8 ms·

Acer Travelmate 4150 retrofitting to Raspberry Pi Laptop, Part 1

94 points by mitola 10y ago

jerf 10y ago
I'm interested in the results of this, but I'd suggest holding off and posting this to HN (and elsewhere) when the task is done. At the moment what we've got here is a goal and a disassembled laptop with absolutely nothing hooked up to the Pi, which is not really that interesting. I'd also suggest that sufficiently interesting stories about why you couldn't manage to do this would also be interesting. ("I couldn't ever get the adaptor"... probably not interesting. "So I had to 3D print it, which was harder than I expected."... interesting. "I tried for weeks to get the RPi working and it almost sorta worked but it was only in monochrome and I couldn't figure out why."... interesting, and probably enough to trigger other people to want to help!)
- mitola 10y ago
  Thank you for your kind reply. I will take that into account as you say, since when it will be hopefully more complete I'll publish an update.
- catdog 10y ago
  Indeed not a very interesting read at that point, the idea itself is nice but pretty obvious. There is also nothing concrete about tackling the hard tasks like power supply or interfacing with the keyboard yet. The author only briefly talked about the LCD driver board but didn't even mention which one he bought let alone share any experiences how it worked out. A "look the screen shows the output of the pi now, thats how I did it" or "I tried … and the screen is still black, not that easy as thought" would have been a better start for submitting such an article series to a wider audience.
uncleleech 10y ago
I think this is a good idea but as mentioned in the article the connectors to keyboard and monitor are hard. I guess there are XF86 standards and stuff for the keyboard but I still find it hard to think that it will behave exactly like the original. Further, I would like to see more info on if the LCD gets working with the RPi because it seems like a great project. Still, good luck with how the conversion works in the end!
- mitola 10y ago
  I was actually quite suprised how hard it is. The amount of different LCD and subsequent separated driver panels that are possible in configuration is absolutely huge. To be honest I am a lot less worried about LCD working then keyboard, since in the worst case I would need to rewire the whole one manually. But for LCD I will hopefully have everything needed after getting my specific LVDS driver board
  - rzzzt 10y ago
    A mapping for the keyboard matrix can be "discovered" by pressing all keys in sequence. There are lots of AVR-based projects that emulate an USB HID for a custom keyboard matrix or other input; for an example, see [1][2]. [1] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Easy_AVR_USB_Keyboard_Firmware https://deskthority.net/wiki/Easy_AVR_USB_Keyboard_Firmware [2] https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=51252.0 https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=51252.0
thomnottom 10y ago
Somewhat humorous in light of this comment on Schneier's post about the laptop ban: "Get the 15" laptop, throw all the electronics away, leave just screen and keyboard. Put Raspberry Pi and three AA batteries inside. Voila - you are able to show TSA staff that this is really laptop, which executes some code, and have a lot of space inside to put in explosives. Moreover, you have powerful processor and lots of program-controled pins to implement timer initiator." https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/the_tsas_select.html#c6749022 https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/the_tsas_sele...
- jnsaff2 10y ago
  Or instead of explosives ten galaxy note 7's with theverge.com or something like that open to make them overheat.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    Note7 were quite quickly banned from planes.
    - jdormit 10y ago
      ...So are explosives.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- agumonkey 10y ago
  similarly, sprite_tm hdd controller hack shows that today anything embeds a computer..
- VLM 10y ago
  The problem with hollywood movie plots is people have been able to remove the optical drive or floppy drive from a laptop for decades, insert a baggie of weed or whatever criminal activity. To some extent avoiding TSA scrutiny might be a goal behind the apparently meaningless quest for thin laptops at apple. No removable parts means you can't rip parts out and insert a baggie of whatever in the case. Also the laptop being lightweight means whatever you're sneaking in can't be too heavy, if a laptop is lighter than a derringer even if it physically fits its going to be weird explaining why your laptop weighs twice as much as a normal laptop. Also I'm sure this looks fascinating on the xray machine.
deng 10y ago
I understand the joy of tinkering, but why do you want to downgrade a working Intel Centrino 1.73GHz to an RPi3? [EDIT] See below, seems that the laptop is already broken.
- candeira 10y ago
