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posted by on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-can-change-more-than-the-battery dept.

Olimex just announced the avaliability of their TERES I DIY laptop. The name is from king of ancient times that ruled in the area of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Return of the netbook? At least once the products stop being out of stock.

This kit lets you assemble a laptop with quad core Allwinner A64 (64 bit ARM Cortex A53 cores), 1GB RAM, 11.6" inch screen 1366 x 768, 4GB eMMC, WiFi & BT, camera, 7000 mAh battery in just under a Kg. Avaliable in black or white, with US keyboard showing a nice Tux. In the assembly instructions you can see two USB ports, HDMI, 3.5 headphone jack, microSD slot, mic and side speakers. Multiple modular cards to update or fix as needed. No fans. Current price 225 EUR incl VAT.

AC opinion: the RAM is soldered and small for modern times, but it could become a plataform upon which to improve without having to throw away everything. Olimex already lists some ideas for future add ons, like FPGA based Logic Analyzer, in the instructions. All spare parts are listed already in shop, some with PCB files (Open Source Hardware, developed with KiCAD) for those wanting to do custom versions.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Foobar Bazbot on Saturday February 04 2017, @05:54PM

    by Foobar Bazbot (37) on Saturday February 04 2017, @05:54PM (#462879) Journal

    I can see how, to a customer who's just in the market for an ARM-powered laptop, they are competitors. But it's important to note that the EOMA68 standard is about a whole ecosystem of interchangeable housings (laptops, tablets, and far more) and CPU cards from many manufacturers; the single laptop design and single CPU card is just a bootstrap phase.

    At least two more CPU cards are already in various stages of design, including one with an RK3288 SoC (a very nice Chromebook-targeted quad core) and 4GB RAM -- when those come out, they're a simple drop-in upgrade, and you can still use the old Allwinner card for something else.

    What that upgradeability, and more generally the whole ecosystem, is worth to you is a question only you can answer, but to me that puts this laptop in a whole different category, one I'm not at all interested in.

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