Framedeck: A Cyberdeck built with the framework mainboard | Hacker News Reader

Framedeck: A Cyberdeck built with the framework mainboard

github.com

440 pointsmodernerd131 comments

I think Framework really has something going here with their à la carte approach to laptop sales. People want to tinker and build their own ideas and there is a dearth of options for portable motherboards which are truly modular, versus doing something like gutting a laptop.

They may have stumbled into a nice niche that is all their own. I Hope they lean into it.

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module series and other OEMs' compute modules have been in a similar space, albeit not laptop-first driven like Framework has.

For those who like me did not know what's a cyberdeck, here are a couple links I've found:

What is a cyberdeck? https://cyberdeck.cafe/mix/what-is-a-cyberdeck

Some examples https://www.makeuseof.com/best-raspberry-pi-cyberdecks/

Reddit community https://libredd.it/r/cyberDeck/

Even though I wasn't familiar with the term, this is actually something I always wanted (a self-built portable device, that I can customise in the same way I can customise a desktop computer).

The link to the shoulder slung dual OS deck is broken, at least at writing. Anyway, it's here: https://www.msglab.co/project/msg-cyberdeck

System76 and Framework both exist. Nvidia just released their drivers as open source. What a time to be alive.

And this is why we must never give up and "be pragmatic". We need to get things done today, sure, but we must also never stop pushing for a freer tomorrow.

This. In the entire history of the world, nothing ever got better by accepting what is. Be the sand in the gears any time the gears don't work for you or for the common good.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

― George Bernard Shaw

“I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable. Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things.”

— Marvin Heemeyer

> Nvidia just released their drivers as open source

Not at all. They just released the kernel modules which is a tiny part of what is needed to make GPU work.

> System76 and Framework

Lenovo has been around for a very long time and their thinkpads have been repairable well before these two brands ever shipped anything.

As a long time ThinkPad/Lenovo fan, suggesting that Lenovo's repairability is in the same league as the Framework suggests to me you've never actually worked with a Framework. It really is on a whole other level.

Are you joking? Thinkpads for decades have had all the parts replaceable with off the shelf components. Framework is barely caught up with my 2008 thinkpad lol.

Have you looked at any more recent thinkpads?

Framework's hardware is nice because it takes advantage of CPUs, ports, RAM, screens etc that are more recent than 2008

I know for some old ThinkPads (edit: The IBM branded T60 from 2006) you can get a custom motherboard that works with modern CPUs, but the price for the mobo alone is more than a Framework laptop

I also have a 2008 and a 2009 Thinkpad. I've looked at some recent ones and we've lost so much since then.

Can you custom design parts with pinouts for your 2008 thinkpad?

If not, I'm not sure I believe you know what you are talking about - its nice lenovo (in past) has been so rugged, repairable, but using reverse engineered parts is a very different thing to a set of components that can be extended.

Put it like this - can you put a lenovo part on a framework laptop? No? Why?

Until you can, Framework is in a whole different category....

2008 ThinkPads are machines from a different era. Lenovo doesn't build them the same anymore.

It's hard to talk about Thinkpads as a monolith because there have been so many different devices sold over the decades and their format has changed quite a bit in that time as well. As a thinkpad enjoyer I do appreciate them still but they have become less repairable in recent time. Personally I have done things like completely swap screens, motherboards, etc. to create franken thinkpads in SKUs that never existed and I would still say the Framework is more "repairable" if you define repairable as ease of removing and replace components as well as gaining access to replacement components. Framework's marketplace lists individual components that I can buy today presumably at OEM quality to fix things like hinges or keyboards and that is something Lenovo never really had (or I was not aware of it or was not able to engage with it a la some special preferred repair program).

good luck finding cheap parts for your framework laptop. Lenovo however can be repaired for years with off the shelf components and at very low cost.

Some business laptops from Lenovo, Dell, and HP rank among the most repairable laptops. But Framework goes even further by making their parts store and repair guides accessible to everyone:

- https://frame.work/marketplace

- https://guides.frame.work/c/Framework_Laptop

The prices of the parts are very reasonable, and each part is labeled with a QR code that can be scanned to access repair instructions.

