
A free/open computer on a card that you swap in and out of a 3D printed laptop - MilnerRoute
http://boingboing.net/2016/08/04/a-freeopen-computer-on-a-card.html
======
jcl
A step closer to the Sandbenders computer from William Gibson's "Idoru":

 _...he used to tear up her hardware, the designer 's, and put the real parts
into cases he'd make in his shop. Say he'd make a solid bronze case for a
minidisk unit, ebony inlays, carve the control surfaces out of fossil ivory,
turquoise, rock crystal. It weighed more, sure, but it turned out a lot of
people liked that, like they had their music or their memory, whatever, in
something that felt like it was there... And people liked touching all that
stuff: metal, a smooth stone... And once you had the case, when the
manufacturer brought out a new model, well, if the electronics were any
better, you just pulled the old ones out and put the new ones in your case. So
you still had the same object, just with better functions._

~~~
josh-wrale
This reminds of something...

As a kid, I played the game "Neuromancer" (1989, Interplay) which is based on
the book of the same name by William Gibson. The images of "decks" (portable
computers) always struck me as odd and quite visually disconnected from the
combination appearance of my Amiga 500 and its Commodore monitor. And yet,
looking at a MacBook Pro from the front or side, it looks a great deal like
those renderings of decks in that game (minus some of the features that make
the images in the game more than just rounded rectangles). I know laptops
existed earlier than that time, but to think they got a futuristic drawing so
right it astounds me (not that we're quite to "deck" level with tech just
yet).

Screenshot from the game:
[http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/popup_screen_index.php?id=77...](http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/popup_screen_index.php?id=778&screenname=neuromancer_16.png&kuk=16)

The front-closed profile of a MacBook Pro for comparison:
[http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/shape-...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/shape-
frontclosed20081014_02.jpg)

Edit: I guess it's not a big jump though, considering these were some
contemporary laptops of 1989: [http://www.roughlydrafted.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/08/200...](http://www.roughlydrafted.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/08/200808292255.jpg)

------
teekert
I'd certainly like a 13 inch laptop housing that I could plug progressively
newer raspberry pi's into. When all you do is ssh-ing and using atom or
Jupyter notebooks on remote servers, that would be a very nice computer to
have.

~~~
lkcl
yeah exactly. now, here's the thing: if you want to plug in newer
hypocritical-boards...

... i'm sorry, you may be confused by the use of that phrase - allow me to
explain before completing the sentence. broadcom is a highly unethical company
that was caught completely off-guard by the rbpi phenomenon. their MOQ for
this processor is 5 million units. the only reason they allowed it is because
it was for "education" and it was _one of their own employees_ working on it.

now, when you get one of these "education" boards, the first thing that
happens is that a proprietary program is uploaded to the GPU, which then and
only then turns on the CPU. this should be ringing massive alarm bells already
for anybody who knows that respecting the privacy of children is fundamentally
important.

but if that's not enough, if these children wish to watch films on these
"educational" devices, they are forced to pay $2.50 to a cartel in order to
obtain - not information but a PROPRIETARY library.

so here's the message that broadcom tells kids: "we want you to get educated!
you're free to do so... except no further than _WE_ say you can. fuck off kids
if you want to educate yourself about the way our cartelled business makes
money".

total hypocrisy.

now, i'm keenly aware that they're under enormous pressure to release the
GPU's inner details, but dumping the tools onto the software libre community
and expecting them to pick up the pieces doesn't strike me as being
particularly responsible _either_.

anyway so back to answering your comment... :)

so if you want to plug in 15mm high boards you need a housing that can cope
with 15mm high boards. you want a pi-top in other words _not_ this one. if
you've seen the pi-top, however, you'll notice that it's almost 1.25 in thick,
possibly even more! there are other issues with it as well, such as: the team
haven't fulfilled their promises to be open with the schematics or the 3D CAD
files.

i've taken a heck of a lot of issues into consideration in the design of the
15.6in laptop housing, basically as a demonstration to the industry that there
is another way.

~~~
tbirdz
The pi includes h264 and mpeg4 decoding support. You only have to pay to
activate the VC-1 and mpeg2 codecs. But, I don't see why you are blaming
broadcom and raspberry pi for this, the cost comes from the MPEG LA's license
fee for using their patents related to the video codecs. I guess you are
saying broadcom or raspberry pi or someone else should have paid the license
fee for the users, instead of having the users pay the cost themselves? They
did that for h264, which is probably the most needed codec.

~~~
lkcl
enshrined in patent law is the right for anyone to implement a single instance
of a patent, so that they may _improve_ on it.

source code that's downloaded and then compiled thus constitutes "a single
instance".

if the fuckers at broadcom had stopped for one second and thought, "we really
should release the full source and just let people get on with it, because
after all this _is_ about education", then there wouldn't _BE_ any need for
them to collect royalties.

instead they went "we make money from this, therefore we should continue to
exploit school children".

broadcom _DOES NOT_ have to distribute binary versions of their CODECs. they
COULD have chosen instead to release full source code under libre licenses.
the fact that they _are_ distributing binaries tells you everything you need
to know.