  Because, once it's working, you have an upgradable laptop: every time a new rPI comes out, you can swap it out. Eventually you'll have a better/faster computer than the Intel Centrino, with potentially much better battery life, modern hardware (USB3+, better radio connectivity), better software support (for instance, mainstream Linux distros are now deprecating support for non-PAE CPUs). I've been giving this some thought: I have a gutted MacBook Pro I plan to perform the same surgery on. Someone spilled soda on it, so the mainboard was already fried... therefore it's not even a downgrade. It's an upgrade from a brick.
  - deng 10y ago
    Reason I'm asking is: I have an old Centrino laptop as well as an RPi2 and RPi3. The Centrino is so much faster than the RPi's, it's not even in the same league. And as long as the Raspberrys are married to Broadcom, I think it will take quite some time until we have an RPi that has similar speed like my old Centrino. Don't get me wrong, I love my RPis, and if my old Centrino breaks, maybe I'd do something similar, but I'd never trash it while it's still working. Just seems wasteful to me.
    - wink 10y ago
      It could also be not only about pure speed - look at what even the RPi 1 can do in terms of media playback. My (working) Centrino laptop can just barely play youtube html 5 videos. If you want a small mediaplayer (remember those portable DVD players? :P) this sounds totally viable.
  - dublinben 10y ago
    This is the concept behind the (much-better executed) EOMA68 project.[0] You can buy a single laptop chassis, and then upgrade or swap the processing unit as you please. [0] https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop
pmontra 10y ago
I've got an old Asus L3000D from early 2000 in a bag. I took it out and looked at it. The keyboard is great, the screen is almost 1:1, a two buttons touchpad, floppy disk, DVD recorder, mic, audio jack, two 1394 ports (I forgot what they are), parallel, serial, VGA, two USB (1.1?), PCI express?, ethernet and modem :-) TV out, PS2 mouse and keyboard. Maybe without all the internal components it won't weight more that 1.5 kg. I remember I made it crawl with Ubuntu circa 2010. Perhaps I should give it a try as a Raspberry case.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  I often think (dream) of a partial solution; using a rpi as a coprocessor, daughter card. My 2006 core 2 duo is fine for 90% of tasks, except for video decoding. Delegating that to a tiny gpu/vpu would release the main cpu for logic and IO.
technofiend 10y ago
RP3 laptop cases making appearance on Alibaba in 5....4.....3....
- extra88 10y ago
  There's already the pi-top [0]. I've been considering getting one for work to use without a Raspberry Pi. It connects to the Pi using HDMI and USB so it might work as a portable, battery-powered version of a rack mount console. [0] https://pi-top.com/product/pi-top https://pi-top.com/product/pi-top
lovelearning 10y ago
Fun project. Will be interesting to see how this evolves. There are also a couple of build kits like [1] for people who don't want to mess with old laptops and weird connectors. I don't have one, but I saw it in Ben Heck's youtube channel and thought it's pretty cool. [1]: https://pi-top.com/product/pi-top https://pi-top.com/product/pi-top
hawski 10y ago
How much weights the gutted laptop? How much can it weight after it will be finished?
- mitola 10y ago
  I can update you on that. At the moment the heaviest part of the laptop is the display. But I think it may not be bellow 2kg, but above. I can update when I have a better estimate.
  - roryisok 10y ago
    Sounds like you might have a balance problem after you get everything working. Might need to machine in a surface style kick stand
    - mitola 10y ago
      After a bit more investigation while I wait for the parts... I think it should be quite fine, beacuse the battery will probably be the heaviest part, but it is quite possible that either left or right side of the laptop will be quite heavier. Hopefully I'll make it fit :D I found an interesting battery with 12V in and separate 12 out and another 5V USB out, so it should be fairly straightforward hopefully with that to power everything with it.
Sanddancer 10y ago
This might be of help to you. The OEM version of this laptop seems to be the Compal LA-2601. Which is a very good thing, because the schematics are readily available [1]. So, getting the keyboard working with a PI3 should be a matter of rigging up a micro with enough pins to drive the matrix controller. Looks like an interesting project though, and I wish you good luck. [1] http://www.s-manuals.com/pdf/motherboard/compal/compal_la-2601_r1.0_schematics.pdf http://www.s-manuals.com/pdf/motherboard/compal/compal_la-26...
- dmitrygr 10y ago
  How do you know this and how did you find that?
  - Sanddancer 10y ago
    Google diving. I got curious as to what the keyboard controller was, so I looked up motherboard pictures and specs and eventually found that it uses an ENE KB910 for the keyboard controller. Searching there for how things were set up was mostly fruitless, until I stumbled upon a russian forum which had a pinout for the KB910 [1]. A few more stumbles and I found a result that stated that Compal was the OEM for the laptop -- it's not uncommon for laptops to be made by a white box maker. From there, a search for the model number brought up multiple sites with the schematics. [1] http://bit.ly/2ob7YaG http://bit.ly/2ob7YaG Not the actual url, because chrome's history ate that.
    - mitola 10y ago
      Impressive :) Thanks a lot for your dive into the subject. It's darn interesting indeed

