Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#91

Post by byran » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:43 AM UTC

jwr wrote: post #77

Congratulations! From someone who does mixed electronics+mechanical design: this is hard . There are moments of desperation where you realize that everything depends on everything else, and there is no way to achieve all of your design goals. You then have to realize that engineering is all about compromises, and move on, compromising — but this is very difficult. It's easy to get bogged down in details and dependenc…

Thank you so, so much! You phrased it so well. The moments of desperation really hit you hard. I have uncountably many loose ends, but oh well, bad engineering :(. Honored that HN thinks I'm a hacker :)

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#92

Post by amatecha » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:43 AM UTC

I clicked through dreading that it's got a Raspberry Pi at its core, but no, RK3588 (same as MNT is using now)! Very nice. Ultra kudos for making it truly open source. Great work!! <3

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#93

Post by byran » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:43 AM UTC

eviks wrote: post #85

Have you thought about finally adding a split ergonomic keyboard to a laptop instead of the standard slab?

That's a sick idea too! Wouldn't be too hard. I'll keep that in mind never thought of it before even though I've used my fair share.

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#94

Post by byran » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:44 AM UTC

xarope wrote: post #81

Wow this is fantastic, great job! I hope this heralds a new era of HW engineering. P.S. @Hello9999901 any relation to "Bunnie" Huang?

Haha I wish, but no. Just surname coincidence.

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#95

Post by byran » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:44 AM UTC

webprofusion wrote: post #82

This is what the internet was invented for.

Thank you!

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#96

Post by byran » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:44 AM UTC

umrashrf wrote: post #74

I’d like to follow up to see how it handles heat or excessive heat if any

I played Minecraft (epic gaming) with friends for a few hours, no problem! The massive heat capacity of the copper + heatpipe + active fan is good enough.

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#97

Post by byran » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:45 AM UTC

amatecha wrote: post #92

I clicked through dreading that it's got a Raspberry Pi at its core, but no, RK3588 (same as MNT is using now)! Very nice. Ultra kudos for making it truly open source. Great work!! <3

Thank you! Yup, Raspberry Pi's great an all, but the RK3588's performance is king (and RPi would've also saved me many nights of head-banging at the software).

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#98

Post by byran » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:46 AM UTC

dataflow wrote: post #87

This is crazy. Hats off to you. My guess is you'll have recruiters knocking on your door yesterday, trying to grab you before the next one does. Whatever you do, don't let your talents go to waste (corporations can do that), and think about your long term success, not whatever they dangle in front of you for the short term. You're going places.

Thank you so much for the heartfelt advice! I'll keep that close to heart :)

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#99

Post by jiveturkey » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:47 AM UTC

came here to shit on this project, that there was no way it was open source down to the ME, like a raptor or framework computer. absolutely required IMO to be considered open source.

i didn't find any firwmware in the repo (didn't look exhaustively) but I did find that the SoC this is based on is supported by https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588 .

AFAICT the azoteq trackpad has proprietary firmware, so if that's true then i won't call this laptop fully open source. but from a practical perspective, i am much less worried about that then the boot path.

love the keyboard, wish i could test drive it!

so instead, i was left very, very impressed!

Re: Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

#100

Post by byran » Thu, Jan 23, 2025, 3:48 AM UTC

geerlingguy wrote: post #79

Always fun to read an article like this, for humility's sake. Wow! And I'm guessing if he attempts a 2nd edition, it'll probably be even thinner, lighter, and faster!

Oh my god! Jeff — huge fan and subscriber!! Thank you for your words of encouragement :). Your videos have been a huge source of inspiration for me.