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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: 2) by engblom on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:47PM

    by engblom (556) on Saturday February 04 2017, @06:47PM (#462899)

    The total price of this product is a bit more sane than the over priced pi-top. Sadly, this one is not Raspberry Pi based. If it would be, future upgrades would be so easy. Just pop in a new Pi when a new Pi is released. Maybe even the rpi compute module could be used for this kind of laptops, making it possible to have a sane port layout for a laptop.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 04 2017, @10:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 04 2017, @10:40PM (#462956)

    Olimex has commented on the Raspberry Pi situation some years ago. Pi Foundation and Broadcom have a deal that prevents competitors from making Pi-clones.
    Ref https://olimex.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/who-fears-from-the-competition-rpi-foundation-pressed-broadcom-to-stop-selling-bcm2835-to-competing-projects/ [wordpress.com]
    Perhaps Pi Foundation could make a board for the TERES framework. I doubt they will. They already have their own empire.