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Homebrew Microcontroller Laptop, Made of Wood

Posted by timothy on from the logically-if-she's-made-of-wood dept.

Brietech writes "This is a homebrew laptop project based on a Picaxe microcontroller. It has 16kb of RAM, 256kb of storage, sound and a self-hosted development environment! It has a simple CLI, file-system, 'EMAXE' text editor and a programming language called 'Chris#.' Oh, and yes, it runs Linaxe."

4 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Pretty fast! by CannonballHead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    CPU: Picaxe 28X-1 Microcontrollers. The main CPU runs at a blistering 16 Mhz, and has a whopping 4 kilobytes of onboard storage for the processorâ(TM)s firmware/OS.

    That's faster than my 11 or 12 MHz 286... of course, that was 17 years ago.

  2. Re:Nobody needs more than 16k... by pete-classic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I saw a video of Joe Rogan doing standup. The guy is a total loon, but he made a really interesting point about our technological society, and how smart we tend to think we are.

    He posed the question, if you were in the woods with nothing but a hatchet, how long before you could send an email?

    This device may not compare favorably with commercially available computing platforms, but having people in our society with curious minds and an ability to make things is invaluable.

    I'd rather be a Morlock than an Eloi. I'd rather be a rancher than a steer.

    -Peter

  3. Re:Now for something totally different... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What a total waste of time. Don't they have better things to do?

    He built a laptop with his time. All you've done is post a whiney comment on slashdot. On the whole, I think it's you who needs some better things to do with their time.

  4. Re:I kind of like the case.. by MightyYar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I f we could get around the microwave radiation issues and the heat issue.

    I may be way off, but aren't most cheap laptops made of plastic? Plastic is a terrible conductor of heat or electricity.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.