Dell Vostro laptops are not as sleek as their consumer models, but they are tanks, and they are a breeze to repair.

I do like what Framework is doing, and my next laptop will likely be from them.

I would not trust a company with no history with providing parts forever. If anything, I'd like them to license the manufacturing of replacement parts so that other companies can make their own if they ever go bankrupt.

> Some business laptops from Lenovo, Dell, and HP rank among the most repairable laptops

I can confirm HP isn't too shabby. Very easy to take apart, and they even put out maintenance and service manuals, at least for their Pro/Elite Desk/Book lines. They show how to disassemble them, the possible part-numbers (for example the different available keyboards with or without backlight).

I've never had to actually source any parts so don't know how easy it is, especially once they get old.

But, in general, I would personally not recommend the laptops. They're cheap junk with ridiculously bad screens.

The desktops are quite OK, though.

FWIW I just look up 6 parts for the Thinkpad (battery, keyboard, webcam, speakers, audio board), and all the prices were within $5 of the framework equivalent. Granted, that doesn't necessarily mean the prices will still be comparable a decade from now.

One of my Lenovo laptops has firmware to prevent me from upgrading its WiFi card using off the shelf components.

If it's successful one would expect availability to increase.

Is it a Lenovo ThinkPad, or one of their other models?

Some thinkpads have a whitelist for wireless chips in the firmware, that's known - but I am not sure how widespread it is.

That one was a yoga 2 pro. An unfortunate choice to stray from the T and X series on my part. Or, they could have chosen not to add software limitations and Superfish or at least made it clear before I bought it.

It was reported recently that they are also doing the same thing with the CPU in some of their machines. As someone who has bought older Xeon CPUs to upgrade older PCs (often giving them years more useful life) that is frustrating.

> Lenovo however can be repaired for years with off the shelf components and at very low cost.

The Framework uses standard parts for wifi, storage, and display. The "proprietary" bits are the mainboard, the battery, and the keyboard/mouse assembly (in the case of the Framework, mainly because of the custom connector).

This is precisely the same situation as with Lenovo, save that the Framework is far more modular and thus easy to repair.

I'm not sure why you think there's any difference.

I use Linux, but Lenovo's reputation is still burned in my eyes ever since the Superfish incident. I'm very happy we have other names in the Linux laptop game.

(Context: Lenovo installed universal root CAs on their laptops during the 2010s, so they could serve ads. They were tied to firmware IIRC, so, reinstalling Windows would not remove the malware.)

I understand why you have a problem with Lenovo following the incident, but ThinkPads are something else, and they weren't impacted by Superfish.

Non-ThinkPad Lenovos are not great by any mean. They are unremarkable consumer-grade laptops. ThinkPads are a legacy from IBM that Lenovo is smart enough to keep separate from the rest.

Still not acceptable. It would be hard for me to buy a ThinkPad (I have bought many in the past).

Obviously Lenovo has zero integrity and will spy on us or cheat us in some other way if they think they can do it without getting caught.

Sad that nobody else makes laptops with the little nub for pointing the mouse.

I used a TP from the 2013, 2014 era, and I have my current main laptop as a TP from 2017...

The old TP was fantastic. Really out of date hardware, but it did the job. New one is great, in theory (spec-wise), but its a much cheaper build, breaks more, and just generally has far more issues than I remember with the old one. I think I had one in the middle too which was just straight up an awful peice of junk...

When Lenovo got bought out by China, they weren't really that smart - they tried to consumerize their TP and thereby cut costs - the features they brought back to modern TPs are still nice but you just don't get the same attention to detail anymore...IMHO.

That was over 10 years ago, a mistake which the company has shown no signs of repeating.

They might have started it over 10 years ago, but they kept the Superfish malware until 2015, when they offered removal tools.

(For context in the future, this comment was made in 2022, when the Superfish Lenovo security controversy was only 7 years old.)

> but Lenovo's reputation is still burned in my eyes ever since the Superfish incident.

I guess you don't use any other company either because every other company has committed something bad in the past? (Sony had rootkits in their CDs, Microsoft has been anticompetitive by forcing the hands of OEMs and inserting spyware in their OS, the list can go on...).

What matters is how each company answers to their mistakes. If they double-down, you are right to avoid them. If they recognize them and make amends, it's OK to give them a chance again.

