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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?"
This is dumb. You'll end up paying three times as much to develop this thing. Just go buy an ultraportable, like the Thinkpad X22... no drives built in, weighs barely anything... runs anything you want, and hell, you can even get it with linux pre-installed.
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
Maybe considering that you want really really good battery life, you should consider stipping yet more out of the specification.
I was wondering if, as an emacs user, you could cope with a real text-only display - just like a text mode console. Surely the lack of video RAM, bandwidth etc should save some power?
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
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
It will save you much aggrivation and probably a lot of money as well.
PC104 is an old, but still very usable reference platform for building embedded devices.
Hit this google link
Google Search on PC104
It has a much greater use/life in Europe than it ever did here in the States.
The little modules are stackable, and they make little "backplane" like boards for you to put the modules.
Or as Egg Chin in Big Trouble in Little China said, "Its like your salad bar -- we take what we want, and leave the rest for everyone else"
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
"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."
What day was that? 1950? First Desktop PCs were sold as kits, you realise.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
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 TiBook G4 has almost _EXACTLY_ the features you want.
It runs Yellow Dog Linux very, very nicely.
And the wide-screen aspect ratio on its display is FANTASTIC for running side-by-side xterms....
--nbvb
Tuxtops used to do it but are now focusing on software. Their hardware buisness is being handled by QLITech Personally, when I wasnt using x, an old Compaq presario 1210 running Slackware worked well (except of course the modem. Now I am running a Sony Vaio PCG-FX240 with Red Hat 7.2, and it has no problems (except the modem, which I have no need for with broadband everywhere I use it. ). (Slack install didnt go as well as I would have liked...) A great deal of useful info can be found on the Linux on laptops page.
Have you read the Moderator Guidelines yet?
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
This remind me of the Simpsons episode when Homer was hired to build a car...
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
"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."
1 week battery life? I think you should invest in an international power adapter. And you don't want PCMCIA sockets, why not? What about expansion?
> 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.
RiscStation is about to issue an ARM-Powered laptop...
And RiscOS machines support ARMLinux or RiscBSD (even though I 'd advice you to just keep using RiscOS which is far more intuitive and performant on such platforms)...
Anyway, the product is not ready yet but you may hear about it *very* soon.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
You may want to check out CyberResearch they have alot of NEMA-12 and NEMA-4 Compliant 'portables' that may suit your needs. They have ALOT of other interesting equipment as well. I used to work for them - they are a very reputable company, and although the stuff they sell is on the pricey side, its well worth it.
Don't Tread on Me
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
"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.
iBook: SuperCrisp 1024x768 screen. Don't want color? Just turn it off.
* 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.
iBook: Check.
* 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.
The current crop of iBooks is rugged. I've dropped mine a few times (oops). Not a scratch, no problem. And unlike the PowerBook, it *feels* rugged. I am confident that it could withstand the abuse that I dish out.
* 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.'
This is the only place I can't help you, except to say that if you aren't using processor intensive tasks or the CD drive, you will get 5 hours (maybe more). Get a few extra batteries and an international adapter if you are going to Tokyo. (Don't they have the same power plugs there as here?)
Also, the adapter that comes with the newest iBooks is very compact and lightweight. Cord wraps around it easily.
* 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.
iBook has 100BaseT, and with an AirPort Card, you're all set. And there is no PCMCIA. (If you want that, you want a PowerBook). The antenna is very good, much better than the PowerBook. (Up to 300 feet in some cases)
See other posts for good reasons why you don't want to build a laptop, but value for dollar, an entry level iBook can't be beat.
Pick one up at your local Apple Store or on the web.
Good Luck
Reality has a liberal bias
Get an Apple Titanium PowerBook running MACOS 10.1. Get the developer tools CD which installs all kinds of nifty stuff, gcc, cvs, project builder. And you're set to go. It's all bsd unix, you can open terminal and console windows and have full access to your system via shells.
MACOS 10.1 is the best thing to ever happen to computing and is the ultimate geek's operating system, and is also the best operating system you can ever run on a laptop.
Its networking configuration is very easily configurable and nicely abstracted behind a very nice interface. Check this:
1) At work, i am connected to the 'net via corporate LAN thru my ethernet port and static tcp/ip configuration.
2) At home, i have a dsl connection and multiple computers, all sharing the connection via a LinkSys DSL router, with DHCP enabled, and an Apple airport base station acting as a bridge to the rest of my ethernet LAN.
3) At my girlfriend's place, she just has a simple phone line and I can connect via dial-up only.
==> I work during the day as a web applications developer, and run the NetBeans java IDE on OS 10.1 which comes pre-installed with Java 1.3, while listening to mp3's with i-tunes, with 10 terminal windows opened with multiple ssh connections to various hosts, using shell scripts i wrote to manage files, quickly edit files with emacs, do complex file search and replaces in BBEdit. I also have my DVD player idling with my crouching tiger hidden dragon DVD just sitting there waiting to be watched during my lunch break.
Work day is over. I unplug the laptop's ethernet jack, unplug my desktop speakers and the power cord, drive home.
