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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!"
Hope he doesn't use Sony Batteries. That sucker looks like it could catch on fire.
God spoke to me.
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?
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?
He used premade components like chips and LCD displays. That's hardly building a laptop from scratch.
Building a laptop from scratch :
Step 1: You're going to need some Silicon. A lot of people would say "Just melt some rock" at this point. But that pre-supposes the existence of ready made rock, which would be cheating. So first we're going to induce a supernova in a suitable star.
...
Step 51,985: You need some plastic. Plastic is made from oil. Scour one of the planets you created in Steps 9 - 23,492 for aquatic micro-organisms. Once you've found a sufficient quantity of the little bastards, you're going to need to crush them hard. No, really hard. Now leave to stand for around 250 million years.
Etc....