Comment by wicket | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wicket | Hacker News Reader

I'm always interested in open hardware but I'm a bit baffled by the choices that are available:

Just the board: This is perhaps the most appealing option but I would want a case with it, I'm not interested in building my own case. Why would I want a 4GB microSD with that? I'll buy my own with a decent capacity/class or even an SSD.

All-in-One Desktop: $700 more than board for a case and LCD? The design of the flip-top LCD doesn't make a lot of sense - you lose a lot of desk space and the board is going to collect dust. It's not very portable due to the lack of a battery, controller board, keyboard and mouse so I might as well just plug it into my monitor.

Laptop: $800 more than the desktop option for a battery, controller board and SSD. Seems a little expensive and again still not very portable. I'm not sure you can call it a laptop without a keyboard or pointing device.

Heirloom Laptop: $3000 more than the "Laptop" for what is now actually a laptop that includes a keyboard and pointing stick with a wooden case. Wood is quite heavy so it's not exactly the ideal material for a portable device.

The first thing you’ll notice about the design is that the screen opens “the wrong way”. This feature allows the computer to be usable as a wall-hanging unit when the screen is closed. It also solves a major problem I had with the original clamshell prototype – it was a real pain to access the hardware for hacking, as it’s blocked by the keyboard mounting plate.

The point of the thing is to be easily modified, and the design facilitates that. If you don't want regular access to the components, you can leave it closed and treat it as more of a conventional all-in-one.

You could conceivably install the LCD the other way, too.

Sounds like you just want a regular laptop, there are many companies who already make those.

My guess is that he's sourced an incredibly cheap batch of 4GB cards from China. It likely adds very little in terms of cost, but gives much more value to the end-user in being able to just boot it up and have it work.

You are correct, the 4GB SD card is mostly about having a quick start ready-to-roll image.

Bootstrapping SoCs gets really tricky when you don't have a JTAG device. The newer chips that let you boot directly from SD have been a great leap forward in development speed.

So wish I could upvote you multiple times. People these days are spoiled with their precompiled ROMs and precompiled software that runs on mainstream desktops to load those ROMs over universal standards (USB). Even with JTAG embedded programming was a PITA.

You want to talk about the days of erasing EPROMS in a UV oven and waiting 15 minutes for a 27C512 to burn? =) Because that sucked.

If you wanted just the board + case, and aren't really interested in hacking on the device, you might want to look into the Cubox-i4pro which uses the same cpu (though slightly slower clock, 1000 vs 1200 iirc)

https://imx.solid-run.com/product/cubox-i4-pro/

I just got my pre order a few weeks back, but haven't had the chance to play with it yet.

It looks like the Cubox isn't open. At least, it fails the 10 minute rule. I couldn't find the design files, beyond pdfs for the schematics of the "upper" and "lower" PCBs (which don't meet the criteria of being open) and nothing for the main board.

It really isn't open hardware... but it's pretty much the same cpu/chipset and if you're fiddling with software, it's a much better option price wise. That said, TFA's open laptop really isn't so open either, considering the gpu/accelleration abilities are locked up. You give me open hardware with open drivers at something resembling cost competative, then I'll take notice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com