------
jbob2000
Impractical and gimmicky.

"You can literally plug in a new CPU -- or swap your CPU into a variety of
devices. (Laptops, phones, tablets -- all powered by the same motherboard!)"

My phone's battery would last 2 seconds if it used the processor my laptop
would use. And my laptop would be slow as shit if it used a processor
compatible with a mobile phone.

"you simply PRINT OUT REPLACEMENT PARTS with a 3D printer"

3D printers have terrible quality. They are for prototyping. You'd be printing
out replacement parts every month.

"you can connect the computer card to your TV set to continue working if your
monitor fails"

I've never had a monitor fail on me, is this an actual problem?

Aside from hobbyists, I'm not sure anyone actually wants this product. Open to
some feedback here!

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I'm constantly frustrated when people make claims like that about 3D printers.
You can absolutely make durable parts on a home 3D printer. I designed a whole
remote control car to prove that [1], and even the gears are 3D printed.
Despite the car having 1/4 horsepower and being able to flip itself backwards
with all that torque, the gears never wear out. There is no such thing as "3D
printers are for prototyping". They're a machine. They're for whatever you
want them for. If you consider the parts okay for your non prototype use, then
that's fine.

Also, this absolutely is for hobbyists. I'm not sure how that detracts from
anything. Maybe the marketing is too suggestive that general consumers will
want to build their own laptop, but that's fine. That's marketing. Personally
I think the product is excellent as I've wanted an open laptop that runs all
free software.

I've also had a laptop monitor fail on me, and had to connect it to an
external monitor to recover the files.

[1] [http://makezine.com/projects/3d-print-badass-rc-race-
car/](http://makezine.com/projects/3d-print-badass-rc-race-car/)

~~~
lkcl
totally cool, alexander. btw look up "Flex3Drive" esp. my reports on it - best
of both the direct and bowden worlds _and_ more. the guy behind it is a quiet
genius who worked in the automotive industry.

regarding the laptop monitor failure: were there instructions online on how to
repair the screen? because what i'm doing is about empowering people with not
only the concept "right to repair" but one that seems to be quite novel these
days called "right to own" \- anyone with an apple product knows exactly what
i'm talking about - as well as "right to not be spied on" and "right to not be
afraid of your computer any more".

frickin love the RC car :)

------
edvinbesic
I kind of wish that this was simply transferring the userland (maybe state)
from one device to another instead of carrying as much computing power you can
cram into a credit card sized device.

I want my laptop to last 10h while being very portable, so I will gladly
sacrifice performance there whereas when I am at my desktop I do not have the
same limitation.

If I could simply unplug this from my desktop and plug into my laptop to
resume my work that would be interesting to me, or work to home etc., but as
is it feels more like a gimmick.

~~~
lkcl
> I kind of wish that this was simply transferring the > userland (maybe
> state) from one device to another > instead of carrying as much computing
> power you can > cram into a credit card sized device.

yehhh that's a software thing... look how that's worked out in a completely
oversaturated market that's controlled by a few massive incumbents with
profit-maximisation as their sole objective.

... not working out so well, is it?

> I want my laptop to last 10h

that's just about doable with this design, and you can always get one of those
portable 10000mAh external battery packs - just make sure it can do 12V and
has a 5.5mm DC pin positive jack.

> while being very portable,

... how does 1.1kg grab ya? :) or, how about 40 grams for the computer card?

> If I could simply unplug this from my desktop > and plug into my laptop to
> resume my work > that would be interesting to me,

you _can_ simply unplug this from the desktop housing and plug it into the
laptop housing - that was the whole idea man! :)

~~~
mwcampbell
I think you missed the point of the comment you're replying to. If I
understand correctly, the parent commenter doesn't want a low-power processor,
the kind that's appropriate for a phone or tablet or laptop, in their non-
battery-powered desktop.

That said, you're right that the likes of Microsoft, Apple, and Google haven't
had any incentive to make it easy for someone to easily transfer their whole
computing configuration from one machine to another.

~~~
lkcl
allo mwcampbell, did i see you on reddit a few days ago? so much has happened
so fast :)

i understood it differently, but there are definitely people who don't want
_today 's_ low-power tablet-style processors in a desktop computer.

