

OSWALD Hand-held Computer (designed by students)  - vinutheraj
http://beaversource.oregonstate.edu/projects/cspfl

======
jws
Nifty device. Sort of a BeagleBoard + LCD and physical IO devices. It has IP
over 802.15.4 for a more power efficient wireless internet connection than
802.11, but you can always plug in a USB WiFi if you need speed.

I wonder if there is a way to acquire one other than enrolling at Oregon State
University or building your own from the open source design?

~~~
mburns
There will be orderable Real Soon Now (tm). There is a fair bit of interest
for smaller projects.

------
NathanKP
Quote from the site:

 _There are (and will be) times when the first few bytes of the NAND contain
the correct information for the OMAP to think that there is a valid boot
program but the program is actually broken. This can happen when trying new
boot programs that don't work or for some reason the NAND become partally
erased. When this happens the OMAP will begin running the broken program and
never make it to the MMC/SD card thus turning your system into a brick.
Fortunately there is a small button (#25 above) that when pressed, will
reverse the device boot order (i.e. it will start at the MMC/SD then try the
NAND). This allows a simple method to recover the system by using a normal
flasher SD._

Sounds like there are still a few issues to take care of, but all in all I am
very impressed. This is great work, especially when you consider that they
pretty much designed everything from scratch. The device is still sort of ugly
and the most notable omission would appear to be keyboard support (perhaps
they plan to make an onscreen keyboard.)

At the moment it is still more of a game console.

The software section of the site is limited, but there are lots of fascinating
pictures in the hardware section. Definitely worth a look!

------
conoryoung
Can't wait to try this with my JFK commemorative keyboard.