94 points by mitola 10y ago

jerf 10y ago

I'm interested in the results of this, but I'd suggest holding off and posting this to HN (and elsewhere) when the task is done. At the moment what we've got here is a goal and a disassembled laptop with absolutely nothing hooked up to the Pi, which is not really that interesting. I'd also suggest that sufficiently interesting stories about why you couldn't manage to do this would also be interesting. ("I couldn't ever get the adaptor"... probably not interesting. "So I had to 3D print it, which was harder than I expected."... interesting. "I tried for weeks to get the RPi working and it almost sorta worked but it was only in monochrome and I couldn't figure out why."... interesting, and probably enough to trigger other people to want to help!)

mitola 10y ago
Thank you for your kind reply. I will take that into account as you say, since when it will be hopefully more complete I'll publish an update.
catdog 10y ago
Indeed not a very interesting read at that point, the idea itself is nice but pretty obvious. There is also nothing concrete about tackling the hard tasks like power supply or interfacing with the keyboard yet. The author only briefly talked about the LCD driver board but didn't even mention which one he bought let alone share any experiences how it worked out. A "look the screen shows the output of the pi now, thats how I did it" or "I tried … and the screen is still black, not that easy as thought" would have been a better start for submitting such an article series to a wider audience.

uncleleech 10y ago

I think this is a good idea but as mentioned in the article the connectors to keyboard and monitor are hard. I guess there are XF86 standards and stuff for the keyboard but I still find it hard to think that it will behave exactly like the original. Further, I would like to see more info on if the LCD gets working with the RPi because it seems like a great project. Still, good luck with how the conversion works in the end!

mitola 10y ago
I was actually quite suprised how hard it is. The amount of different LCD and subsequent separated driver panels that are possible in configuration is absolutely huge. To be honest I am a lot less worried about LCD working then keyboard, since in the worst case I would need to rewire the whole one manually. But for LCD I will hopefully have everything needed after getting my specific LVDS driver board
- rzzzt 10y ago
  A mapping for the keyboard matrix can be "discovered" by pressing all keys in sequence. There are lots of AVR-based projects that emulate an USB HID for a custom keyboard matrix or other input; for an example, see [1][2]. [1] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Easy_AVR_USB_Keyboard_Firmware https://deskthority.net/wiki/Easy_AVR_USB_Keyboard_Firmware [2] https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=51252.0 https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=51252.0

thomnottom 10y ago

Somewhat humorous in light of this comment on Schneier's post about the laptop ban: "Get the 15" laptop, throw all the electronics away, leave just screen and keyboard. Put Raspberry Pi and three AA batteries inside. Voila - you are able to show TSA staff that this is really laptop, which executes some code, and have a lot of space inside to put in explosives. Moreover, you have powerful processor and lots of program-controled pins to implement timer initiator." https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/the_tsas_select.html#c6749022 https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/the_tsas_sele...

jnsaff2 10y ago
Or instead of explosives ten galaxy note 7's with theverge.com or something like that open to make them overheat.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  Note7 were quite quickly banned from planes.
  - jdormit 10y ago
    ...So are explosives.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
agumonkey 10y ago
similarly, sprite_tm hdd controller hack shows that today anything embeds a computer..
VLM 10y ago
The problem with hollywood movie plots is people have been able to remove the optical drive or floppy drive from a laptop for decades, insert a baggie of weed or whatever criminal activity. To some extent avoiding TSA scrutiny might be a goal behind the apparently meaningless quest for thin laptops at apple. No removable parts means you can't rip parts out and insert a baggie of whatever in the case. Also the laptop being lightweight means whatever you're sneaking in can't be too heavy, if a laptop is lighter than a derringer even if it physically fits its going to be weird explaining why your laptop weighs twice as much as a normal laptop. Also I'm sure this looks fascinating on the xray machine.

deng 10y ago

I understand the joy of tinkering, but why do you want to downgrade a working Intel Centrino 1.73GHz to an RPi3? [EDIT] See below, seems that the laptop is already broken.

