No there aren’t a lot of good reasons for building your own laptop. If you’re an Acorn enthusiast you don’t really have an alternative. It’s got a nice metal case and the hinge has been designed to balance the screen. It looks pretty slick; the only unfortunate thing is that the LCD has to be plugged in externally.
[thanks MSg]
Is this part of the hundred dollar contest? if so he spent way over that amount of money, like ~ 500 over. but it is still really cool.
No this isn’t an entry, but I did put this up today because of the relation.
I thought this was neat, i’d like to make one myself. battery lasts two hours thats awesome for parts made for a desktop computer
Someone should enter a TI-83+ graphing calculator as a less than $100 laptop lol. They are actually quite handy.
So are handhelds.
Why not just hook em up with an AlphaSmart Dana?
I mean, there is no Dana, only Zool, but still…
Lots apps, robust, great battery life…
Acorns? they had them at my primary school lol.
Its definetly a start of a laptop. Keep up the hacking..
Reminds me of the Amiga laptop that’s out there somewhere.
i got an acorn archimedies emulator going once. apparently these things have the OS and other main parts loaded into a flash card, and then the other apps and such are on the hard disk. this makes it really responsive in many ways because it doesn’t have to go to the hard drive for bootup and whenever it wants things like widgets for the screen. very nice concept. the UI felt clunky though; possibly because i didn’t have an acorn mouse, which makes use of the middle mouse button for menus. overall though, i liked the idea.
The linked page mentions a gap in the Acorn mobility market; this was at one point filled with the then great Acorn A4, a portable, battery powered, RiscOS 3 machine. It came with no trackpad, but a port for three button mouse, and the screen was only 16 shades of greyscale, but it worked fairly well.
Mine unfortunately died a few years ago, but I was able to extract the ROMS a while before this to enable use of ArmEm, a Mac OS X Acorn Emulater. I’ve not used it since 10.2, and I’ve no idea if it still works anymore, however… The orriginal machines can still be found on eBay and the odd British public school in the midst of clear out.
hey did you guys see hack a days geek favorites in macworld?
I *think* the original blurb is incorrect, the very last picture and caption seem to indicate that the screen no longer is connected externally.
Can anyone verify this?
It is custom modelled laptop i belive
albert
That is neat. You know, this almost makes me want to get my hands on a PC104 board and and cook myself up a laptop. This proves that it’s possible with right about any OS and components.
Imagine the possibilities too, A laptop of which you can upgrade the mainboard. Isn’t it time that sort of thing becomes a reality?
i agree with the post above its time we had laptops we could fiddle with ourselves i hate having to get rid of a machine instead of upgrading. but then that’s how the big corps make their money they want us to get rid of the old and buy new.
#11 the “plug in externally” seems to refer to the fact that the screen is plugged into the motherboard externally after the laptop is opened, i think its all powered by batteries/single PS
do you thing i could get some more info on the battery i was planing on doing something similar with a mini itx mobo but couldnt find any batterys that lasted very long
Awesome, reminds me of that Amiga laptop I saw a long time ago that was made from a 1200.
the reason the battery lasts so long on this is down to the hardware. Acorns were known for their low power consumption. The ARM processor uses only a matter of milliwats. It can’t be used in a standard Pc though. You need a RiscOS Acorn