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Homebrew Microcontroller Laptop, Made of Wood
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."
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.
Does it run Lin-...You know what? It's time to start a new meme. How about "Does it run Vista?"
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
I thought it was a beer thing.
So...it weighs less than a duck?
At least, if this laptop catches fire, it won't burn black, toxic, smoke like most laptops do.
It looks like he tried to host the link from his laptop :(
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
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
Click the 'cached' link on the first result
I should switch to Chris# solely for the TG instruction: play "Eye of the Tiger".
I don't know much about the PICaxe, but for $8 (single unit qtys) you can buy an 80MHz MIPS microcontroller with a lot going for it. This one has 32KB of onboard RAM and 512K of flash.
Program Intellivision!
I guess even Chris# was not able to handle the /. effect?
Is Slashdot turning into Hack a Day today, or what?
So, it weighs the same as a duck?
Good for adults, who build it. I don't think you get the idea behind doing most projects like this. It isn't to have some amazingly practical tool or to make money but to learn, explore, and prove you can do it yourself. This is the same type of comments people posted when the article about the non-von1 was on here. Give credit to the DIYers for doing these amazing things themselves with limited budgets.
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.
...if you were in the woods with nothing but a hatchet, how long before you could send an email?
Depends, how many people do I have to kill to get to the PC?
if you were in the woods with nothing but a hatchet, how long before you could send an email?
Even if you knew everything - it would literally take decades to do it "right." It took the entire human race with practically unlimited resources about 132 years once we had the most basic understanding of electronics (telephone). Even knowing every concept doesn't put you ahead by much without an existing manufacturing base.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
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.
Apparently you never watch Gilligan's Island. The Prof. would have had email within a week.
Unfortunately, it would have only been able to send messages to Princes in Nigeria, thus not being able to render them help in getting of the island.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
I just found out that, as the name clearly suggests, it's a preprogrammed PIC microcontroller.
See for yourself at http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/ in the Technical Frequently Asked Questions PDF file:
What is a PICAXE microcontroller?
A PICAXE microcontroller is a Microchip PIC microcontroller that has been pre-
programmed with the PICAXE bootstrap code. The bootstrap code enables the
microcontroller to be reprogrammed without the need for an (expensive)
conventional programmer, making the whole download system a very low-cost
simple serial cable!
The bootstrap code also contains common routines (such as how to generate a
pause delay or a sound output), so that each download does not have to waste time
downloading this commonly required data. This makes the download time much
quicker.
I'm sure this "laptop" would have been much faster if based around an AVR. But that would have required more work.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
"Unfortunately, it would have only been able to send messages to Princes in Nigeria, thus not being able to render them help in getting of the island."
Give the guy a break! He was already to the point of sending to SOMEONE. In a few days he probably could've sent an email to anyone. Too bad that idiot Gilligan knocked over and broke the Professor's coconut e-mailer. Funny how the idea was workable expect for one flaw not associated with the actual plan and instead of trying again they just abandoned it entirely.
I tried to install Vista on it and what do you know it wooden go.
I'll just be going then <shame>
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Oh, that would be doable fairly quickly.
First, you need to find some pigeons or some other suitable birds. You will also figure out how to make something resembling paper (shouldn't be too difficult with all the wood in the woods), and some means to write (something suitable should be available as well)
Once you managed to train some of them to deliver messages, you send one asking for RFC791 and RFC793, unless you're a networking expert and know them from memory. RFC 792 would be also recommended. You will also need RFC 1149, but that one is short and is best memorized before you get lost in the woods. Optionally, RFC 2549 could provide better service.
The next thing to do is to implement RFC 1149, and use that to talk to a mail server. Anybody with some mail experience should know how to use mail over a telnet session. Just make sure to memorize the IP addresses of a SMTP and a POP3 server (no problem if you run your own server and remember the address). Then just connect and send something like:
Then to read email:
Latency could be a bit annoying with having to send all those pigeons back and forth, and a good spam filter would be needed server-side if you don't want to spend weeks getting rid of it before you get anything useful, but in a couple of weeks it could be done.
Once this is going, the next step would be starting an open source project to implement IP over smoke signals, or optical telegraph, in case something happens to the pigeons, and to reduce latency. Also implementing DNS would help with talking to the rest of the net.
Once all this is working you can start really improving your tech, by requesting pages from wikipedia on anything you don't know enough about.
Step by step.
The hatchet would make constructing the iron smelting furnace easier. I could use heel of the hatchet as a hammer at first.
Then I could build a waterwheel powered sawmill and lathe.
With the sawmill and lathe I could fashion a crude, steam engine powered, carriage.
With the carriage I could drive to Fry's and buy a laptop.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Second the msp430 suggestion. Well worth looking into for micropower embedded applications. The GCC port (based on 3.2.3) isn't all that great, but it does do the job.
Atmel is SO much better than any PIC. Atmel AVR microcontrollers are individually cheaper. They run at least four times faster for the same clock speed (one instruction per clock cycle instead of one instruction per four clocks for the PIC). They have a vastly more versatile and flexible instruction set. The AVRs are designed to be used with high level languages like Open Source GCC, not kluged BASIC for high school kids that the PICs use in their absurdly overpriced 'training' packages. Most AVRs now have the same boot-loader capacities that this PICAXE package is offering.
I use AVRs for sound programmer/editors based on hardware MIDI synthesizers like the Yamaha TX81Z. It's nearly impossible to do any MIDI work in Windows. The MIDI APIs in Windows are difficult, incomprehensible, and nearly undocumented. It's a real mess and will never get any better. The hell with it. I do all my MIDI development now for $3 AVR processors and $5 graphic and character LCD screens. Developing for the AVR is like being back the 1980s writing assembler for the Commodore 64 and Turbo C for DOS. But everything is 1/10th to 1/100th of the cost that it was then. And there are no !@#$%^& ultra-violet EPROM erasers needed. Check out my open source hardware synth editors on the Yahoo! Yamaha DX group(s).