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Rolling Your Own Laptop?
rneches asks: "I've been looking around for a Linux friendly laptop, and I've found a
couple of reasonable systems. However, there really aren't any laptops out there that really meet the needs of a Linux user.
In particular, most laptops are, more or less, desktop replacements.
As such, they are loaded with scads of nifty features, beefy
processors, and so forth. This is great, I suppose, if you are
running Windows or MacOS and want a desktop replacement. If you're a
Linux user, and spend most of your time in emacs windows (er, frames), most of that fancy stuff is more of a liability than an asset. In other words, I'm talking about coders, admins and other Linux hackers more than I'm talking about the 'average user'." In short, rneches is looking to find a way to build his own laptop, and if the platform doesn't exist to be able to do this, he's looking for help in creating one. Interested?
Which brings me to my point - Is it possible to roll your own laptop? I've looked at pc104 systems that might do the job for a base, and flash disks that would be great for storage and battery life, but the video, screen and enclosure are all somewhat of a mystery to me. I've taken apart Dells and (shudder) Sonys, and the video hardware is completely non-standard and funky. Each major brand of LCD has a different connector, and require a special (as in, not your average VGA compatible card) hardware to drive them. I'm not sure where I'd get a decent PS/2 keyboard that would be appropriate for a laptop. And as for the case itself - well, I'd probably need take out some life insurance, and then get in touch with those folks from the /. story a few months back about making storm trooper costumes from vacuum molded PVC.
I know this sounds like something of an absurd project, but then again, there once was a day when building a desktop PC was an absurd project. The pc104 standard seems like a pretty good standard to use in the same way desktop system use AT and ATX. Most of the pc104 boards are intended for ultra low power embedded systems, but there's no reason I can see that beefier chips couldn't be used. You'd have to give up the spiffy ZIF sockets, but laptops aren't really that upgradable anyway. Chances are, there's already a pc104 board that will do just about anything you want at very low power consumption. You could cram two or three pc104 boards into a really thin laptop (side by side, not stacked).
If someone started making pc104 video cards that could drive a host of different LCD screens, that would help a lot too. And, of course, someone would have to make some decent cases.
Is there anyone out there who's tried this? Any successes, I hope?
If I actually did go out and build my own laptop, do you think there would be enough general interest to get a community together? Maybe even start a little company to sell pc104 compatible laptop shells and the various adapters, trackpads, keyboards and other doodads that people would need?"
"From a laptop, I want five things:
- A nice, clear screen. Color is nice, but not critical. It should be big enough so that looking at it doesn't make me feel like I'm stuck in the coach section of a DC-9.
- Decent 2D video performance. I might just be editing text, but at least it should look good while doing it. In any event, with decent a framebuffer and hardware acceleration, I can use nice anti-aliases fonts and play around with the window settings. This might sound frivolous, but nice-looking text and windows go a long, long way to relive eyestrain, which is exceedingly important.
- Good physical utility. Too many laptops seem to be designed to sit on your desk, with the occasional trip to some other desk (transported in a deluxe, custom leather briefcase). This is OK if you are, say, the CEO, and don't do any real work in the first place. I want a laptop that is durable, light and small. I don't want to have to transport it in a special bag, or worry about fragile bits getting broken from normal use.
- Insanely long battery life. I don't mean 'barely survive the flight from NWK to LAX'. I mean 'I'm only going to be in Tokyo for a week, so I won't need the AC adapter.'
- Good built-in networking. No PCMCIA stuff, dongles, or other junk. The system should have a respected 100base-T card built in, and probably an 802.11b card and high-gain antenna as well.
Which brings me to my point - Is it possible to roll your own laptop? I've looked at pc104 systems that might do the job for a base, and flash disks that would be great for storage and battery life, but the video, screen and enclosure are all somewhat of a mystery to me. I've taken apart Dells and (shudder) Sonys, and the video hardware is completely non-standard and funky. Each major brand of LCD has a different connector, and require a special (as in, not your average VGA compatible card) hardware to drive them. I'm not sure where I'd get a decent PS/2 keyboard that would be appropriate for a laptop. And as for the case itself - well, I'd probably need take out some life insurance, and then get in touch with those folks from the /. story a few months back about making storm trooper costumes from vacuum molded PVC.
