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Comment by shakna | Hacker News Reader

I loved my PocketCHIP, right up to when the software stopped getting updates, and the company ghosted everyone with hundreds of waiting orders.

I still have it, but getting it working again is a couple weekend's of work. (Which makes me somewhat doubt the simultaneous claims of mainline Debian _and_ based on the same underlying hardware as the CHIP.)

I love the form factor that these kinds of computers present. However, the promise of a decent production line will always ring hollow. Many of these companies have popped out, had a small run, and vanished, leaving the customer with a paperweight or a security risk.

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Upon seeing this project I immediately searched the HN thread for fellow PocketCHIP owners. Mine's still on my shelf next to a few other handheld Linux portables that showed promise, but ended up with poor support and no updates. The real clincher for me is eMMC storage - with no way to back up or modify the storage other than their web-based flasher, the CHIP was a headache and a half to deal with, compared to other microSD-card-based SBCs, which are simple to backup and restore when needed.

I'd love to have a device like this with the longevity of a Thinkpad (still using mine from 2012) or at least my Nexus 5 (2013, and still in use!) but it seems after a year or so these all just get abandoned.

Mine's lying half dead in my drawer. It needs to be reflashed. It really was exactly what I wanted - apart from the terrible support which turns it into a dreaded chore. I used it enough I had to repair the ctrl+shift keys (well, the caps) from clear overuse.

Though, one of these weekends I'll get around to using these [0][1] to make it work again.

The web-based flasher really was the pits to deal with (forced to flash via Chrome was such a terrible experience). Thank goodness someone got a hold of the actual flasher before it all went up in smoke.

[0] https://archive.org/details/C.h.i.p.FlashCollection

[1] https://github.com/SaltyCybernaut/PocketCHIP-flash-utils

The big problem with mainline support for the CHIP is that it uses raw flash directly connected to the SoC - and to make matters worse, on many boards that's MLC flash which is particularly nasty and is very firmly not supported by mainline Linux. This seems to dodge that problem by using eMMC with a built-in controller.

Not quite a pocket pc, but famously and recently, the librem 5[0]. My comment below wishing them luck hinted at this, it's almost expected for them to falter during delivery, ghost everyone and disappear because it has become a sadly familiar pattern around these open source electronics in small factor (phones, pocket pcs and the like).

[0] https://jaylittle.com/post/view/2019/10/the-sad-saga-of-puri...

HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21369733

I bought a couple of these and installed nes and SNES emulators with a full library of roms for my nephews. They loved it.

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