candeira 10y ago
Because, once it's working, you have an upgradable laptop: every time a new rPI comes out, you can swap it out. Eventually you'll have a better/faster computer than the Intel Centrino, with potentially much better battery life, modern hardware (USB3+, better radio connectivity), better software support (for instance, mainstream Linux distros are now deprecating support for non-PAE CPUs). I've been giving this some thought: I have a gutted MacBook Pro I plan to perform the same surgery on. Someone spilled soda on it, so the mainboard was already fried... therefore it's not even a downgrade. It's an upgrade from a brick.
- deng 10y ago
  Reason I'm asking is: I have an old Centrino laptop as well as an RPi2 and RPi3. The Centrino is so much faster than the RPi's, it's not even in the same league. And as long as the Raspberrys are married to Broadcom, I think it will take quite some time until we have an RPi that has similar speed like my old Centrino. Don't get me wrong, I love my RPis, and if my old Centrino breaks, maybe I'd do something similar, but I'd never trash it while it's still working. Just seems wasteful to me.
  - wink 10y ago
    It could also be not only about pure speed - look at what even the RPi 1 can do in terms of media playback. My (working) Centrino laptop can just barely play youtube html 5 videos. If you want a small mediaplayer (remember those portable DVD players? :P) this sounds totally viable.
- dublinben 10y ago
  This is the concept behind the (much-better executed) EOMA68 project.[0] You can buy a single laptop chassis, and then upgrade or swap the processing unit as you please. [0] https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop

pmontra 10y ago

I've got an old Asus L3000D from early 2000 in a bag. I took it out and looked at it. The keyboard is great, the screen is almost 1:1, a two buttons touchpad, floppy disk, DVD recorder, mic, audio jack, two 1394 ports (I forgot what they are), parallel, serial, VGA, two USB (1.1?), PCI express?, ethernet and modem :-) TV out, PS2 mouse and keyboard. Maybe without all the internal components it won't weight more that 1.5 kg. I remember I made it crawl with Ubuntu circa 2010. Perhaps I should give it a try as a Raspberry case.

agumonkey 10y ago
I often think (dream) of a partial solution; using a rpi as a coprocessor, daughter card. My 2006 core 2 duo is fine for 90% of tasks, except for video decoding. Delegating that to a tiny gpu/vpu would release the main cpu for logic and IO.

technofiend 10y ago

RP3 laptop cases making appearance on Alibaba in 5....4.....3....

extra88 10y ago
There's already the pi-top [0]. I've been considering getting one for work to use without a Raspberry Pi. It connects to the Pi using HDMI and USB so it might work as a portable, battery-powered version of a rack mount console. [0] https://pi-top.com/product/pi-top https://pi-top.com/product/pi-top

lovelearning 10y ago

Fun project. Will be interesting to see how this evolves. There are also a couple of build kits like [1] for people who don't want to mess with old laptops and weird connectors. I don't have one, but I saw it in Ben Heck's youtube channel and thought it's pretty cool. [1]: https://pi-top.com/product/pi-top https://pi-top.com/product/pi-top

hawski 10y ago

How much weights the gutted laptop? How much can it weight after it will be finished?

mitola 10y ago
I can update you on that. At the moment the heaviest part of the laptop is the display. But I think it may not be bellow 2kg, but above. I can update when I have a better estimate.
- roryisok 10y ago
  Sounds like you might have a balance problem after you get everything working. Might need to machine in a surface style kick stand
  - mitola 10y ago
    After a bit more investigation while I wait for the parts... I think it should be quite fine, beacuse the battery will probably be the heaviest part, but it is quite possible that either left or right side of the laptop will be quite heavier. Hopefully I'll make it fit :D I found an interesting battery with 12V in and separate 12 out and another 5V USB out, so it should be fairly straightforward hopefully with that to power everything with it.

Sanddancer 10y ago

This might be of help to you. The OEM version of this laptop seems to be the Compal LA-2601. Which is a very good thing, because the schematics are readily available [1]. So, getting the keyboard working with a PI3 should be a matter of rigging up a micro with enough pins to drive the matrix controller. Looks like an interesting project though, and I wish you good luck. [1] http://www.s-manuals.com/pdf/motherboard/compal/compal_la-2601_r1.0_schematics.pdf http://www.s-manuals.com/pdf/motherboard/compal/compal_la-26...

dmitrygr 10y ago
How do you know this and how did you find that?
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Google diving. I got curious as to what the keyboard controller was, so I looked up motherboard pictures and specs and eventually found that it uses an ENE KB910 for the keyboard controller. Searching there for how things were set up was mostly fruitless, until I stumbled upon a russian forum which had a pinout for the KB910 [1]. A few more stumbles and I found a result that stated that Compal was the OEM for the laptop -- it's not uncommon for laptops to be made by a white box maker. From there, a search for the model number brought up multiple sites with the schematics. [1] http://bit.ly/2ob7YaG http://bit.ly/2ob7YaG Not the actual url, because chrome's history ate that.
  - mitola 10y ago
    Impressive :) Thanks a lot for your dive into the subject. It's darn interesting indeed