How far does that list go? I indeed don't use Sony software and I avoid Microsoft's. I don't know many other violations of this severity. For example, Dell had pre-installed root CAs (but weren't persistent like Lenovo's), and many other laptop manufacturers haven't preinstalled root CAs (e.g. HP hasn't afaik).

With Framework and System76 and other smaller manufacturers making Linux-first laptops, I'm especially disinclined to ever consider Lenovo again.

Owning both Lenovo and Framework myself, Lenovo doesn't hold a candle to Framework.

Call me when you buy a used Framework for 200-300 bucks...

Whats that got to do with anything?

My old lenovo is still too good to throw away for $200, though I'd give it to a relative or friend for free.

It will be years before any Frameworks get that old, and by the time they do 5 or 8 years from now, well their whole sales pitch is that you can just keep repairing it or repurpose it's parts indefinitely. And this thread is talking about repairability not any other value propositions like market availability of old ones.

It may never become a junker you sold for 200 because you used it's parts for something else or you replaced the mainboard and just kept using it.

If there never appear any $200 Frameworks, that would only support the assertion that they are more user repairable.

This question makes no sense to me in this context.

Some of the recent ThinkPads have soldered RAM.

Unfortunately. The more expensensive ones outside of the x1 carbon line are still upgradable.

Do you understand what “not at all” means?

If they did part of the work, then clearly it is “some” work, and not “none at all”

Worth pointing out that while linux has usually worked quite well on thinkpads, official support for linux was very infrequent until recently. Also, support for linux on non-thinkpad lenovos was much more of a crapshoot. For corporate linux support, Dell (edit: and HP!) has always been a better option.

Edit: And apparently even today is very limited. Just checked Lenovo's website, and apparently only two models can be ordered in the US with linux preinstalled: X1 Carbon, and the Yoga. That's it.

Even for framework, the official Linux support isn't much better. They don't ship with Linux and it's only recently all the kinks have been mostly ironed out with the distro they recommend, Ubuntu 21.04. They have been making proactive steps with Linux support, like providing prerelease hardware to maintainers of lots of distros, but they don't officially support any distro.

> What a time to be alive.

What?! It's 2022 and all CPUs and chipsets are closed source, incredibly complex, designed by very few companies and manufactured by a monopolist (TSMC).

End users are increasing using laptop and phones (instead of desktops) that are entirely proprietary and not modular.

All hardware runs tons of closed source software below ring 0, with no way to remove it for 99.9% of users.

Hardware security vulnerabilities abound. As complexity increases every year, reliably detecting bugdoors/backdoors has become a pipe dream.

Everything you say is true. It's been true to some degree since the beginning of consumer-level computing. What is also true though is that open companies like Framework and System76 (who I work for) actually are developing the power and scale to push back on this paradigm and ... sorry for the drama ... bring out a new era of open hardware, software and firmware. It's so hard to claw back freedom from these megaliths, but it is actually happening.

Oh how I wish laptops had keyboards like that, mechanical or otherwise. Framework is doing great work democratizing higher end computing, had no idea they released their mainboards separately.

Really appreciated the build tour: https://github.com/brickbots/framedeck/blob/main/docs/build_...

These guys do a mechanical keyboard on a laptop. similar idea as framework, maybe a bit more raw.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform

Definitely more raw, but lots more open hardware on the Reform than you'll get from Framework:

https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform

But yes, it's a slow ARM system, so you have to temper your expectations. I've been using mine a bit more lately and enjoying it though. :)

Yea this is the real hacker dream machine, I’m always sad framework is getting more love when it’s not open hardware or open source.

$1500 for a machine which is so underpowered it's hardly anything more than an expensive toy for programmers with too much money. I love the trackball and mechanical keyboard though. Shame it's far too overpriced and underpowered for any kind of daily driver usage.

I mean, that's literally what it is, an expensive toy for hackers

Well, I would give my left nut for a laptop like this that's actually useful though.

But $1500 for a fun weekend project is a disgusting waste of resources that I can't afford. I used to have to live off of less than that for the whole month, so the mere thought of it makes me angry.

