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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!"
He used premade components like chips and LCD displays. That's hardly building a laptop from scratch.
With a $50 budget, he could have picked up a 486 laptop that would be much more useful. I have a stack of old thinkpads that I paid nothing for and could part with for $50/ea.
Hope he doesn't use Sony Batteries. That sucker looks like it could catch on fire.
God spoke to me.
So easy, even a cave man could do it!
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
OLPC baby! Give them to the masses.
Your university bookstore sells wood? !
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.
string sig = llGetSig("dimentox"); llSay(0,sig);
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?
There is an interesting overview of guides to make a do-it-yourself laptop at Repair4Laptop. If you don't want to build it completely from scratch you can consider to make it as a so-called barebone or white box laptop. Barebones are also featured in a separate section of the overview.
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.
Less is more.
It is a laptop computer, not a laptop PC.
He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. -- The Sphinx, Mystery Men
I'm sure Chris# will be a much more full-featured language. You should have seen the original Chris language; that was a monster to work with.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
It's sort of like when a friend or relative introduces you to their new baby and you wonder how they managed to get that giant head on that thing, only you can't really say that without hurting their feelings because everyone thinks their baby is the most beautiful one ever. In reality it's just a baby and some of them are not all that attractive, especially to people who don't have or want kids. Which the preface to my comment about that laptop: I'm sorry, but that's just one butt ugly computer.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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?
WTF?
Don't worry the rest of the tree was use for credit card applications, AOL CD mailers and other fine publications.
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
When we all talk about "building" desktops from parts off newegg I'm a little bit reminded of "writing" games by hacking a few lines into some TAs code in an indroductory CS class. While a great many slashdotters understand what their computer is doing, this sort of thing indicates a much deeper understanding than "I need a motherboard, a processor, some RAM, and a videocard."What are you talking about? Ive got a clean room, photolithography, etching, cleaning, doping and dicing machines in basement. You insensitive clod!
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A $50 FPGA can be made to work as a 256 color VGA driver (or any size lcd controller you like), and you can easily get it to accept PS/2 input from a keyboard.
Then you pick your poison for processors, coprocessors, etc - as long as it fits on the FPGA.
You have lots of options.
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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.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I once developed my own language called SQUAT - just some higher level functions, basic I/O and a STDIN/STDOUT thang.
Mainly I wanted to be able to tell people that I know SQUAT.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
No, Methane......
This tricorder can locate chili cookoff contests within 300 miles.
Entry level boards from both Xilinx and Altera run about $50. Personally, I think it's worth it to spring for the $200 models since you get all kinds of useful things already on it (like RAM), but the $50 ones are out there. Here's some examples.
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