Beautiful Raspberry Pi Laptop Inspired By Psion

July 8, 2016 by Jenny List 34 Comments

In the four years since the first Raspberry Pi appeared, there have been many takes on a portable computer based on it. The choice of components is fairly straightforward, there is now a wide selection of suitable keyboards, displays, and battery packs to choose from. You might therefore think that there could be nothing new in the world of the portable Pi, indeed another one might be as mundane as just another PC build.

News reaches us from Japan this morning of [nokton35mm]’s “RasPSION” Pi laptop build (machine translation) inspired by the Psion portable computers of the late 1990s.

The RasPSION features the Raspberry Pi 7″ display as well as a Bluetooth keyboard, 5V battery pack and the Pi camera. What makes it special is its laser cut case, and in particular its pivoting hinge mechanism. This is the part that takes its inspiration from the Psion machines, and its operation can be seen in the video below the break.

He claims the finished laptop gives him about two hours of battery life, which is no mean feat given that it lacks the sophisticated power management you’ll find in a commercial laptop. We hope that in time we’ll see him posting the details of the build somewhere other than Twitter, as this is a laptop we’d love to know more about.

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Smallest BASIC Computer?

July 8, 2016 by Elliot Williams 57 Comments

This may be the most minimal computer that we’ve ever seen running BASIC. Hackaday.io user [Kodera2t] has been working through the history of computing, so after his 4-bit CPU, he stepped up his game to eight bits. It’s amazing how much can be done with so little. It’s basically a Z80 on a single PCB.

[Kodera2t] is careful to give credit where credit is due: the design of this computer is by [Grant Searle]. It’s amazing what you can do with an old CPU (6809), some SRAM, a controller-interface chip, and an EPROM for your BASIC. Check out the GitHub for the computer’s PCB files if you want to make your own — it’s a very hobbyist-friendly two-layer board with fat traces. Or you could put it all together on a breadboard. It’s that non-critical.

The other sweet touch is this monochrome CRT build that pairs up with the tiny computer.

[Kodera2t] is doing some really clever retro and minimalistic hacks, and putting them all up on Hackaday.io. You should really give his whole portfolio a look. We recently wrote up his experimentations with the Atmel ATtiny10 if you’re in the mood for something more modern.

Triple Monitor Travel Battlestation

July 7, 2016 by Adam Fabio 19 Comments

[AbyssalUnderlord’s] schedule has him packing up and moving between school, home, and internships every three months. Not an easy task when your computer is a triple monitor CAD and gaming powerhouse. To make his moves easier, he built this portable computer / monitor frame.

The design started with a CAD model. The basic materials for the build are aluminum angle and steel-slotted angle stock. There was no welding involved in this build. Pop rivets, nuts, and bolts hold just about everything together. An angle grinder was used for all of the cutting. [AbyssalUnderlord] used drawer slides to move his monitors from stored to deployed position. The small red extensions at the end of the drawer slides allow the monitors to be positioned in a standard 3 wide triple monitor setup. It’s a clever design.

This schedule isn’t going to last forever so [AbyssalUnderlord] didn’t want to make any permanent mods to his tower or monitors. Blue camping foam acts as a cushion between the hardware and the new case.

We’ll admit that this isn’t the prettiest of builds, but it looks plenty rugged and it gets the job done. As mentioned in the Reddit thread, a few coats of spray paint would go a long way toward improving the aesthetics. Just don’t spend too much time playing Overwatch, [AbyssalUnderlord].

If you like DIY portable setups, check this Transformers-themed portable workbench, or our Hacklet all about portable work stations and toolboxes.

42,300 Transistor Megaprocessor Is Complete

July 6, 2016 by Moritz Walter 83 Comments

As it turns out, the answer is not 42, it’s 42.3 — thousand. That’s how many discrete transistors spread across the 30 m² room housing this massive computation machine. [James Newman’s] Megaprocessor, a seriously enlarged version of a microprocessor, is a project we’ve been following with awe as it took shape over the last couple of years.

[James] documented his work in great detail, and by doing so, took us on a journey through the inner workings of microprocessors. His monumental machine is now finished, and it’s the ultimate answer to how a processor – and pretty much everything that contains a processor – works.