I don't think the fun of it will last only a weekend, and I don't think you have to get angry at expensive toys. It's more than I would want to pay though.

I currently use the "digital piano" measure of price. My Roland FP-10 + stand cost me around 500 euros, and that is going to bring me many hours of practise and interest. I don't think it's likely that this laptop will beat that, so it's not great value. I don't think it's really terrible though

I really don't think it would last more than a weekend. If I can't use this thing for anything peoductive, why is it even in a portable form factor? If I wanted to tinker with computationally cheap software on the go, any shitty laptop from 10 years ago would be fine. If the only thing I want is tinker with hardware, that's only gonna happen at home anyway, might as well just get a raspberry pi. I just don't see a point of this being portable with such weak components, at that price.

It's my dream laptop form factor with useless hardware in it. Just too good to be true I guess. Maybe someone will make a board with a real computer for it, fingers crossed

I know a few people whose main hobby for many years has been fiddling with their Linux distribution, so I can see it lasting a long time for people like that

The SoM can be swapped out, and other ones are in development. The ability to just slot in 18650s for the battery means it could outlast most other laptops (as a portable machine) as well.

> democratizing higher end computing

Framework's PCBs and schematics are proprietary and patented.

It's just a proprietary laptop with some parts made easier to replace.

If you are referring to the price - they are not exceptionally cheap.

They don't design PCB's completely themselves. Usually these designs are created with the actual manufacturer, which don't allow open sourcing of their designs.

Framework is not perfect, but they come way closer than other companies. Not even companies like System76, which are open source focused, are able to go that far (they use Clevos with Intel ME largely disabled).

How is this "democratizing higher end computing"?

I love be a cyberdeck, but the idea that we'd all be running derivatives of '70s game firmware after 50 years of putative progress kind of puts lie to Gibson's futurism, which required a certain panache and optimism to technology that has clearly not come to pass.

> ...we'd all be running...

I think this is not an all or nothing sort of present that we live in...and i think maybe there will be some (maybe non-trivial) slice of the computing population who might - at least for some of the time and for some tasks/work - be quite interested in tools like cyberdeck. I have no hard data to support my claim of course, its only my opinion...and in fact my opinion is based on the popularity that i'm seeing with a tiny portion of tech entusiasts more and more interested in things like TUIs, command-line based tools, Gemini protocol and associated Gemini sites for engaging with content, etc. Maybe its just a cycle of 70s/80s computing nostalgia, or maybe its a reaction to the annoying consumer web (the lay web? the layperson web?) and all its bothersome bells and whistles, ads, privacy invasion, etc...?

What's this thing for thick subnotebooks with tiny screens all of a sudden?

I liked subnotebooks, and they're now hard to get. I have a bunch of Eee PC 1000 series machines I bought off eBay for about $50 each for semi-embedded applications, or to carry around. I replace the battery, wipe the hard drive to get rid of Windows, and install XUbuntu. Newer machines at a similar price point would be nice.

The sudden growth in cyberdeck projects comes out of the convergence of three things:

1. The mechanical keyboard DIY and modding community.

2. The availability of small ultrawide LCDs, mostly from the automotive space.

3. The Raspberry Pi ecosystem.

We're basically enabling that community with a higher power x86 option.

Funnily enough the original EEE PC 701 happened (in part) because of the availability of automotive parts, in particular the screen. Same spec as the built-in sat-nav units that started to trickle into the mainstream in the 1998-2003 era.

I think another big part of it is a desire to return to "personal computing" in the personal sense, as a reaction against subscription everything, sandboxed app everything, polished everything. Cyberdecks are under your control, from the design to the keyboard, and a person is probably more likely to be running something personal like Emacs on these machines than some Electron groupware.

There does appear to be a small unserved niche for people looking for an open computing device that's portable but with a keyboard.

As you mentioned, subnotebooks are hard to come by. Android phones with keyboard are also hard to find. Android tablets with keyboard sleeves are clunky. Android programs are designed for touch also.

iPads have a decent keyboard case but are also locked down.

> ...Android phones with keyboard are also hard to find...