(aside: let's remember that tomorrow's desktop processors will be lower power
and more powerful even than today's tablet-style processors!)

those people are the ones that i'm specifically not targetting, here. i'm
targetting the "good enough" crowd. and the makers. and the libre people. and
those who are fed up with being spied on through devices that _they paid for_.
we don't _like_ paying to be snooped on, that's just f __ __*g cheek.

~~~
mwcampbell
> allo mwcampbell, did i see you on reddit a few days ago? so much has
> happened so fast :)

No, but I'm the one that pointed out this HN thread on the arm-netbook list.

Edit: Oh, and I talked to you a little on the #arm-netbook IRC channel a few
weeks ago. I use the same nick on IRC as here.

------
ChuckMcM
I like the concept, especially the compute module you can move around. But the
this call to action for a crowd funded platform is based on "truly open" ?
Given that I was a bit disappointed it was using an Allwinner A20 CPU, at this
point shouldn't "truly" open source use a chip with a RISC-V core?

~~~
diydsp
1\. Is there any RISC-V silicon available?

2\. Is there even a complete spec for RISC-V?

3\. At that level of paranoia, you're always going to probe deeper... Suppose
someone inserted backdoors into your RISC-V core. Suppose the fab house has
backdoors in the layout tools. Suppose an oversight committee got paid off...

~~~
lkcl
> 1\. Is there any RISC-V silicon available?

not anything useful

> 2\. Is there even a complete spec for RISC-V?

yes.

> 3\. At that level of paranoia, you're always going > to probe deeper...
> Suppose someone inserted backdoors > into your RISC-V core. Suppose the fab
> house has > backdoors in the layout tools. Suppose an oversight > committee
> got paid off...

the damage that would be done to the reputation of any company stupid enough
to allow backdoors to be slipped into their tools would be... they'd be
finished. absolutely NOBODY would trust them EVER AGAIN - not their billion-
dollar customers or the Military or the Intelligence Services that utilise
their tools on a daily basis.

no - what you're suggesting is, far from being a plausible scenario, is in
fact those companies WORST NIGHTMARE scenario because it's the day that they
go out of business and probably have agents from all over the world _queueing
up_ to murder them! i love that film with john travolta, "this is incredible.
i never seen anything like this. ya actually gotta get in line to _whack_ this
guy"....

------
justinlardinois
So...what exactly is in the little card?

> You can literally plug in a new CPU -- or swap your CPU into a variety of
> devices.

Either they're using the term "CPU" in a colloquial sense to refer to the
processor plus other things, or it's literally just the processor. If it's the
latter, what's the point? The CPU is hardly the important thing when I'm
switching between devices. If anything, I would want a set of devices that all
boot from the same storage device.

~~~
lkcl
where did you see that misquoted? there was an article on zdnet which was so
badly written that i refused to put it on the campaign front page - the editor
totally garbled pretty much everything about the project.

the CORRECT phrase to use is:

"You can literally plug in a new COMPUTER CARD -- or swap your COMPUTER CARD
into a variety of devices".

does that start to make much more sense now?

------
rbanffy
I find the PCMCIA format a bit too restrictive.

I would prefer to have a larger card with female HDMI (or DP) and USB (female
for power and eventual storage access by a beefier host and male to use the
mouse and the trackpad and other USB ports on the laptop or dock.

~~~
floatboth
Um, it has:

\- Micro-HDMI Interface (for 2nd monitor)

\- Micro-USB-OTG (bi-directional power)

USB-C would be great though

~~~
lkcl
> USB-C would be great though

when the USB3 world stabilises - even intel can't get it right. also it'll be
a while before GPL-compliant SoCs come out that have stable USB3 hardware.
it's quite costly at the moment and the low-to-medium end tablet/smartphone
fabless semi companies can't justify the cost.

------
sschueller
What we need/want is to use our phones.

There should be a dock that lets the phone use a faster processor and GPU etc.
Data would be stored on the phone and accessible but for desktop performance
and full os it would need to be docked.

~~~
rbanffy
It exists. It's called a computer and it can read the files you store on your
phone while using a much more powerful processor and a more complete OS.

~~~
justinlardinois
This. If the "dock" is using a better processor for computing then it's not
just a dock, it's its own computer.

------
Artlav
While neat in theory, this have zero practical possibility.

It could be improved a bit if they used a smartphone instead of a card, but
that still leaves the problem of there being no "base stations" around.

Perhaps a better idea would be something like an HDMI computer - a stick that
carries everything and is pluggable into a regular TV, but that's invented
already.

~~~
chriswarbo
> Perhaps a better idea would be something like an HDMI computer - a stick
> that carries everything and is pluggable into a regular TV, but that's
> invented already.

Would it even be possible to make a free/libre machine which uses HDMI? One of
the reasons I don't use HDMI/HD equipment is because of they use DRM (and, of
course, because there's nothing wrong with my VGA equipment)

~~~
wolrah
HDMI does not mandate HDCP. You can use it as just DVI with audio if you want.
That's the default mode for all PCs and the Xbox consoles, which only switch
to HDCP mode if you try to play DRM-protected content like Blurays.

PS3 is shitty and runs in HDCP mode all the time, but that's Sony for you.

As far as I'm aware even on HDCP-compliant hardware none of the Linux drivers
can even use it if they wanted to.

