the other Mainboard


mclien

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reading the thoughts about a bare mainboard and the Pyra-Phone ideas, I couldn't help to think about my old idea of having a Pyra in side the old Palm3 cases and the foldable keyboard for that:
http://www.dansdata.com/portkey.htm

Here are my rough thoughts to that:
- case is easy enough to open, screwed instead of glued
- has a nice retro look
- it should be cheap to get hands on (my last Palm 3 was 10 Euro on ebay)
- there is a battery case for 2 AAA Batteries on the backside, that perhaps could hold connectors
- for the keyboard I have done some work. The PCB is replaceable, it is possible to convert it too USB. That should make the port reusable, so you can use the foldable keyboard as USB version

Backdraws:
- perhaps I'm too optimistic about the space available in the case
- screen is more like 3:4 and there is perhaps no way to find a fitting modern one

My personal preferences:
- e-ink Display (because on the road I would use it for e-book reading and writing text). For more stuff a additionally external HDMI Display should work
- perhaps the on the road things could even run on the M0 cores of the OMAP?? (no idea)

It might be at least worth to look into it to design the bare mainboard in a way that it might fit into it...
Maybe in a way, that all connectors are on the edge of teh PCB, so you could design an "extension board" around it later...

just my 2 cents
 
I still have one of those keyboards, and I've thought about using it on a handheld before, but I never found the time to look at the keyboard pin-out. Did you say you've figured it out what you need to do to make it USB?
 
Yes, I disassembled it, cut all connections to the PCB and used a continuity tester to "decrypt2 the key matrix. I even started to design a new PCB with another guy (was a multi purpose idea to also have a board to get the keyboards from the old thinkpad to reuse incl. the trackpoint).
Needs to be revive, steps I did are documented here:
https://hackaday.io/project/3839-convert-palm-foldable-keyboard-to-usb
 
Because:
- you have to take care of an extra battery charge (honestly allways a PITA to me)
- you do not upcycle/ reuse something otherwise useless fine keyboard
- your are not hacking something for coolness
- you have to carry an extra stand, which is already integrated in the other keyboard and fits the Palm housing
- you are so non-retro, because the reuse of the Palm case is again very cool
- you are not going understatement by having a modern computer hidden in a 90th devise
...get the idea?
 
A SBC mainboard could open up all sort of possibilities for stuffing the board inside all kinds of odd things, as we saw back in the day with the miniITX standard*, or more recently with the RPi and similar.

* Like the stuffed E.T PC or sticking it in an old Atari 800XL
 
I have the Palm one and the USB and Bluetooth versions from Think Outside. They're all 3 nearly identical.
So, if you're trying to make one work with the Pyra, maybe start with the USB or BT version?
 
But that leaves out the second and third bullet from mclien's list, and those are the best ones (if you change "coolness" to "fun"), imo.
 
But that leaves out the second and third bullet from mclien's list, and those are the best ones (if you change "coolness" to "fun"), imo.
Well thanks, glad to be not the only one ;-) (and I think coolness and fun are kinda exchangeable, depending on situation or work parallely)
 
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