I know this sounds like something of an absurd project, but then again, there once was a day when building a desktop PC was an absurd project. The pc104 standard seems like a pretty good standard to use in the same way desktop system use AT and ATX. Most of the pc104 boards are intended for ultra low power embedded systems, but there's no reason I can see that beefier chips couldn't be used. You'd have to give up the spiffy ZIF sockets, but laptops aren't really that upgradable anyway. Chances are, there's already a pc104 board that will do just about anything you want at very low power consumption. You could cram two or three pc104 boards into a really thin laptop (side by side, not stacked).
If someone started making pc104 video cards that could drive a host of different LCD screens, that would help a lot too. And, of course, someone would have to make some decent cases.
Is there anyone out there who's tried this? Any successes, I hope?
If I actually did go out and build my own laptop, do you think there would be enough general interest to get a community together? Maybe even start a little company to sell pc104 compatible laptop shells and the various adapters, trackpads, keyboards and other doodads that people would need?"
What about tux screen ? http://tuxscreen.net/
Even though it's a telephone type system, you might be able to get enough information from it to build what you need. It has a ARM based processor running Linux. You might get some ideas from that.
In what way? I have run Linux (various distros) on a variety of laptops ranging from an old toshiba T3400 to various Tecra's and Thinkpads without too many problems.
Anyhow, building your own laptop would be quite a challenge. You don't have a choice of nice, standard-sized mobos that fit nice standard enclosures. Laptop parts (mobos, cases, screens) are made to fit by the manufacturer, there ain't much you can change except for the HDD.
And you don't want PCMCIA (PC-CARD), well bang goes most of your hardware customisation options right there!
Look,
You are asking for a lot of trouble and I doubt you will be satisfied with your hackies result.
I am a typical "power-user" and have cycled through many laptops and machines but it seems I am settling on my laptop just for mail, and do all my development on a box. Just the raw power makes a huge difference.
I used to love my Linux laptop about 2 years ago, I felt so sophisticated. Tell you the truth I am running w2k on it now (A Sony Vaio), just wasn't worth the trouble. Then my box runs Linux (RH) and I do most of my java development on it, I am very happy with it.
Bottom line is this: Laptops and boxes are very different in how sensitive they are to "fucking around". It is pretty simple to assemble a box from scratch, even fun and economical but with Laptops I wouldn't fuck with quality, you need high end material and high end assembly, otherwise you are going to have a clunky thing that doesn't hold up... and then the linux choice to boot is imho a mistake, but that is another story.
Get real,
marcf
The real mnf999 always posts as anonymous coward
With a bigger screen and better video. Maybe take a look at an iPaq, grab an expansion chassis and a couple of NIC's (Whichever you want), and have a blast. You can even install Linux on it, if that's what really floats your boat.
See... and you thought your sig was boring - TT
Well, you could start with some pc-104 components, add a pcmcia module, an LCD control module, etc. Or you could base it off of one of many SBC's available in the EBX little board format such as this one from Ampro. Then you just have to find an open-frame LCD to use, pick some drives and fabricate your own case. Easy right ;-).
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
I suggest taking a look at some old (used) IBM ThinkPads. I've used them for years, and for the most part they're great. They're too expensive when they're new, but the older systems have just about everything you're asking for. Most had built-in Ethernet at least as an option. Many had CD-ROM as only an option, with the space replacable with an extra battery or hard drive. They're a decent size and well-built. The ones with butter-fly keyboards (expand when opened) are exceptionally small.
The only issue could be battery life. But like I said, with some models you can drop the extra drive and use a battery instead, or maybe IBM sells better modern batteries that would fit in the old systems.
So check out models from IBM and then search for them on auction sites and such. Good luck!
P.S. When you've found or built what you're looking for, let us know what linux distro you used, or how you built your own, since so many of us have issues getting Linux up on laptops.