To this day, my partner - who is not a tech person - believes that the days when mobile phones had physical, slide out keyboards was the epitome of tech design. She felt is was the proper balance for the tech- and non-tech audiences. She feels like typing into glass is either kid-like or too far fetched for the not-yet-Star-Trek-like world that we live in. Go figure! :-)

https://www.clockworkpi.com/ has RISC-V and ARM (Raspi CM3 or a Rockchip module) models of their DevTerm slab system. The schematics are GPL v3. There's micro HDMI if you need an external screen for a while. The ARM versions run Ubuntu, Debian, their own ClockworkOS, or most other things that will run on Raspberry Pi. $260 to $340 or so for the ARM ones new, not including the 18650 batteries.

With the other DIY Framework machine on HN earlier today[1], is anyone maintaining a list of such Framework projects?

1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31387055

If it doesn’t already exist, I anticipate a awesome-framework will get created on GH.

Is there money in those, or is it a labor of love?

Well, an aspiring hacker will (hopefully) create one as a labor of love but in creating it, will build a brand and that’s worth money, so there’s that.

Yes, we are maintaining the list here. https://community.frame.work/t/a-company-or-individual-drive...

These cyberdecks look awesome, but I don't really understand the ergonomics of the screen. Don't you have to crane your neck to look at it?

Has anyone here used a form-factor like this for any length of time?

This was actually the form factor of numerous 1980s portables, most notably the TRS-80 Model 100 mentioned in the article, but also others such as the Epson HX-20 and Clive Sinclair's Z88. You don't really "crane your neck" any more than you do with modern smartphone which likewise has the (virtual) keyboard in the same plane as the rest of the screen.

I don't really see myself thumb typing with a cyberdeck though.

It could pair perfectly with screen glasses like these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31393483

You could even drop the built-in display. I totally see a future now where I’ll have a screen-less MacBook with a pair of glasses like these for on the go and plugging into a monitor at home/work.

Damn, this is what I've been waiting for for years! No mention of PC/laptop compatibility, though. Do you happen to know anything about that? (I guess any machine with HDMI out should do but before spending hundreds of dollars I guess I should make sure.)

These are really not designed for ergonomics. They are obviously much worse than a phone on your neck and back.

Cyberdecks are craft objects, made for show, like many mechanical keyboards.

I love the design, but wow, that keyboard is unusable. I know it looks cool but it's going to need so many layers to be practical that it becomes... impractical.

It's only missing the extra pinky column for my preferences (6 keys), but I know plenty of programmers who love layouts like this (see CRKBD/Corne 5x3)

Did I miss the space bar?

Probably one of the thumb buttons that are dark blue.

And the enter key. I'm betting on key combos for them.

nah usually they're the keys where your thumbs are and aren't hidden behind a layer because they're so commonly used... so the bottom left down arrow is the spacebar and the bottom right up arrow is enter

It's pretty common to use one or both of the innermost thumb buttons on the bottom row as the space bar, for this style of keyboard (you often have to learn to partly ignore the labels on the keycaps, when your keyboard is this minimal).

(I use both of the innermost thumb buttons as a space bar on my split keyboard, with the left one also acting as a layer shift which gives me arrow keys on hjkl while holding it down. If you're a vim user, this arrangement becomes second-nature startlingly quickly, I found)

I'm on a 42-key keyboard; two 6x3 halves plus three thumb keys on each side. I would dearly love to try living with a (5x3+3)*2 keyboard for a week but I just can't see how I would replace the outside columns; I just need my tab, shift, control, and quote keys too much, and I'm pretty doubtful about the prospects of putting those keys onto separate layers or otherwise chording them. (backspace and enter are likely to be issues as well, although I could maybe adapt to ctrl-h and ctrl-m for those the same way I've adapted to ctrl-] for escape. And now that I've mentioned it, I could do tab on ctrl-T. So that brings down the number of extra keys I need to just shift, control, and quote. I guess I could do 'shift' with a hold of z or / and a tap of the opposite-side key to be capitalised. Not sure what I'd do about quote or enter, though.)

It's about the size of my Ergodox and I only use 2 additional layers for most things

The ergodox has significantly more keys.

Maybe 3-4? Once you get used to it you probably save so much time by never having to move your hands.

I'd say with layouts like this (and, say, the Dvorak keyboard layout), the more significant benefit is comfort rather than speed.

