I love the expandable 18650 battery bay so I wouldn't have to rely on my laptop model being popular enough to have third-party replacements or rely on myself being skilled enough and brave enough to recell a battery pack (something I have admittedly attempted and failed in the past lol)
I cannot recall seeing the word "cyberdeck" until 2 days ago, on this site. Now there are 2 articles on the front page with this term. The keyword tag has been used only in the last 2 days: https://twostopbits.com/tag?q=cyberdeck
Did I miss some event in the world that made this word popular? I understand it's a word from Neuromancer. I read that decades ago, so I don't remember anything. I gather from context that "cyberdeck" is a slang for "retro laptop" or "retro tablet"?
Yes. It came about maybe 10 years ago when people stated building small computer/laptops from Raspberry Pi. Best I can tell.
For those that don’t know ..What people are actually building is a laptop, but they are emulating a "cyberdeck" which was a portable computer used by hackers to jack into cyberspace in William Gibson's 1984 book "Neuromancer". A jacked user experienced cyberspace as a virtual reality. Geeks like myself who build these things try to trick out the laptop to look retro or futuristic that never happened. In some similar ways to Steampunk. They also looked like the military grade laptops in Aliens or Space: Above and Beyond.
perhaps a cutoff point would be 32bit os or less. cpm, dos, os/2 and it's pretty retro. anything with a 64bit os modern windows or linux is not applicable to this site?
I would prefer to stick to the bounds of good taste than a hard cutoff. IRIX on SGI equipment from the 1990s was 64-bit. It would be a shame to not post anything for that kit because it is 64-bit. iPod is on its way to be vintage / retro since. And what about the revive 800xl built totally on modern FPGA kit - an Atari with native HDMI.
At this point my post is going to tumbleweed along as it has not received a single upvote and will never see the front page. And I am ok with it if that is the will of the site.
Tbh. I spent a lot of time thinking on this today. My self regulation was to post an interesting cyberdeck link on “Cyberdeck Thursday”. Mostly im suckered by ones that harken back to gas plasma displays or look futuristic in some way.
Ultimately, I want to see this site succeed and grow . So many amazing things I’ve seen and learned about.
I always like them because they appear in so much cyberpunk art that predated the web. Especially this one in particular. Of what could have been instead of all the boring clamshells and beige boxes that define the PC era.
Retro doesn’t have to mean old. New guts in old cases. Atari vcs inspired case running an emulator so that old games from many eras could have another life.
That's fair. I like them too. I just worry that Two Stop Bits could get overrun with people's cyberdecks. But as I said above it's the users of Two Stop Bits who upvote stuff so we'll see where it goes.
I think we only have issues if we wake up one morning and the front page is all cyberdeck or any other mono topic. I try to draw from my links file randomly to keep the site interesting and varied.
I really like this build for a couple of reasons. It uses an Intel nuc insteead of thr more typical raspberry pi. And it makes homage to the cyberdeck in Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Did I miss some event in the world that made this word popular? I understand it's a word from Neuromancer. I read that decades ago, so I don't remember anything. I gather from context that "cyberdeck" is a slang for "retro laptop" or "retro tablet"?
For those that don’t know ..What people are actually building is a laptop, but they are emulating a "cyberdeck" which was a portable computer used by hackers to jack into cyberspace in William Gibson's 1984 book "Neuromancer". A jacked user experienced cyberspace as a virtual reality. Geeks like myself who build these things try to trick out the laptop to look retro or futuristic that never happened. In some similar ways to Steampunk. They also looked like the military grade laptops in Aliens or Space: Above and Beyond.
These are are some good examples of them. some are just art that is kick ass; some work as real equipment, but it should totally say "80s" when you see them: https://www.mrjakeparker.com/blog/2022/3/15/cyberdecks
At this point my post is going to tumbleweed along as it has not received a single upvote and will never see the front page. And I am ok with it if that is the will of the site.
perhaps a better definition would be 2 out of 3 of ancient, obsolete, legendary?
Ultimately, I want to see this site succeed and grow . So many amazing things I’ve seen and learned about.
Retro doesn’t have to mean old. New guts in old cases. Atari vcs inspired case running an emulator so that old games from many eras could have another life.
https://blog.rfox.eu/en/Hardware/Cyberdecks.html
https://www.msx.org/wiki/Sakhr_AX-370
https://www.msx.org/wiki/Sanyo_WAVY_PHC-70FD
http://www.computercloset.org/AmstradPPC640.htm