As everyone rushes to get new laptops every year, Carter Hurd tried something different—he used a tabletop for a month.
[Carter’s] build is a prototype that allows him to try out the form factor and use it as a daily driver, so many decisions were made to speed up the build and get something functional. For example, rather than spend the time tweaking and printing his own keyboard, he used an off-the-shelf keyboard he knew he liked. While a framework motherboard would have been perfect for something like this, they, unfortunately, weren’t available when [Carter] started the build. So [Carter] used a used gaming laptop for the task. He had hoped to drive the display directly from the motherboard as many laptops use embedded DisplayPort internally. Unfortunately, this didn’t work as the motherboard didn’t support the resolution he was trying to drive at, so he just used the external port to drive the screen. A 3d printed base fits underneath the keyboard to hold the laptop motherboard with little extensions for bits that don’t work well, such as the wifi card. The chassis also has a slot that allows a secondary display to slot right in.
Excerpt from Hackday
The aesthetics are spot on, harking back to the old days of typewriter-style computers, and it seems functional even with a second monitor. Perhaps not the most practical option for anything other than word processing and Web surfing but even then you could get a Chromebook or a tablet and keyboard for the price it cost to make this. But that’s not the point, is it?
Filed under: retro video