I admit it's a little small for my tastes at only 36 keys, but I do a lot of typing on an Planck EZ with 47 keys which is only 9 more keys... ok actually that's a significant percentage of the keys, this is ~20% smaller.

I enjoy typing with layers, but I find it annoying when a keyboard gets too different from a normal laptop keyboard because it makes it harder to type on anyone else's computer. This might be a bridge too far for me, but I can see how someone with slightly different preferences / habits from me would love it.

Great board but in retrospect, I do enjoy a dedicated number row, as they get way too often combined in chord shortcuts like Ctrl+Alt+1 to hide them for my usecases. I own a Planck, but in retrospect I should have went with the Preonic. Planck is a little bit much in terms of layer dancing for me, made it work with my Iris which has a number row (on top of the small thumb cluster).

All in all, I still find 40% to be on the annoying to use side. But I really love that those boards even exist in the first place, so many possibilities.

It's 8 keys less than on my atreus, which I run with 3 layers, not all of which are full. I can see how I'd get there from here.

I just want a laptop with an ortho keyboard (grid layout instead of staggered rows).

Any of these open source DIY projects would make it easy to drop in your choice of keyboard, no?

It definitely looks like with this one at least you could make it ortho

That would be amazing - like the framework laptop diy edition and you can customise the keyboard part and the hinges or something and run low profile mechanical switches in whatever layout you and keymap you want

Yea with the framework it's very much doable, but I myself am not that good at this kind of DIY. I have done assembling and soldering on mechanical keyboards, but the parts were already designed by people who know what they're doing.

Framework is probably the coolest non-Apple laptop to come along in a long time. I love how they've connected with the hacker and maker communities to enable... well, things like this, but beyond that a more open and honest hardware ecosystem for x86 portable machines.

If anything, this is a great ad for the flexibility of Framework's mainboard.

I wish we had good and discreet ar glasses to use with cyberdecks

oh wow, yeah. a good AR/VR mobile setup might be what it takes to get me off Macs (unless Macs get there first.)

What about Project Northstar?

not sure that fulfills the "discreet" requirement

It's pretty self contained. I guess the apple glasses or something is what you mean. Eh.

see "discrete" vs "discreet". I think you're thinking of the first term

Unfortunately I think discrete is far off for that tech

Can anyone comment on "Gazzew Boba" as a source of key movements? I recently acquired a few Cherry devices but have not found them to be either to spec, bug-free or supported. I'd like to support an alternative company (more whole-keyboard than DIY but would DIY if needed) and figure this is semi on-topic.

I am using a fully custom Boba linears (assembled from spare parts bought from the man), 55gr springs to reduce the load on fingers.

They are nice

I'd absolutely buy one of these for a kid. This looks like a ton of fun for someone's first computer.

I wonder if it would be a good replacement for the Alphasmart-type machines that are made mostly for writing? A computer that can run for weeks on AA batteries could be useful.

I can't edit my comment, so I'll add it here: after looking into it more, this Cyberdeck wouldn't be a reasonable replacement for an Alphasmart or even for the original Model 100. It's way too power hungry.

Is there a board out there you could build a machine around that is low power and fanless? Something that could run on a 4 AA batteries for a month? the Tandy machine couldn't make it that long, but we've come a long way since then. Along the way there have been machines from other companies - Alphasmart, Psion, Sharp, Casio, etc...

Isn't framework mainboard the best bank for the buck x86 SBC, alas a tad bit bigger?

A Steam Deck would be an order of magnitude cheaper and more practical.

This is really cool. I'd love to see more devices like this. As I don't exactly have the resources to build one on my own, I'd also be interested in the opportunity to buy one.

I'd sacrifice having a screen for more palmrest space. If I were to use this for terminal-only work, a 65% layout with no trackball would be perfect.

What is the display interface on this motherboard?

Could I use a large matte display instead of the framework glossy LCD display?

framework has published all the pinouts and with the right adapter it should be possible to directly integrate any eDP display. I think this is a project I'd like to tackle soon as there are a plethora of good 10"ish tablet replacement screens out there.

This is certainly an aesthetic I can get behind. Kudos to Framework for supporting things like this.

I would love to have one of these

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