Starting my ultra-portable PC project (PCp?) update Nov 26th

MrTroy · Post by **MrTroy** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 11:09 am

Nice... I just noticed how much of the battery thing was actually a problem. I forgot all about heat. And it looks like as much as I didn't want to put a fan in it. I'm gonna have to anyway.

Which brings me to the batteries. Ugh! I miscalculated all the way to hell. I almost shot my self in the foot royal. Not only was the batteryI was going to use a very bad choice due to size. It would've been the wrong voltage.(I have the 5V board not the 12V one)

SO I'm gonna have to give up the dream of having a 4 hour battery life. I don't want to though.

I was thinking at 6 X 4.5 inches x 1.75 inches I had plenty of space for everything. You're saying that's too small? I was thinking I could get it a little smaller if I stared desoldering certain things (Specially the stuff I won't be using that stick out too much)

definitely look into picoPSU 60W Wide Input, as it runs off 6 to 26Volts and supplies both voltages you need and is very small.

I have one! Yesss!

ATOMICMAN · Post by **ATOMICMAN** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 11:30 am

yeah that battery is f'ing huge!

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 1:03 pm

You can still use that battery, and almost to its full potential, too! The standard picoPSU's run on 12v, and they are very efficient- something like 90%. The PicoPSU will take the 12v and modulate it down to 5v with little loss. The things are incredible small, too. All you'll need to do is jump some of the connections on the 20 pin connector, which is as easy as jamming in a wire or two.

Turning on a PSU without connecting the 20 pin connector:
http://www.gideontech.com/content/articles/196/1

PicoPSU review:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article601-page1.html

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 3:35 pm

Nice... I just noticed how much of the battery thing was actually a problem.

Batteries are the whole reason I'm even on this board, as this is the only hobbyist place that gives a lot of consideration to batteries, that I know of. With the battery you were planning to use, you'd pretty much have to have it as a belt clip or in a separate case, as it is large and heavy.

I was thinking at 6 X 4.5 inches x 1.75 inches I had plenty of space for everything. You're saying that's too small? I was thinking I could get it a little smaller if I stared desoldering certain things (Specially the stuff I won't be using that stick out too much)

I'd try a larger portable first, then down size. The smaller a given size you restrict yourself too, the harder it will be to incorporate changes. Just take a look at all the changes in parts I went through with the first board, and you'll see why flexibility is key. Building disposable prototypes (cardboard, Legos) would be recommendable, as there is quite a few details that are easily missed that would throw off everything if not caught early (like the fan out the back with it laying on my lap issue).

MrTroy · Post by **MrTroy** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 12:08 pm

Yeah I may end up taking a hit on this one. I can't get the board to show up on any CRTs I try. It's beeping once (Cause I don't have a keyboard connected) and hitting reset works. But I can't figure out why the video isn't show up. I hope it's not broken, cause I'm gonna have save up and get a new one. (They have another board I wanna try as soon as it's available which will allow for a huge amount of battery life so I'll focus on a smaller one then.)

I'm gonna go ahead and make it bigger. I wanted to avoid having a huge battery pack on the bottom of this thing, but hey. I at least wanna squeeze 1 hour of play time on this thing. I don't mind any more. I may just go with what tom said and have an external battery pack. I always have room to improve with the next version.

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 5:45 pm

MrTroy wrote:Yeah I may end up taking a hit on this one. I can't get the board to show up on any CRTs I try. It's beeping once (Cause I don't have a keyboard connected) and hitting reset works. But I can't figure out why the video isn't show up. I hope it's not broken, cause I'm gonna have save up and get a new one. (They have another board I wanna try as soon as it's available which will allow for a huge amount of battery life so I'll focus on a smaller one then.)

I'm gonna go ahead and make it bigger. I wanted to avoid having a huge battery pack on the bottom of this thing, but hey. I at least wanna squeeze 1 hour of play time on this thing. I don't mind any more. I may just go with what tom said and have an external battery pack. I always have room to improve with the next version.

Your video may not be showing up due to the board being set to output to LVDS (LCD). See if there is a jumper for it, and disable it if so. Otherwise, use the CMOS clear jumper, or pull the CMOS battery and leave un-powered for a while (an hour usually works, but some cases you need to leave it off for a few days).

Look into external portable DVD player batteries, as those are usually thin, but pack a lot of power.

MrTroy · Post by **MrTroy** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 12:43 pm

Free hugs foreveryone!

I fricken tried to clear that CMOS so many times and NOTHING! But tom61... thank you. The battery trick worked! Damn thing booted right into windows 98! Now I gotta find that CF card that I had floating around with the adapter. Yes yes yes... it's on now!