DIY Laptop

Brietech writes "Ever felt like building your own laptop from (almost literally) scratch? This is a microcontroller-based "laptop" built from the ground up from a handful of chips and other hardware found lying around. It runs a self-hosted development environment, allowing the user to write and edit programs in "Chris++" on the machine, and then compile and run them. The carpentry looks like it could use some work, but it's a neat project!"

Comments

I thought it was rather good.

[Dimentox]

While it may be nothing based on modern laptops, and the title is a bit misleading, i thought it was rather interesting. What was interesting is that he took a proc chip, wrote his own os and compiler. It really was a DIY project. I dont think it needed that big of a box but otherwise it was an interesting find. I would be intrested in if we could really do laptops like we do Desktops, perhaps there is a site out there that has the parts. but over and all this was a interesting find.

I had a dream

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a pretty old guy so I'm kind of fed up of waiting for the so-called ubiquitous computing era. I find that modern electronics has piss-poor interoperability, usually by being intentionally crippled. Why can't I use my camera's SD as a USB drive? It's not a camera, it's a computer with a lens. Why can't I get a true handheld computer that can act as a USB host so I can control my camera? Because the stupid application only exists on Win2K and up, not for mobile Windows, and the handheld can't act as a host anyways. Why not? It's just software. Oh but there's USB-on-the-go, a poorly documented USB mode that requires a special cable, but the connectors look the same.

So why can't there be an industry standard of handheld electronics building blocks? Instead of an iPod, how about an IMod? A cpu block that you can tack on a battery, lens, HD or CF, and headphone amp. Then you create the driving application in some sort of 90's AmigaVision drag-and-drop metaphor.

Why is it in 2007 there still is such a thing as a seperate cell phone, walkman, camera, and you need a 14 year-old with a PhD to try to get a file from one device to the other?

Cut him some slack already...

[TigerNut]

Your laptop with its "modern" $(OS) spends about 99% of its CPU cycles supporting itself. What we're seeing here could be viewed as an attempt to improve the cycles-for-the-user ratio, if nothing else. If just I want to add a couple of numbers together or edit a document, do I need, or should I have to pay for, the ability to simultaneously have an MPEG movie playing in the background?

Stripping a computer back to its bare essentials is an art. Real hot rods don't have air conditioning. Real computers don't need 3GHz CPUs, 2GB of RAM, and a 500 watt power supply to present an interactive user interface.

Neat

[wolff000]

It may not win in looks, or processing power, or graphics, or any thing for that matter but it was a neat project. They guy spent some real time piecing things together with chips instead of just using a mini itx board. The fact he made his own language to program it is a definite plus. It isn't something I would make myself but a nice DIY project none the less. I don't quite get what all the complaints are about even if it is a glorified calculator he built it himself. When was the last time any of you built something starting with just a handful of chips?

Re:right....

[squiggleslash]

Well, then this article isn't for you.

Personally, I think anyone doing something different and practical like this is fairly interesting however useful (or desirable to ME) the end result might be.