

Open hardware/source laptop reaches funding goal - officialjunk
http://crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop

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officialjunk
>A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for
use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board. >Novena is a 1.2GHz, Freescale
quad-core ARM architecture computer closely coupled with a Xilinx FPGA. It's
designed for users who care about open source, and/or want to modify and
extend their hardware: all the documentation for the PCBs is open and free to
download, the entire OS is buildable from source, and it comes with a variety
of features that facilitate rapid prototyping.

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jedahan
I'm in for one (laptop version), but wondering just how close one could get
off-the-shelf.

If you had $1999 to build your own version of the novena, thats as
portable/powerful/free as you can make it, what could you make?

minimum requirements: 13" 1080p IPS, xilinx spartan 6 fpga or better, quad
core 1.2Ghz cpu, dual 1gb nic, usb otg support, high speed gpio, 240gb intel
530 ssd

freedom bonuses: hackable case, replaceable battery, open source bios/eproms,
open source gpu

My best guess is some older thinkpad + xilinx fpga eval kit + beaglebone black
+ usb3 gigabit ethernet dongles will still cost around $1600 but have a faster
cpu/gpu and memory, but wouldn't be nearly as free/open source as this one.

Or, how much would you really save trying to start with the $500 board and
make the laptop-tier version?

