If I had to determine what to do with the insides of a Framework 13 laptop computer I had mendacity round after right now, I may not flip it into a unusual however compelling “Slabtop” this time.
No, I believe that, having seen Penk Chen’s exceptional venture to suit Framework components into a type of fashionable restyling of the Grid Compass laptop computer, I must wait till Chen posts detailed construct directions for this venture… and till I had a 3D printer… and will collect the customized mechanical keyboard components. Sure, that is a lot tougher, however it’s onerous to place a worth on drawing pointless consideration to your self whilst you chonk away in your faux-used future laptop computer.
The Rasti Computer, which Chen writes is “derived from the German compound phrase ‘Rasterrahmen’ (grid + framework),” has at its core the mainboard, battery, and antennae from the extremely modular and repairable first-generation Framework laptop computer. It takes enter from the customized keyboard Chen designed for the chassis, with customized PCB and 3D-printed keycaps and case. It sends pictures to a 10.4-inch QLED 1600×720 show, and all of it matches inside a bevy of 3D-printed items with some pretty normal hex-head bolts. Oh, and the hinges from a 2012 13-inch MacBook professional, although that is probably negotiable.
-
Rear view of the Rasti Computer, with “a contact of silver dry brushing [that] added the beat-up steel look.”
-
Semi-exploded view of the Rasti Computer.
-
You can, in fact, run Windows on this gadget, in the event you like. But it’d really feel dissonant to place a lot customized work in to run a inventory OS.
Chen’s venture derives from, and pays tribute to, the Grid Compass (styled “GRiD” by its maker, GRiD Systems Corp.). The Compass was most likely (once more, most likely) the primary clamshell-style laptop computer made. It noticed use by NASA’s Space Shuttle program, in addition to by army and different entities needing a laptop computer that was each compact and throw-it-at-a-wall sturdy. It had 256KB of reminiscence by default (lower than half the quantity Bill Gates did not say you need to ever want), a 320×240 pixel display screen, and an Intel 8086 processor. Some fashions contained a 1,200bps modem. It value greater than $8,000 in 1982, or nearly $25,000 right now.
We have it on good phrase from some resident classic laptop collectors that the Compass stays a uncommon and costly merchandise to get. Rebuilding a Framework mainboard into a modern-day Grid-like does not appear significantly low cost, relying in your 3D printer setup, or lack thereof. Nor is it more likely to be simple, given a glimpse at the way it goes collectively. But it gives you a distinctive transportable and dialog piece, one which runs packages past Grid-OS.
You can learn a lot extra in regards to the Grid Compass at Cooper Hewitt, the agency the place Compass designer Bill Moggridge labored as design director from 2010 till his 2011 passing. If you bear in mind bubble reminiscence, it is a dip again into that genial trauma. Hackaday, the place we first noticed the Rasti venture, wrote up a equally Compass-inspired laptop computer, the GRIZ Sextant, with a Raspberry Pi at its core.