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?

"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.

If it can do that, I don't care all that much about CPU speed, disk storage, CD-ROM or DVD drives, USB, FireWire, IrDA or integrated late makers. Oh, and it needs to run Linux, or at least OpenBSD or NetBSD. So, basically, I want a tough little system with a StrongARM CPU, a flash disk and grayscale 1024x768 LCD. Insofar as I can tell, no one makes such a thing.

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?"

Comments

Build your own laptop?

[iBod]

there really aren't any laptops out there that really meet the needs of a Linux user

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!

I agree it is dumb

[mnf999]

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

Old ThinkPads

[truthsearch]

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.

Not So Laptop

[Aeris the wired]

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".