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

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:43 pm

paul4990 wrote:cool man, and i have lost track of what u r using? what are you using?

Let's see:
3.5" embedded 1GHz Via Eden motherboard, dual LAN, SATA
256MB DDR SODIMM
20GB 2.5" IDE harddrive
PSOne screen
Two 5400mAh 9 Volt Li-Ion battery packs (w/ intergrated charging circuit, etc.) same pack as what Ben used in his PS2P.
MAX787 based DC-DC conversion circuit to take 9 Volts down to 5 that the motherboard needs

The controls are currently up in the air. I may add a touchscreen, dual analog game controller, keyboard, but I'm not sure yet.

reg · Post by **reg** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:50 am

one, hyphenated, word: Mini-pac

ps: first post. hiya.

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 6:46 pm

reg wrote:one, hyphenated, word: Mini-pac

ps: first post. hiya.

Ultimarc MiniPac is a possiblity, but I'm thinking more of bolting on a complete gamepad, to save time.

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 9:13 pm

A slight update:
I've been busy between being sick and mid-terms lately, so I've not had too much time to work on this. With it being Spring Break now, I should be able to make some progress.

The install of Linux got corrupted completely and could no longer boot when I tried it with better cooling. I finally got DOS (which is really hard to install with no floppy drive) installed and Linux re-installed yesterday. DOS should let me get the system running faster, as it's easier to get a PSOne screen working with it, it gives me a way to run memtest 86 easily and the lower overhead gives less trouble, even if th RAM isn't 100%.

joevennix · Post by **joevennix** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 9:18 pm

Sounds awesome... keep us updated! What kind of case do you plan on using?

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:24 pm

Custom case, probably out of lexan/plexiglass is the current plan.

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 11:56 pm

I decided to make a prototype out of Lego. Seeing it rendered in Lego makes me wonder if this is the right design, seems rather big, even when you factor in th extra size of the Legos over a custom case.

I made a mount for the thumb keyboard yesterday:

Then a mount for the PSOne screen today:

Final assembly, with the ability to actually be held in hand! I was starting to wonder as the first couple of assemblies of the two units broke in half.

I still need to add the board, power pack, and converter circuitry, of course. Playing with the design in Lego should let me play around with possibilities with case designs a bit easier.

Post by **Skyone** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:18 am

Nice man, it's coming along great!

G-force · Post by **G-force** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 9:14 am

Is that the keyboard you're gonna use? It's uh, small! Does it work decent?

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:14 pm

G-force wrote:Is that the keyboard you're gonna use? It's uh, small! Does it work decent?

It works OK for typing, if you're used to a thumb keyboard. However, it doesn't have a backspace or delete key for some reason. I'll probably hack up one of those PS2 gamepads with the keyboard intergrated where thw gripper handles normally are.

Newer prototype:

I remembered that the largest thing (width/length anyways) right now is the PSOne screen, so overlaying the keyboard makes a lot of sense, which makes the handheld a lot smaller. I'm thinking that this will end up more square-ish than tablet or portrait.

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Sat Mar 11, 2006 3:34 pm

So, will it look something like this:

If not, you can try this idea if you want

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:42 am

Harshboy wrote:So, will it look something like this:

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b64/H ... wthere.jpg

If not, you can try this idea if you want

More like the older cardboard prototype, but reduced horizontally.

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 7:27 pm

The board is still having troubles. I ran memtest86+ v1.65 under DOS, and nothing came up in 3 passes. However, this program version can't probe/test the memory being eaten by shared memory, and it seems to only start crashing with graphics running, leading me to suspect the 16megabytes I can't test might have some troubles. I did some more testing under Linux, and got random crashes, which leads me to believe it's a hardware problem. After giving up on Linux for the time being, I decided to go back to DOS and test out the memory again, now that it's 'warmed up', pop into DOS, launch memtest86+, and it crashes without finishing loading the program. So, the problem is probably heat based. Increasing the cooling helped some, I actually did some surfing with firefox before locking up, once.

I tried to set the bus or memory speed lower, but this board seems to support only 133MHz. I did quite a bit of playing, but nothing helped.

Right now, the keyboard works with the BIOS, but goes dead as soon as Grub starts loading, and doesn't come back afterwards. I think it's related to the A20 Gate setting, as I tried 'Failsafe defaults' in the BIOS, and didn't check to see if that setting was changed.

I've got some pics, but the only thing new, unless you want to look at memtest86+ screens, is that I bought some stand offs and RadioShack, and mounted the board on those. So, I don't really see the point in posting those.

The only other progress is that I've ordered a Sammy PS2 Keyboard Mini Pad, which is a PS2 controller with a keyboard where the handles would be. The keybaord circuitry is seperate form the gamepad board, so all I'd have to do is mod the case and I have a nice keyboard.

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:47 pm

I went through a few old backup CDs and DVDs and pulled some neat DOS programs off them, and put them on the HD. I found out that the board can boot off of USB harddisks, which saves some cabling troubles, as it's a lot easier to plug in a USB cable than line up 44 pins of a cable, which some of the pins are a little bent.

I played some SNES games using ZSNES, and got the board warmed up, but not enough to cause it to crash. I then ran memtest86+. It found no troubles in the RAM. However, watching the clock it was displaying, it would count seconds normally for a few seconds, and then speed through three. I.E. 10...11...12.13.14...15...16

Feeling around, one of the silver heatsinks was hotter than anything else (including the RAM). Thinking about things, I believe the South bridge, which intergrates the video, and probably the clock, is probably under that heatsink. It probably overheats when X11 pushs the video chip at all, considering that it got rather warm with ZSNES driving the video, but stays cool when only non-graphical stuff is running (I.E. memtest86+ running for running over an hour). I might see if I can lap (polish out imperfections) the heatsink, put some Artic Silver on it and superglue it back on.

Oh, yeah, the USB keyboard trouble was that USB got turned off entirely when Failsafe Defaults are loaded. Also, the Sammy PS2 Keyboard Mini Pad came. I like it more than the older thumbpad. It has del and backspace keys, plus the more stretched out layout fits the current size of the handheld better.

Post by **Triton** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 10:54 pm

sounds like things are starting to pick up, cant wait to see pics man! this thing will look aweosme i tink