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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

#71

Post by ForOldHack »

lanna wrote: post #13
saulpw wrote: post #7

Man, I want this, but IBM AT level, 32-bits with at least a 386 and 8MB of RAM.

The IBM AT used an Intel 80286

The Original IBM AT used a 6Mhz 286, and then an 8Mhz 286, and then modified the ROMSs so you could not make a 6Mhz into an 8Mhz by swapping the crystal. Other vendors cranked up the speed to 10, 12, 16, 20 and finally 25Mhz.

IBM PS2s went for 10Mhz 1 Wait state, and 10Mhz zero wait states.

A 25Mhz 286 rivaled a 386 DX in speed in benchmarks, but was left in the just for any 32-bit apps. I had a 20Mhz 286 with 4mb of ram, but only for DOS programs such as CA-General Ledger.

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

#72

Post by MiddleEndian »

tomcam wrote: post #61
MiddleEndian wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who… who was doing the updates?

The Google Play Store presumably lol (or however Google pushes updates onto Android devices)

I certainly never manually updated anything. Obviously certain services like Lyft or messaging apps are unlikely to work without updates, but there was no reason to change and slow down my texting or email apps, they've done the same shit since forever.

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

#73

Post by keyle »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #64
keyle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you've seen the videos, but the latency from input to result on the screen is, very, very bad. I don't think this is actually what you want. We all want low-power retro computing but expect reasonable latency in usage. We also want WIFI working in every room and e-ink that doesn't suck and doesn't cost half a car... And the ability to browse the web (HTTPS). It's just not there yet. When someone will…

I think it would be 90% of the way there if you swapped the e-ink for a transflective panel with some form of RLCD.

Yeah a MacBook Air type device with such a screen would be interesting.

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

#75

Post by kstrauser »

codebje wrote: post #70
kovac wrote: post #22

Love it! Any idea how long the display can last? I've been playing around with e-paper (nothing as impressive as this!) dashboards. I use Waveshare displays that has a max of 1 million refresh cycles. The display you've used seems more capable. My own humble e-paper projects: https://www.asciimx.com/projects/e-reader/ https://www.asciimx.com/projects/etlas/

It's probably https://www.good-display.com/product/440.html which is also 1mil refresh cycles and a fast refresh time of 1.5sec - around 185 hours of screen updates, so ~3 months of 5hrs a day typing or a few years of e-reader style usage. I can't really see a device like this getting used super heavily every day, so expecting it to still be usable from time to time for a few years seems reasonable to me.

For e-ink, does the refresh count include the entire screen or individual pixels?

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

#76

Post by kstrauser »

nine_k wrote: post #24
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.

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…

That's the wrong form factor for me, though. A TRS-80 Model 100 with modern guts would be my ideal, but something like this but with a faster screen would be nearly a tie.

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

#77

Post by hakfoo »

Narishma wrote: post #74
shdon wrote: post #48

Surely that's Doom8088 rather than the original version if this thing truly emulates an XT level machine (or rather an 80186 CPU)?

How does it even work on an 80186? I thought Doom required a 386.

There's been some downports. They tend to be slow, some of them using things like rendering using 80x50 text modes in 16 colours to reduce the "pixel" count.

I recall trying a Wolfenstein 3-D downport and it was getting about 5 fps on a NEC V40 (80188-equivalent) at 8MHz.

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

#78

Post by fractallyte »

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

There's also the MobiScribe Wave (https://mobiscribe.com/), a color e-ink Android tablet, with frontlighting, and excellent battery life. On standby, it lasts for weeks. I have it hooked up to my Bluetooth keyboard. It runs emacs, a web browser, and email client - plus all the usual e-reader apps.

(Yes, I'm aware there are several other Android e-readers. The Wave has the unique combination of top-end handwriting functionality with waterproofing.)

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

#79

Post by kstrauser »

tomrod wrote: post #50
knowitnone wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromebook with linux installed?

A bit clunkier compared to a clean ARM or AMD linux install, but still more or less useful. Asus' eeePc was awesome!

I had an Eee PC 701. Pluses: the size was perfect. Minuses: everything else, from the CPU to the tiny drive to the tiny RAM to the keyboard to the trackpad was meh, at best.

I'd love one with modern tech, long battery life, decent display quality, and long battery life. I don't care if it could only do text mode. That might even be ideal for my uses, which would primarily involve running Emacs and org-mode.

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

#80

Post by tlhunter »

kstrauser wrote: post #76
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…

That's the wrong form factor for me, though. A TRS-80 Model 100 with modern guts would be my ideal, but something like this but with a faster screen would be nearly a tie.

In case you haven't seen this: https://www.clockworkpi.com/home-devterm
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