Electronics That Last: How I Built an Heirloom Laptop | Hacker News Reader

Electronics That Last: How I Built an Heirloom Laptop

makezine.com

199 pointschei0aiV75 comments

Most comments here focus on the name and its perceived conflict with the fact that electronics inside will get outdated at a much faster pace than the "heirlooms" of the past.

However what I truly enjoyed when reading this article was the detailed story of the design process for a project like this. Each detail found in the final design went through numerous experiments and iterations, while balancing the requirements for aesthetics, functionality, manufacturing process and sourcing the materials and components. A fascinating read.

I agree, I love the article for the construction details. The design and build process is fascinating to me. Best thing is just to ignore the 'heirloom' description and enjoy the laptop for what it is.

I'd go the opposite way. I reads to me like yet another article about the joys of building a wooden boat. Far to much effort is put into style than design. The choice of wood isn't anything to do with design. This was always going to be wood no matter what. That decision had been made long before anything else, probably even before the idea of a laptop. Whatever this project was to be, it was to be out of wood. Just like the boats in the sheds.

Imho anything that wants to stand the tests of time should start with an examination of which material is best suited to the task. Is that wood? Is that composites? I don't know. I'd like to read about the same effort and creativity focused on building the best case possible.

Wood can last centuries in constant use. You have to make the wearing parts replaceable. And you need to take good care. Just look at musical instruments or sailboats or houses. Since laptops are not operated in rain, they are closest to instruments. Heat dissipation seems to be a problem that doesnt exist in many other traditional wooden objects, indeed often the opposite, insulation, is strived for.

Wood is a joy to work. Metal is brutal and composites are toxic and require building molds. Plus wood rewards careful craftsmanship and a bright finish with unparalleled beauty. I don't think it's an affectation to choose wood for a hobbyist project: it's the best material for the job.

PS: Since this guy encapsulated his wood in fiberglass it technically is a composite.

I agree. It is much more fun for the builder. But this is to be an "Heirloom" object. Focus should therefore be on those who will actually have to live/work with the finished product. The desires of the craftsman are irrelevant. If they matter, then this is an article about a hobby more than product design.

The choice of wood has everything to do with design. If all he wanted was function, wouldn't it make sense to just go buy a laptop? In terms of pure function, ignoring such things as the look and feel of wood, do you really think you can improve on a mass produced laptop?

You can trivialize "style" if you want, but in this case, it is what makes the difference between "everybody else's laptop" and a beautiful work of craftsmanship.

(now if it was me, I would have done even more out of wood, such as the side panels)

To be fair, the headline is "Electronics That Last: How I Built an Heirloom Laptop."

Wrapping commodity electronic components in wood does not create 'electronics that last'.

Exactly. Before I clicked I was expecting to read about high quality / high durability capacitors and the like.

Beautiful construction and all but heirloom's last generations. Not sure you can do that with modern, process nodes given how inherently unstable and broken they are. Computers on the old nodes lasted forever because the physics were more sane and the chips simpler. I could see a heirloom Apple II or something because they're still functional.

Seems only the shell of this one is heirloom. Should be the key portion if true to the concept.

Even with an Apple ][ I doubt they could become true heirlooms. Most of them already broke down, and there's no way the survivors will survive 50 years or longer without having all internals refurbished.

Although that's not nearly as bad as this one. SSD, fan, LCD, RAM, battery are all wear parts that won't survive a decade on average, and the rest is only marginally better.

Luckily Apple ][ innards are all commodity. Caps, resistors, 74xx parts, some RAMs, some PROMs and a 6502. Everything is replaceable, and there's nothing too crazy.

I was actually all set to say that 6502s were now unobtainable, but it turns out that they're not --- in 40-pin DIP, no less. Assuming they haven't changed the pinout it should just drop right in.

http://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/Western-Design-Center-...

Mmm, 600nm process!

The 6502 is relatively popular in some embedddd devices. The Tamagotchi used it: http://hackaday.com/2013/05/24/tamagotchi-rom-dump-and-rever...

The trouble with the old architectures like the 6502 and the Z80 is that they were designed before stack-frame languages like C became popular --- which means they don't have any stack-relative addressing modes, which means that accessing stack frames is horribly expensive.

e.g. on the Z80 most compilers have to keep a copy of the stack pointer in an index register, so that they can address the stack; and even then the absence of 16-bit accesses means that you need eight bytes of code and like a billion cycles to read or write a single 16-bit value. (I do know that the Z80 variant in the Game Boy added a ld hl, (sp+offset) instruction, which helps; shame they didn't add a ld (sp+offset), hl instruction...)

