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.
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.
nine_k 2 hours ago [-]
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 limited number. Nobody is going to crack into your internet-connected Amiga except maybe some of your friends, as a prank. But a forever-device used for something substantial, something touching money in any way, would have to be much more up-to-date.
trollbridge 4 minutes ago [-]
The unique thing about an IBM PC compatible like this is that it has an absolutely massive library of software that will continue to work and be "supported".
Retric 2 hours ago [-]
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.
binarymax 39 minutes ago [-]
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.
MiddleEndian 47 minutes ago [-]
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.
tomcam 22 minutes ago [-]
Who… who was doing the updates?
idiotsecant 2 hours ago [-]
There are a lot of 'forever devices' currently touching money in major financial institutions.
bigfatkitten 2 hours ago [-]
I spent a good chunk of my career in banking. I had many conversations to the effect of “see that RS/6000 in the corner of the network diagram? It processes $45bn in payments every day.”
indycliff 1 hours ago [-]
did you work at Chase too
gtirloni 2 hours ago [-]
Yea, and armies of engineers supporting them.
bigfatkitten 2 hours ago [-]
More often in my experience, it’s one or two greybeards who have been there for 30 years, and are the only two people still in the workforce (or still alive) who understand how it works.
ct0 2 hours ago [-]
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.
jmward01 45 minutes ago [-]
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?
chneu 2 hours ago [-]
Low power consumption. slap a small set of solar panels on there like Garmin watches, and possibly add a wireless power generator. I could see a device like that having standby battery measured in years.
kstrauser 3 hours ago [-]
Take my money.
No, really, this is precisely the sort of thing I've wanted for ages, and I don't have the time or resources to build it myself.
keyle 2 hours ago [-]
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 make a product this good with all of the modern life "requirements", that will be a vastly successful product I imagine.
kstrauser 2 hours ago [-]
Rats. Those are good points and you're right. I do so want that, though.
bombcar 3 hours ago [-]
This is basically the HP 200LX on steroids.
fuzunoglu 37 minutes ago [-]
Powered by ESP32, which reportedly uses archaic 40nm technology. Aren't there some good ARM microprocessors built with 5nm technology, which would consume comparable power?
bobmcnamara 36 minutes ago [-]
Not with a radio, no
sedatk 3 hours ago [-]
Not an XT clone per se. XT had 8088 CPU, CGA/Hercules display adapter, and a 640KB RAM with a PC speaker. This one has 80186 and 1MB RAM with MCGA (VGA) and Adlib emulation too. It's better than an XT.
rubyfan 3 hours ago [-]
I was thinking the same thing when I saw 80186 and the display.
I had an XT in high school and used to hit up the BBSs at 2400 baud watching each character light up on my green monochrome display. It was glorious!
nine_k 2 hours ago [-]
It's some XT++, but it's below the AT specs. That's the material difference.
It also sort of sets the expectations for the sloooow screen.
pinewurst 3 hours ago [-]
This one has ESP32 just running 80186 emulator.
sedatk 3 hours ago [-]
Still, it's not emulating an XT. XT is a very specific PC configuration. Maybe they just wanted to emphasize that it was ancient.
bobmcnamara 33 minutes ago [-]
Fully upgraded, my XT had VGA, 1MB including extended memory shenanigans, a sound card, a SCSI card, and Ethernet.
userbinator 2 hours ago [-]
This is running under emulation, but I wonder if the power savings would be even more (an order of magnitude?) if the hardware was "gate accurate" to the original but shrunken down to a modern CMOS process.
I find it amusing that the keyboard has a Windows key. Does anyone recognise what laptop it was originally from? It can't be a Thinkpad since there's no pointing stick, and I seem to remember some early Dells having a similar odd layout, but it's definitely an older one given the keys aren't islands.
genewitch 1 hours ago [-]
Intel makes the quark which is like a 486dx that runs on a watch battery. There are a few models now, but I think that qualifies?
Tangential, but what happened to Intel Claremont, the solar-powered CPU? Did this project go anywhere or was it only a tech demo?
d3Xt3r 2 hours ago [-]
This is awesome, only wish it was a 486DX2 with 4/8MB RAM instead, that would increase the possibilities of running more heavier operating systems, like Windows 95.
Also, is there a mention of the refresh rate of the display? I wonder what gaming on it would be like. They provided a screenshot of Test Drive and Wolf3D running on it, but a video would've been nicer.
girvo 1 hours ago [-]
So it's not quite that, but the Pocket 386 exists right now today, and is quite excellent!
There’s a video, too, but the framerate wasn’t usefully playable. I’ve seen worse, but you wouldn’t ever want to play it this way.
mulmen 2 hours ago [-]
> Also, is there a mention of the refresh rate of the display? I wonder what gaming on it would be like. They provided a screenshot of Test Drive and Wolf3D running on it, but a video would've been nicer.
There's a 2:30 video of Wolfenstein 3D gameplay on the linked README page.
tomrod 3 hours ago [-]
Pretty dang cool. Well done.
My ideal setup before eyeing the e-ink space was a linux-based netbook and occasional internet access to offload heavy compute to powerful servers. I could see using this sort of setup in a similar fashion.
knowitnone 2 hours ago [-]
Chromebook with linux installed?
tomrod 1 hours ago [-]
A bit clunkier compared to a clean ARM or AMD linux install, but still more or less useful.
