Building a Handheld PC (opens in new tab)

If you make something that's obviously shoddy, nobody confuses it for a serious product. Nobody is telling grandma that her knitting isn't as practical as a waterproof jacket from J. Random Outdoorswear Company. Nobody is telling the electronics newbie that a blinking LED isn't actually of any use to anyone. Everybody has nothing but positive encouragement.

But if you start to make actually really good stuff, requiring an enormous amount of skill and experience, you instead get "cool, but actually not quite as good as the nearest commercial competitor".

If you're so good at your hobby that people are comparing you to the literal state of the art, you're doing something right.

Ignoring the fun DIY aspect, this project's main advantage would be:

- extensibility and modularity: hardware wise it could fit a PS2 port if it needed to, software wise you can put any OS that runs on arm.

- repairability and upgradability

- the actual physical keyboard. If your goal is to be typing at a CLI prompt 80% of the time, and you want it handheld, that's a pretty sweet form factor, better than a tablet with a flipping keyboard.

I've even tried shimmying in an order with an 'educational supplier' here in the UK who apparently have 'some', but only for schools, so they won't let me have one, despite how much material I buy from them each month for my non-educational purposes. I don't blame them, of course, but I do find it weird how there's apparently a heckload of demand and no uptick in production.

https://www.aliexpress.com/i/1005004814091297.html

Anybody care to have a look and comment?