The 6502 is even worse; the stack's limited to 256 bytes and isn't relocatable, let alone addressable. The C compilers I've seen maintain their own stack pointer in zero page. They also generate code which at best is terrible and at worst makes you want to claw your own eyes out to make the pain stop.

So:

(a) I'm curious to know what they wrote the Tamagotchi firmware in --- raw machine code? Forth? C? Fortran? (Fortran's actually a good match for these architectures because all variables, including function parameters, are global --- no stack frames required.)

(b) why was it cheaper to use a 6502 core rather than a more modern architecture --- PIC, AVR, MSP430? Licensing? An in-house team of 6502 experts?

That product was made in 1996. Up to then, quite a few gaming devices already used them. Commodore was going bankrupt but company taking over still sold tons of them. So, it was a decent chip, probably cheaper than usual, and might have hired game developers with prior experience in it.

All speculation based on business details at the time. I'd also like to know if it was cheaper or there was a talent advantage in mid-90's.

There's actually a niche market for making pin-compatible replacements for obsolete parts. Mainly for embedded and military industries. For instance, my private research looking for ultra-reliable hardware found RCA 1802 to be a great option:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_1802

Turns out, it's still around via Intersil with a very thorough datasheet:

http://www.intersil.com/en/products/space-and-harsh-environm...

Another trend is emulating them cycle for cycle and bug for bug with virtualization on modern hardware. Great example is replacing legacy VAXen with NuVAX:

http://logical-co.com/nuvax/

So, there's possibilities for obsolete stuff to keep going. Just can't depend on that happening. Especially if it's a complex and modern SOC rather than simpler chips of the past.

I thought the heirloom part is that a lot of that stuff is user-replaceable on this design, unlike most (all?) other laptops. I assume this is a standard Mini-ITX motherboard?

So you could keep it working with some maintenance over the years.

Its actually an open source hardware design built around a Freescale quad core arm CPU. It is definitely designed to be user replaceable; you can print your own boards if you want.

Info here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena

Designing and making boards for this kind of system is very expensive, especially at small scales. The Novena as a whole sold far too little to really spread out the one-time engineering costs and was very expensive as a result. Only 12 of the Heirloom laptops exist and it's unlikely all 12 owners would buy a replacement board; it's just not going to get made unless one of the owners has the skills to do it themselves and is willing to spend far more than the cost of the laptop to do it.

I'm surprised it turns out to have an ARM processor - I wouldn't have guessed that it would need active cooling. When you consider that many phones would use this same CPU, in a smaller package with less airflow and smaller heatsinks, it seems even more surprising that a fan is required here.

The reason phones can do that is because they throttle heavily after a couple minutes of heavy CPU usage. That wouldn't be very good for a laptop.

The success of the Macbook seems to be arguing the opposite. Most tasks we perform don't require sustained CPU usage.

macbooks are giant passive heat sinks though; a wooden laptop doesn't conduct all that well

But that Freescale CPU isn't open and cost big $$$ to develop. That's the problem: can't use something like that if heirlooms. Only exception maybe is if whole platform is tied to a virtual ISA. That way, hardware might change but SW & interface is the heirloom. System/38 did this to be ported to successively new hardware and interfaces as AS/400, then iSeries, then IBM i.

The ports, though? That looks like USB Type A? I think that'll be replaced by USB Type C sooner or later.

If you think about old computers with their serial ports and floppy drives, it's hard to think these ports will still be in use decades from now.

That's a fair counter but one must remember the cost. The PCB board is usually designed for certain parts. Those parts availability often changes. Replacing them requires redeveloping or implementing them at hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars. It can also be hard to replace a CPU depending on how it's packaged into the board.

So, it would have to be pluggable, open, inexpensive to prototype, and enough volume to spread prototype over users in maintenance.

Tin whiskers is another problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)

Add tin pest from the RoHS switch and EEPROM/flash memory which can store charges for a finite period, and precious little currently being made will last for a long time.

Tin pest is only a problem in very cold conditions. Laptops are usually stored at room temperature. But tin whiskers, another potential problem with lead-free solder, will grow at room temperature.

"and precious little currently being made will last for a long time."

The difficult physics of recent nodes almost guarantee that. It's why I encourage safety-critical designs to, where possible, rely on stuff made on older process nodes (350-500nm if possible). One of the older or newer 180nm's might be OK. Yet, it was the stuff closer to a micron that lastest decades where the modern stuff croaks all the time. Plus, more predictability and less interference from weird physics.

