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Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

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Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#51

Post by MiddleEndian »

Retric wrote: post #34
nine_k wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people sell or give away fully functional, very powerful mobile phones, because of the end of the software support. Hardware is more than capable for a long time, and is often very durable. But it takes a special kind of audience to put up with decade-old unsupported software, let alone with IBM XT-level software (which I remember using). Security is not a consideration for such devices, because of their very li…

I’ve never dumped a phone over its software. Ware, damage, swapping networks, meaningfully better hardware, or just losing the things explain basically all the replacements me or my friends / family have done. Sure, eventually people stop updating software to work on old devices but that’s because the overwhelming majority of people have already stoped using that hardware for other reasons.

I dumped my last phone, the Palm PVG100, because unwanted software updates made it too slow and ate up its battery life too quickly. It's too bad the PVG100 has the best form factor of any phone I've owned.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#52

Post by jmward01 »

ct0 wrote: post #21
jmward01 wrote: post #15

I think there is a class of device here that is missing. Low power but forever devices that have some basic functionality. Over time I could see this taking over laptops and the like as ultra-low-power became more and more capable.

There are a few commercial products popping up and marketing. I think youll find what you find here interesting: https://old.reddit.com/r/writerDeck/ Im using a Boox palma 2 on a stand, and a Thinkpad Keyboard 2 to emulate the same thing. The battery life may not be 100 hours but considerable.

I'd love something ipad size with an attached keyboard/trackpad that did the very basics of compute but on a more modern stack. I think the biggest thing that would hold me back would likely be the slow refresh rate/no color in the display. I bet a setup like that with solar so is trickle charged could be built and have an effectively unlimited runtime. I wonder when high refresh rate/color e-ink like displays will finally make it?

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#53

Post by cosmic_cheese »

hyperhello wrote: post #8

Can you make one that emulates a PowerBook 100?

Came here to say something similar. A laptop with a high quality transflective screen (e-ink is a touch too slow) that can run classic Mac OS with absurdly long battery life would be a nice little device.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#54

Post by binarymax »

Retric wrote: post #34
nine_k wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people sell or give away fully functional, very powerful mobile phones, because of the end of the software support. Hardware is more than capable for a long time, and is often very durable. But it takes a special kind of audience to put up with decade-old unsupported software, let alone with IBM XT-level software (which I remember using). Security is not a consideration for such devices, because of their very li…

I’ve never dumped a phone over its software. Ware, damage, swapping networks, meaningfully better hardware, or just losing the things explain basically all the replacements me or my friends / family have done. Sure, eventually people stop updating software to work on old devices but that’s because the overwhelming majority of people have already stoped using that hardware for other reasons.

Just last month I finally moved on from my iPhone 6, which had been working great for 10 years, because some critical apps stopped working unless I upgraded, but couldn’t upgrade because apple no longer released iOS updates.

It needed a new battery, but held a charge on low power mode for 8 hours, and otherwise was perfectly fine.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#57

Post by bobmcnamara »

sedatk wrote: post #14
pinewurst wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one has ESP32 just running 80186 emulator.

Still, it's not emulating an XT. XT is a very specific PC configuration. Maybe they just wanted to emphasize that it was ancient.

Fully upgraded, my XT had VGA, 1MB including extended memory shenanigans, a sound card, a SCSI card, and Ethernet.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#59

Post by hedgehog »

unleaded wrote: post #33
hyperhello wrote: post #8

Can you make one that emulates a PowerBook 100?

can you? There's a MAME driver in macprtb.cpp you could work off—might want a few hacks in your implementation which is nothing new to Mac emulation. also this: https://github.com/evansm7/pico-mac

I really like this design by John Calhoun (known to me originally for his game Glider, I think he posts on HN as well):

https://www.engineersneedart.com/systemsix/systemsix.html

A wire-free version running a Mac emulator would be pretty slick. Very usable with MacWrite or a HyperCard deck of recipes.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#60

Post by sien »

sien wrote: post #46

The idea of a laptop with an e-ink display running Linux and having days of battery life is really interesting. To save others doing what I did there is an Android tablet like this called 'Daylight' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43098318

Oh, the Clockwork Pi is also interesting.

https://www.clockworkpi.com/

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