Developers: We can use your help.
The guy seems to be more interested in ruggedness and battery life than the cost. No platter drives, no case, a week long battery ... sounds like a NASA project, and I'm sure he's well aware of that. ;)
"Old man yells at systemd"
Not quite the question, but I bet a great many people looking for a Linux laptop really do care about things like color.
I am a developer who uses X and graphics tools. In my looking for a laptop had one priority: Screen resolution.
I purchased a Dell C800. Currently I am staring at a 1600x1200 16 million color Mozilla window. Not only that, but how many CRT's can do that resultion well. With my LCD, not only is the screen crystal clear, but I still have room to have more things on the screen at one time than I can really pay attention to. For my application testing (jsp), I do my editing in full screen Netbeans, then minimize leaving two terminal windows, and a Mozilla window (or two) open. I use the two terminals for packaging and deploying the app for view in mozilla.
I have had RedHat 7.1 and (now) 7.2 on the C800, and most things work fine. Only problems I have had is the video adapter doesn't support DGA (for direct VMWare screen access) and the internal modem (on a ethernet, 802.11b, modem combo card) did not work until RH 7.2. RH 7.2 detected the modem on the first after install boot. I have never used the wireless interface, so I'm not sure it that works.
This is a great machine for the high end Linux user, I would buy it again for use with RedHat 7.2. (I have the 1Ghz version btw.)
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Small, durable, and insanely long battery life (9 hours+ with quad capacity battery.) They're coming out with a new version that runs at 600Mhz and runs at 1280x600 native resolution.
Being a hopelessly addicted computer user, and a college student 147 miles from home, I've often brought everything -- My 15" monitor, keyboard, mouse, and the tower. It's quite a lot to bring, so when I built my new box, portability was the key.
Here's the base unit:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/bookpc2.htm
It's small, compact, and fits in the large pocket of my schoolbag nicely. It currently has a 933 Pentium III, 256 mb of memory, and a 40 mb HD. It's dual-booted with Win98 and Mandrake Linux 8.1
I also use a special keyboard:
http://www.dnrtechs.com/foldable.html
I feels a bit strange at first, but it's not all the difficult to et used to -- even for everyday use.
Finally, I have a logitech optical mouse. I don't have a LCD monitor yet, I'm hoping to find a thin 15".
"Software is a feeling, refined and expanded by each who touch it."
-Solstice
Solstice@deninet.com
Well, I have a 5 year old Toshiba, and the disto I use (older laptop, small harddisk) is Peanut Linux . Everything works, XFree86, sound, network PCMCIA card and modem PCMCIA card. Give it a try. I ditched KOffice and parts of KDE2 (well, most of it, not everything) because it's too heavy for my laptop, but with WindowMaker it works fine.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
but what is a laptop, after all? it's a portable computing device. You can buy really tiny computers, such as tiqit or pocket pc (many slashdot articles on these) :
tiqit
pocketPC
add a fold-up keyboard, and a 5G PCMCIA drive
5G pcmcia
And a display device, either a portable screen (there are wireless screens out there) or glasses:
micro glasses
and you've got a really small computer. There are also a couple articles I've seen on building a "laptop" into a small stainless steel or brushed aluminum brief case.
Obviously, designing a motherboard and integrating everthing into a nifty case would be nice, but that's where the cost comes in. Buying really small parts isn't cheap, but building your own thang never is. But you *can* build a really small, portable computer, pretty much tailored to your needs.
You might also consider (if you really want to go for the gusto) the new technology that lets you output circuits via a printer (which thus far has been used to create cell phones and batteries):
but I see no reason you couln't print custom PC's! In short, although it may not be cheaper, it is I think possible to build something small, light, portable, and tailored to your design. And if you do, could you send me one?
cheers,
neil
neil@dove-tail.com
I have been wanting exactly what you are talking about for at least 6 years now. I've been looking for off-the-shelf because I've felt that I didn't quite know enough about hardware to build one and really don't have the time. A few years ago when Sun was talking about Java chips that could natively handle the language and perhaps it's own OS I thought they might head this direction with some hardware... but alas.