Naturally, that leads to a proposal to go NanGate on the situation to make a ton of custom cells and analog for 350nm. Automatically, of course. Throw in some rad-resistant ones, quad-logic, or something. Then can squeeze more life out of safer, longer-lasting processes if application doesn't demand GHz, etc. Also, can always do SMP or NUMA. :)

Unfortunately, it looks like I've been corrupted by current design trends. I can only look at this and think of the fake wood paneling on station wagons[0], or other faux-antiques. It just screams "kitschy" to me, because I don't have any nostalgia for that era.

Also, attempting to replicate past eras through skeuomorphism is /so/ out right now, come back with flat minimalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodie_%28car_body_style%29

The point is that this is timeless. What's 'in' or 'out' right now doesn't matter. Jeez.

Does being made of wood make it inherently more timeless than if it was made of aluminium? How about if it was chiseled out of stone? You associate a certain style with timelessness, whether you like it or not, while someone else might not.

The "/so/ out right now" bit was intended as a joke, btw.

I look at it and think "That must be really heavy."

I don't care about heirloom technology. But I would love to see very much better recyclability.

I suppose at some point we'll have waste-free nano-replication, and the idea that things are built and stay built will seem as quaint as comparing a wattle and daub hut to modern architecture.

I mean, if it were made out of stone it would still make for a nice paperweight long after the components are obsolete.

No, you can make a timeless design with or without wood. The point is it would look equally at home in any time, or at least anytime from now into the future.

I've never liked fake wood paneling either, but this looks different to me. It has a quality look to it.

I actually think the next design trend will be replicating past eras, but with a Hugh caveate, something this current retro trend overlooked; The retro looking products will be made to the same exacting standards of the products on the past.

I can use collector cars, or mechanical watches as examples.

I have a 1950's IWC movement 853 watch. I wouldn't trade this watch for the any newer IWC watch. There's just something about the simplicity of my watch I like, along with its unobtrusive look it has, the movement is time tested, and is easily serviced. I found mine in a cheap watch bin. It didn't look like it was touched for 50 years. I wound it up, and it kept perfect time. I knew is was a special watch, with a faded dial.

If I had the money, my weekend car would be a 50's-60's Porsche 356. Of course restored to factory standards. I wouldn't want them to change a thing.

As I gotten older, strike that--I've always coveted well made, sensible looking, easier to repair things. And that includes computers. I still have a Toshiba Satellite P25-S607 that's still running daily. It's a tank, but it's well made. It has three internal, quiet fans. I still kick myself I don't buy the nos Toshiba that popped up on eBay a few years ago. What I like best about that old Toshiba is I can still fix it with a screw driver. Some people don't like to look of my old computer. When I look at it, I look to its inner beauty, and it just shines in my little world.

That's an absolutely beautiful piece of work. So many different materials used in a very well thought out way. I'm sure this will inspire a lot of people to make imitation laptop enclosures for 'ordinary' guts.

This is beautiful. Beside the fact of being thick and heavy (maybe), I think the classical feel of this laptop makes it look antique.

I was expecting a steam-punk design before I clicked the link but, I wasn't disappointing at all.

If you want to read more, the author has a blog off of Makezine: http://mottweilerstudio.com/novena-heirloom-achieving-proper...

What's the age of the oldest physical artifact that is simultaneously personal, inheritable, and usable?

Most are things that have a larger scale, gross appeal, aren't personal. A water wheel, a stone bridge, a building. Perhaps a gun, or a watch, comes closest.

Start with that and what would an heirloom computer look like?

Somewhere on the continuum of abacus, slide rule. What's the computational era's equivalent? An HP-11, HP-12 series calculator?

Sometimes I think: we're all making expendable shit.

Brooches and rings. In UK in some families these will be passed down to couples marrying as a gesture of continuity. In Birmingham, we have a 'quarter' that has many small workshops that make and repair/alter jewellery. Some of the older companies have design patterns/dies going back to the Victorian era.

I agree with your basic point: we all buy so much that is basically landfill.

Fountain pens. I have some fountain pens come down to me from my mother's student era.

I think we can go a fair bit older than that.

The Imperial Regalia of Japan, if it still exists, is... really old. I can't find a date.

The anointing spoon of the British crown jewels dates from the 12th century, and is still used [2].

If we don't need something to be in continual use, then bronze age jewellery, or stone age flint knives.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Regalia_of_Japan

[2] https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/31733/the-coro...

Ceramics and glassware can and do last generations. They're functional too but use is likely inverse proportional to longevity.