Asus' eeePc was awesome!
sien 1 hours ago [-]
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'
Looks like someone found a good way to get rid of a bunch of new-old-stock embedded/industrial boards and/or SoCs that were sitting around in a warehouse somewhere in China.
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
hedgehog 29 minutes ago [-]
I really like this design by John Calhoun (known to me originally for his game Glider, I think he posts on HN as well):
A wire-free version running a Mac emulator would be pretty slick. Very usable with MacWrite or a HyperCard deck of recipes.
cosmic_cheese 42 minutes ago [-]
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.
shdon 1 hours ago [-]
Surely that's Doom8088 rather than the original version if this thing truly emulates an XT level machine (or rather an 80186 CPU)?
bee_rider 2 hours ago [-]
Interesting hardware.
The IBM emulation stuff—it is a project, the some 40 year old OS seems quite limiting, but I can see why one might do that for fun. But, the hardware looks like… maybe something folks might actually buy? Maybe only us, here, though, haha.
fortran77 2 hours ago [-]
The HP Palmtop IBM PC compatible clones also had very long battery life--on double AA batteries:
you will spend 99 of those hours waiting for screen refresh (1/second).
RecycledEle 2 hours ago [-]
This is what portable computers should have been.
squigz 2 hours ago [-]
Fairly unrelated, but loading that repo's page is nearly 200MB... Was a bit surprised at that.
actionfromafar 2 hours ago [-]
It would be really neat if the emulator had some kind of "escape mode" where it could jump to and run the native instruction set.
It could even be implemented to look like some kind of extension card in RAM. You write native instructions to a piece of RAM and call a special (otherwise invalid) 8086 instruction and the native execution kicks in.
Or if you want to make it more ambitious, create a COM or EXE format which indicates that the instructions are really ESP32 native, but with full access to the BIOS functions with some kind of translation layer.
reaperducer 3 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of playing SimCity and learning Turbo C on my IBM PC Convertible with its far inferior non-backlit monochrome display.
Interesting that they Sharpied-out all of the extraneous keys, except Windows.
karunamurti 1 hours ago [-]
CTRL+F DOOM. I'm not disappointed.
fnord77 2 hours ago [-]
what's the rationale for x86? To run vintage software?
I would love an eink laptop like this but with ARM, modern ports and linux
6SixTy 20 minutes ago [-]
Then search for Raspberry Pi laptop cases and go for the one that can hold your choice of eink display + driver?
Rendered at 02:04:02 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
My own humble e-paper projects:
https://www.asciimx.com/projects/e-reader/ https://www.asciimx.com/projects/etlas/
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 limited number. Nobody is going to crack into your internet-connected Amiga except maybe some of your friends, as a prank. But a forever-device used for something substantial, something touching money in any way, would have to be much more up-to-date.
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.
It needed a new battery, but held a charge on low power mode for 8 hours, and otherwise was perfectly fine.
No, really, this is precisely the sort of thing I've wanted for ages, and I don't have the time or resources to build it myself.
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 make a product this good with all of the modern life "requirements", that will be a vastly successful product I imagine.
I had an XT in high school and used to hit up the BBSs at 2400 baud watching each character light up on my green monochrome display. It was glorious!
It also sort of sets the expectations for the sloooow screen.
I find it amusing that the keyboard has a Windows key. Does anyone recognise what laptop it was originally from? It can't be a Thinkpad since there's no pointing stick, and I seem to remember some early Dells having a similar odd layout, but it's definitely an older one given the keys aren't islands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quark
Tangential, but what happened to Intel Claremont, the solar-powered CPU? Did this project go anywhere or was it only a tech demo?
Also, is there a mention of the refresh rate of the display? I wonder what gaming on it would be like. They provided a screenshot of Test Drive and Wolf3D running on it, but a video would've been nicer.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/a-few-weeks-with-the...
You can buy them off Aliexpress etc. quite easily
There's a 2:30 video of Wolfenstein 3D gameplay on the linked README page.
My ideal setup before eyeing the e-ink space was a linux-based netbook and occasional internet access to offload heavy compute to powerful servers. I could see using this sort of setup in a similar fashion.
Asus' eeePc was awesome!
To save others doing what I did there is an Android tablet like this called 'Daylight'
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43098318
https://www.clockworkpi.com/
https://www.tindie.com/products/cycle/pocket386-retro-dos-co...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40750371
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35995959
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.
The IBM emulation stuff—it is a project, the some 40 year old OS seems quite limiting, but I can see why one might do that for fun. But, the hardware looks like… maybe something folks might actually buy? Maybe only us, here, though, haha.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-golden-age-of-hp-palmtop-pcs
you will spend 99 of those hours waiting for screen refresh (1/second).
It could even be implemented to look like some kind of extension card in RAM. You write native instructions to a piece of RAM and call a special (otherwise invalid) 8086 instruction and the native execution kicks in.
Or if you want to make it more ambitious, create a COM or EXE format which indicates that the instructions are really ESP32 native, but with full access to the BIOS functions with some kind of translation layer.
Interesting that they Sharpied-out all of the extraneous keys, except Windows.
I would love an eink laptop like this but with ARM, modern ports and linux