There are certainly enough (net|sys)admins out there to support a 'community' for this effort. After all this hardware setup is perfect for us at work or on the road. (Even at work we are away from our desks at racks of computers or in foreign data centers!) My company (Steem) will gladly step up the web resources , maybe even hardware purchasing if we could begin producing something 'sell'able. I would even venture to guess that ThinkGeek would support the endevour on some level.
I'll keep an eye on this story and see what develops. Obviously the more off-the-shelf (COTS as the gov businesses call it) stuff we can find the better. I have looked at the PC104 hardware and it seems do-able but we'll need to work at getting all the other pieces together.
BTW, if you haven't read through the MIT wearable web pages or wearables central, I suggest that you should. Lots of good hardware suggestions there.
RudeDude
Perl/Linux/PHP hacker
I know this sounds seriously wierd, but it's relatively easy to take apart a laptop shell without damaging it by easing your fingernails into the joins between the mouldings and prying them apart, popping in those little moulded snap locks as you work around the case. Using screwdrivers etc. to lever apart the case will almost certainly scratch, deform and generally mess up the mouldings.
If you don't have custom tooling, a strong set of fingernails can often do the job safely, and If you're not too much of a geek, you can even clean under them!
This seems to be close to what you want. It just needs a bigger display (which will consume more power). Or try this to obtain that special geek look! Enhanced by mumbling 'Close window. open xterm. err emm dash err eff dot' into a headset!
Links to this came from here
Bas
I used to sell laptops that we custom built for ppl, no body would by them because individual parts were so expensive. Why would anybody buy a laptop with a 500mhz processor for close to 1500 when you could at the time buy it at best buy for 1100. Shope around price watch for discountinued laptops, or any good inexpensive laptops with the specs you want and pop linux on there. Lot cheaper than building it yourself.
Full blown laptop? Not quite. But try this:
Get a 31xx monoPAQ. Get the compactflash sleeve and the pcmcia sleeve (the latter because it has its own battery). Get a large (5gb) PCMCIA drive (IBM microdrive), a smaller (1gb) CF flash card, a Targus foldable keyboard, a CF 10/100/802.11b card, a PCMCIA 10/100/802.11b card, a PCMCIA Sierra Aircard 510, and a CF vga-out adapter. Find a LCD panel that you like, build a battery pack for it.
Some creative duct taping or plexiglassing and yes sir, you have a Linux-capable computing brick that has a modular power system! Go full-tilt, and you have VGA on a full LCD with a keyboard and your big microdrive. Monitor dies, and you switch back the native screen. PCMCIA battery pack goes down, switch to CF. CF draining you too fast? Switch to internal memory.
If you want to get more creative, try it with the new 38xx series. Has longer battery life and built-in SD so you don't even need a sleeve. Don't forget, for the 31xx and 36xx series ipaqs, you can expand internal memory to 128mb with some creative soldering (read: surface mount).
So let's review your criteria:
1) clear screen: the 36xx has a nice screen, and whatever external LCD you choose could be good.. up to you.
2) decent 2d video: Hrm... well, it runs Quake. You decide.
3) Physical utility: Well, build a padded titanium case for your ipaq and lcd screen. Should be sturdy. Use it as a foot stool.
4) insanely long battery life: modular battery style means you can get long battery life. 12+ hours with the monopaq alone. Since everything else has it's own battery pack (except the CF sleeve), you can mix-n-match. A little creative hackery and you can probably paste an external big battery to the ipaq.
5) networking: 10bt, 100bt, 802.11b wireless, CDPD wireless and CDMA wireless. Sounds good to me.
Sounds fun to me.
IBM Workpad Z50. It's a WinCE device that one can install NetBSD onto. http://www.orcawerks.com/sgi/misc/ibmz50/ has the info.
Might be a better idea to get a slightly used laptop, though. As others have already said, an IBM thinkpad would be a good place to start.
The party's over