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A 150MHz 6502 Co-Processor

July 5, 2016 by Jenny List 16 Comments

If you are familiar with ARM processors, you may know of their early history at the 1980s British home computer manufacturer Acorn. The first physical ARM system was a plug-in co-processor development board for Acorn’s BBC Micro, the machine that could be found in nearly every UK school of the day.

For an 8-bit home computer the BBC Micro had an unusually high specification. It came with parallel, serial and analog ports, built-in networking using Acorn’s proprietary Econet system, and the co-processor interface used by that ARM board, the Tube. There were several commercial co-processors for the Tube, including ones with a 6502, a Z80 allowing CP/M to be run, and an 80186.

As with most of the 8-bit generation of home computers the BBC Micro continues to maintain a strong enthusiast following who have not stopped extending its capabilities in all directions. The Tube has been interfaced to the Raspberry Pi, for instance, on which an emulation of original co-processor hardware can be run.

And thus we come to the subject of this article, [Hoglet] and [BigEd]’s 150MHz 6502 coprocessor for the BBC Micro. Which of course isn’t a 6502 at all, but a 6502 emulated in assembler on an ARM which is in a way the very distant descendant of the machine it’s hosted upon. There is something gloriously circular about the whole project, particularly as the Pi, like Acorn, the BBC Micro, and modern-day ARM, has its roots in Cambridge. How useful it is depends on your need to run 8-bit 1980s software in a tearing hurry, but they do report it runs Elite, which if you were there at the time we’re sure you will agree is the most important application to get running on a BBC Micro.

We’ve featured the Tube interface before when we talked about an FPGA co-processor with a PDP/11 mode that was definitely never sold by Acorn. And we’ve also featured an effort to reverse engineer the primordial ARM from that first BBC Micro-based co-processor board.

BBC Micro image: Stuart Brady, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Feel Extreme Workbench Envy After Seeing The Tempel

July 4, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 24 Comments

For those of us with space to spare, our workbenches tend to sprawl. The others who are more space limited will certainly feel envy at [Love Hultén]’s beautiful Tempel workbench.

The workbench appears at first to be a modern interpretation of a secretary’s desk. There are some subtle hints that it is no ordinary piece of furniture. The glowing model of our solar system on the front, for example.

With the front folded down, rather than the expected leather writing pad and letter sized drawers, a few more oddities become apparent. The back is a pegboard which holds a small selection of tools. To the left, a checkered grid obscures speakers. Knobs control volume There are even USB ports. On the right sits another speaker. Banana jacks let you use the analog voltmeter. Most appealingly, the indestructible Hakko 936 soldering iron has been entirely integrated into the structure of the desk.

If you press the right button on the front, the desk will reveal its last secret. It contains an entire workstation somewhere behind the array of drawers on the front. A linear actuator pushes a computer monitor up from inside the cabinet, covering the pegboard in the back. Awesome.

There is a build log, but unfortunately it’s been imageshacked and only the words remain. We think [Love Hultén] has finally managed to build a soldering station that’s welcome in every room of the house except for the garage.

Refurbishing Armored Tablets

July 4, 2016 by Elliot Williams 10 Comments

Who can resist the insane deals on bizarre hardware that pop up on auction websites? Not [Dane Kouttron], for sure. He stumbled on Armor X7 ruggedized tablets, and had to buy a few. They’d be just perfect for datalogging in remote and/or hostile locations, if only they had better batteries and were outfitted with a GSM data modem… So [Dane] hauled out his screwdrivers and took stuff apart. What follows is a very detailed writeup of the battery management system (BMS), and a complete teardown of this interesting tablet almost as an afterthought.

First, [Dane] tried to just put a bunch more batteries into the thing, but the battery-management chip wouldn’t recognize them. For some inexplicable reason, [Dane] had the programmer for the BMS on-hand, as well as a Windows XP machine to run the antiquated software on. With the BMS firmware updated (and the manufacturer’s name changed to Dan-ger 300!) everything was good again.

Now you may not happen to have a bunch of surplus X7 ruggedized tablets lying around. Neither do we. But we can totally imagine needing to overhaul a battery system, and so it’s nice to have a peek behind the scenes in the BMS. File that away in your memory banks for when you need it. And if you need even more power, check out this writeup of reverse-engineering a Leaf battery pack. Power to the people!