As soon as i get home, i open the laptop. This instantly wakes it up from sleep. It instantly detects that I am not using my ethernet port, but it also detects that there is an open wireless network at my home. It hops on it right away. Then automatically makes the DHCP request as I had configured to. BAM: I get home, I wake up my laptop, and it's connected to the net via its airport card.
Say I wanna go to my Girl's place rite now and check my e-mail from there. Put the laptop on 'sleep', get there, plug her phone jack into my modem port, and click the little modem icon on my status bar and select "connect". And there i am. Easy.
I recently downloaded, compiled and configured the standard samba daemon distro by passing a few flags to the configure script. OS 10.1 already comes with a couple samba clients built-in via command-line and is also handled at the URL/protocol level, but not samba SERVER. So that lets me share drives with windoz weinies, while i already had the built-in ability to share drives two-ways with AppleTalk clients and unix/linux NFS clients, via standard unix command-line as well as a couple GUI tools.
It really doesn't get any sweeter than this. Wether you are just getting your feet wet into Unix, or you only work in vi/emacs and swear by terminal and console windows, this puppy has everything you need to get your stuff done and your jollies off.
I guarantee you, there is absolutely NO cooler operating system than OS 10.1. They've still got improvements to make, and it's still unofficially considered 'betaware', but hey, I've been using it very intensively for weeks now, and it hasn't failed me. and the titanium powerbook with its wide screen and pretty colors and all its connectivity stuff is just way cool.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Going to a restaraunt with you is a staggering exercise in pain & humiliation, isn't it? I can just tell: you must be the sort of person that looks over the menu at a fine dining establishment and then makes the staff do backflips to come up with some esoteric custom dish for you, because the many, many fine offerings they provide are never quite right. Give me a break... :)
I wouldn't pick at you, because you've clearly thought about this a lot, but somehow you haven't noticed that your requirements are, aside from just plain silly, mutually exclusive & thus impossible. You want a week long battery -- yeah right! -- and you want ultra light weight (thus, um, no battery??) and built in high speed wireless networking? How much power do you think that's going to draw? I'll admit, I'm not sure myself & maybe it's less than I'm thinking, but you are going to have to make some compromises between these wildly varying demands. If you want long life, it means a big battery. If you want lightweight, it means a small battery. You pick.
And in the, assuredly long time you're going to spend ruminating over that dilemma, there will be thousands of others that take one of the many fine off the shelf offerings, meet 90% of what you seem to really want here, and they'll be able to get on with their lives without a second thought. Might I suggest relaxing & trying to do the same?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
--Mid
First, consider that LCDs are expensive and nonstandard, as already mentioned. TVs on the other hand, are cheap, mass-produced and rugged, even when portable. So...use a TV for the display. Of course, the bigger the TV, the more expensive it'll be...but then you can use it to watch TV too.
Then you want rugged and portable? Get a biscuit form factor PC. They're small, but they're still standard PCs (which can therefore run Linux), including all the usual connections. You can get them with TV outputs (for VGA drivers), and built in ethernet and serial connections. Check out some of them at this site.
Most don't come with a hard drive, and you'll have to "roll your own" there, too. You have a choice: buy a biscuit with an IDE connector, or buy one with another standard connection, such as Compact flash or PCMCIA. If you go with the IDE, a portable 500MB IDE isn't that expensive. I saw one for $40 (US dollars) recently.
Then of course, you have to worry about batteries/power supply. That's not as big of a problem as you might think - there are LOTS of battery manufacturers. You want long lasting? You'll have to pay for longer lasting. On the upside, the compact system shouldn't take as much power as a standard laptop would.
How rugged is the result? Well, you'd be creating the casing for everything, so that's pretty much up to you.
So, I figure these costs:
$400 CPU (with ethernet, etc...)
$400 portable Flat Screen TV (VGA video displayed)
$50 Hard Drive
$800 Batteries/Power supply (enough to last a week - a SERIOUS load, and still probably an underestimate of the price)
$80 Casing
Of course, for an extra $500, you could upgrade to having real SVGA video, but you don't need hardware acceleration of video for most applications with which this technology is normally used, so...you can't get it.
I suppose if $1730 is three times as much as you would have paid, then this is a bad deal...but since the Thinkpad X22 retails for around $3000, I think I'm talking about a better deal than a prebuilt machines. Plus this thing is actually upgradable.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
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.
You may want to consider the Compaq Armada 4000 line, particularly the 4220T.
It's like 5lbs, 266mhz Pentium MMX mobile, 12" screen (does 800x600), runs linux very well... grab one of those 2-slot-high 3com PCMCIA cards that lets you jack the ethernet straight into the card (no more dongle annoyance). The stock battery will run you in X, editing files, for about 8 hours. Add a second battery, that time goes up to 18 hours, depending on use. These numbers are with a Toshiba 4gb IDE laptop drive. If you replaced that with a less power-hungry Flash device, I'm quite sure that a double-battery setup could run for 25-30 hours on this laptop.
I used to run one of these laptops as a car MP3 player, and it could normally go 15-18 hours without being recharged on two batteries. It also recharged to full in about 3 hours.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".