer" was subject to derision before it was even built. Jokes abounded on morning and late night shows. In a viral video, as banjos played, a primitive desktop computer from the 1980s was slowly operated by a dip-chawing hillbilly idiot with bad teeth, drunk on a jug of illicit moonshine. What Kentucky made, and all Kentucky students use, is a durable, chunky, slightly undersized laptop with a loud clacky keyboard and archaic square sun- light-readable display. The desktop computer is a small cube you plug a keyboard, mouse, and monitor into. Kentucky computers run a modernized backward-compat- ible DOS, a single-tasking operating system previous- ly used from the mid 1980s to early 1990s. Neither desktop nor laptop has hardware for network- ing over wifi, bluetooth, or ethernet. Neither has a camera. Kentucky computers communicate over serial and support PS2 keyboards and mice. You can add USB ports and other functionality (at the cost of more power draw) with pluggable PC cards. The desktop computer has a VGA port to drive a monitor. Due to battery cost most people plug their Kentucky computer in to mains power or use autonomous solar or muscle power without batteries. For those who can afford them, rechargeable 18650 batteries power a Kentucky computer for 50 hours of use or 6 weeks of standby. When they came on the market, a Kentucky computer cost more than $1,000. Schools offset the high cost with grants and loaner computers. The price dropped modestly over time. As they've proved robust and easy to fix, the used market is strong. You can find independent computer and typewriter service and repair shops in many repair malls and school districts. What Kentucky computers can do ------------------------------ Design was driven by what could be manufactured domestically given supply constraints, minimum specs to dependably run educational, scientific, and professional software, patent and intellectual property costs, and durability, repairability, and extendability, given uncertainties and how essential having computers is. I'm sure everybody's used them. Many of the first generation are still in use, though modified in some way. They're pretty close to what we use now. Probably the first time you used one it turned on to the BASIC, XPL0, or UCB LOGO programming prompt and waited for you to input a command. Some of you first used it with a FUZOMA educational suite ROM in the PC Card slot to learn reading, arithmetic, typing, chess, and basic logic. Later you probably used PC cards with other ROMs: - A business suite with email, a notes/to-do data- base, spreadsheet (Lotus 1-2-3/visicalc), word processor (wordperfect/wordstar), calendar, terminal, and business/scientific calculator;[^3] - Creative suites like Decker (multimedia platform for making and sharing interactive documents with sound, images, and scripted behavior, based on HyperCard) or uxn/Varvara (games, text editor, drawing program, livecoding environment, sprite editor, font editor, desktop clock, hex editor, interactive REPL) to make visual art, music, games, newsletters, and for creative programming; - A scientific or industrial suite (computer-aided design software, statistical computing environ- ment, sensor data collection or industrial control PC card); - Network utilities to connect securely to a more powerful computer in your school or workplace to use the bulletin board, chat server, game server, plan9 server, or general-purpose UNIX system; - Accessibility ROMs (screenreader, translator, voice-to-text transcriber). [^3]:The standard business suite ROM is much like the suite used from 1994-2004 on HP 200LX palmtop PCs. The Kentucky computer is much faster than the 200LX, which started up and launched programs instantly with a 7.96 MHz 80186 compatible embedded CPU and 1 to 4 MB of memory (640 KB RAM, the rest could be used for expanded memory or storage). Each PC card ROM isn't a program, it's a whole system. Most households only have a few PC cards, whether they own them, or have them issued from school or work. Public libraries lend PC cards, and they're reprogrammable. You can take an old one to the repair mall to have it updated or overwritten. Students turn in assignments over serial with kermit, by printing on paper, or by turning in a mass storage PC Card. Many assignments still must be hand written or typewritten. The computer aids some kinds of thinking, turning it off aids other kinds of thinking. The Kentucky computer's legacy ------------------------------ Millions of Kentucky computers are currently in use. In Kentucky schools alone, there are 700,000 being used by K-12 students and 300,000 by college and university students. As you know, Kentucky computers are also used in other states, in schools and some jobs from Alabama to Maryland. We credit our computer with our repu- tation for producing skilled engineers who solve some of our world's hardest problems. Our two recent Fields medalists credited their Kentucky teachers and their early and sustained LOGO programming hours for extraordinary achievements in pure mathematics. The world continues changing rapidly. We have a lot to figure out, a lot to do. It makes me proud we rose to the challenges the past gave us and made the Kentucky computer. We don't back down from tough problems. Not yesterday, not today, with its compounding challenges, not tomorrow, whatever it brings. We stand on a proud heritage, as we stand on college basketball, horse racing, car manufactur- ing, bluegrass music, and our mountains. The sun shone through the big windows and tubular skylights onto the room's artifacts. Ryleigh shep- herded the tour group on to the next room.