- not a laptop but a psion ii. the companies accountant borrowed a psion ii and a landrover to do a job in back of nowhere rural ireland. he needed the landrover to get to the site where no road vehicle not 4x4 would go. he needed the psion for stock taking and a few other tasks.
psion ii is a brick that wouldn't fit in briefcase so was in his hand when going to the car. put it on roof while he opened the door and forgot about it.
got to the motorway before he remembered it and braked, which flung the psion off the roof onto the road ahead of him and which he then drove over. pulled over. retrieved it. it was fine.
was telling another psion owner in ireland this story and they told me of a different accountant who ran over their psion ii with a range rover. and again it was fine.
- worked fine when it defaulted to english and ireland where i'm located.
- it's really neat but i don't think i'd risk putting it in my wallet or pocket.
my fave business card remains kevin mitnicks locking pick business card. https://cleverbusinesscards.com/lock-pick-business-card/
- 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.
- as soon as i hit enter i remembered the early 64 bit systems from the 90s PLUS the mainframes we're now emulating in micro systems like https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/pidp-11-review
perhaps a better definition would be 2 out of 3 of ancient, obsolete, legendary?
- 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.
- some of the early laptops had real cyberdeck vibes
- lcd was a wonderful display tehnology. so much better to my mind than modern screens in outdoor use. i often find i have to turn around or shade the screen to get bright light/sun off the screen before i can read it. with lcd it made it easier to read.
my fave was the screen of the olpc which could be b&w lcd or colour screen depending on config. which also saved a lot of power in b&w mode.
- i've loved the of the model 100 since i first saw them. have always kept an eye out for similar form factors. not carrying around a huge fragile screen. not having to power said screen when a small one would be enough for my simple needs.
the cambridge z88 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88
the alphasmart dana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart
the clockworkpi devterm https://www.clockworkpi.com/shop
some day i'll just have to bite the bullet and buy one of them :-)
- i've thought about this from different directions.
i'd love a laptop that i could upgrade. something like the https://www.crowpi.cc/ where every 3-4 years i could replace the old pi and get a newer better one. the current versions are really only made for 1 specific version of pi. and wouldn't fit any clone boards.
or perhaps a vt100 terminal connecting to a rasp pi as a terminal. text only for distraction free work. could even get a z80 cp/m based computer for real old school vibes.
i did look into getting a bbc model b and adding a rasp pi as a second processor. http://www.breakintoprogram.co.uk/hardware/adding-a-pitube-c...
- even if every pi disappeared overnight there are a dozen clones you could drop in as a replacement the day after. in 10-20 years time. you'll be able to find something that can run emulate the os or computer you want.
- Are there though? I’d call those other boards a pi-like but their software stacks are often abandoned shortly after they ship. Unlike the offline by default of the 8-bit era these are going to need updates and support in an ever hostile world - just my thoughts on the subject.
Random : anyone else posting from mobile get their posts duplicated ?
- there are some shoddy clones out there that are abandoned a few months after launch and never get the patches they need. but there are respectable alternatives too. https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-raspberry-pi-alternative/
- Fair enough. Lot of quality SBC boards in that lot. I bought a lot of junk during the dark times when Pi 4 was scarce. Now that Pi4 and Pi5 are ramping up production and available again its hard to choose a less mainstream board. My uncle sent me an N100 board to play with. FAST AF, but man howdy do I feel like it has a shelf life in years at best.
- More
https://youtu.be/MNXypBxNGMo