Leather goods last well, I have my father's belt but it's not in a state to pass down further.

I'm pretty sure a TI calculator fits the bill for tech heirloom. It's very basic, just an Z80 cpu and a small LCD display. It's rugged and can last. Even with being outdated tech, they sell for as much as when they first came out and could definitely be "inheritable". And, because it doesn't aspire to be a general purpose computer, just do some fancy math, it's not going to be outdated (unless you count ubiquitous cell phones)

Stone knives 3.3 million years:

http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2015/04/worlds-ol...

Tutankhamun's metal ones from 3000 odd years ago look quite modern:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Tutankhamun+knife&num=20&tbm...

I'd say that knives can be either inheritable or usable, but not both. Like all tools they will be worn pretty quickly if used actively.

Pocket watches with a mechanical power source, if done properly last quite long.

Rifles are functional for a long time as well.

Knives.

Jewelry.

The wedding band I wear was used by my grandfather (I wear it around my neck now, pain in the ass to remove it from my finger). I also have a 1961 mechanical watch that was a gift to my father from his brother-in-law, and now it's mine and it works perfectly good (mechanical watches, if serviced every 5 years or so, have an indefinite lifetime). Pocket knives also come to mind.

>> Somewhere on the continuum of abacus, slide rule. What's the computational era's equivalent? An HP-11, HP-12 series calculator?

I have my Dad's wooden abacus, which must be at least as old as I am (mid forties). It's obviously not Antiques Roadshow old, but as a child, I remember him using it for his bookkeeping instead of a calculator. He taught me how to use one, and as a kid, I got pretty quick at using it for simple arithmetic.

Of course, once tape calculators (and calculators in general) got cheaper, he stopped using it altogether. If I had kids, it's definitely something I would pass on.

The novena is nearly unique with its FPGA, features for hardware hacking and expansions that let you use it like an oscilloscope or for software defined radio. It's supposed to be considered like a piece of bench equipment rather than a disposable main laptop, and it'll probably age similarly to bench equipment (i.e. much better than a basic laptop).

Stradivarius.

Unfortunately the part of modern laptops that breaks first is rarely a case, be it wooden or metal, even plastic, but usually the battery, keyboard, screen, or just some random small part of the mainboard.

And all of those are replaceable on this system. George Washington's Axe is still an heirloom.

Off-topic, but from the article:

> Huang has a cool thermal imaging device for his phone that he used to make this photo of the Heirloom showing the heat distribution

I'd be really interested if this is an affordable solution. A FLIR camera would be nice to have, but they're really expensive. Does anyone know what model he's talking about?

EDIT: Thanks everyone, looks like they've come down in price significantly. Almost cheap enough to buy one just for kicks.

FLIR do an entry level smartphone attachment, "Flir One". It's not particularly precise or high-resolution, but it's a lot cheaper. (Still not cheap-cheap.)

Very cool. File this under the list of "things I don't need but want anyway".

http://www.flir.com/flirone/

They are $250. Resolution is increadbly small (gen two has 160x120), then upsampled. Still useful.

There's also the Seek Thermal cameras: http://www.thermal.com/thermal-cameras/

I have one of the Compact model, and I think it's paid for itself with a few repair jobs around the house.

i'm not sure if this is it, but i'm enthusiastic about the dawn of sandbenders [1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer

I think you meant to link to Idoru.

You're right!

They're both great books, though, and I encourage everyone to read all of Gibson.

Really, how naive can one be? Who is still using phones with dial disc? Who uses VHS recorders? CRT monitors? Would anyone like to stick to them because of a wooden case? In 50 years we surely won't be using laptop style devices but rather something with much more intuitive input...

Is the bottom being wavy just an aesthetic design or is there a reason? Seems like needless bulk on an already very bulky laptop.

The laptop form factor is an odd choice, but the equivalent for a media centre (or similar) would be popular in some niches.

I dunno about the whole wood thing, but if i could get it either as a kit or fully assembled i would be all over it.

My Amiga is an Heirloom.

So does "heirloom" mean "made of wood"?

"Gee thanks grandpa... does this run VR? whats a Gigahert, oh its a fraction of a terrahert... hmm thanks.."

"Hertz, son, it's hertz. Named after the old guy, Heinrich Hertz. Used to hang out at my hackerspace when I was a kid. Well, it was just a garage, but you know what I mean."

That is (a) a beautiful laptop, and (b) a shame that it can't be made as thin as a MacBook (or even as thin as 2 MacBooks).

It's a waste of beautiful wood.

Looks like something the Apple I could have gone into. Nothing beautiful about it.

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