Guys, I have a problem. I'm confessing this in the name of transparency, accountability, and openness.
I just can't stop thinking about the MNT Reform.
That chonkbook is the stuff of my dreams, and I can't figure out why. It's slower than my pinebook pro, but everything about it (other than processor power and battery life, probably, lol) is just amazing. :D
@RL_Dane@mntmn If I could afford the £1500 for a laptop, was better at soldering to repair it when it breaks and didn't already have more than enough computers, I would probably buy one...
Love it! Any work on the management processor slow battery bleed issue? I doubt I'll be able to afford one this go-around, but if I did I was thinking of jury-rigging a pretty crude-and-crazy shielded toggle switch for power cutoff, or maybe find some way to have something like a hidden switch that can be engaged with a pin to cut off power.
LOVE the design, and that trackball is GLORIOUS. I don't even like trackballs on my PCs, but it's so much better than a trackpad XD
@RL_Dane if you mean the undervolt issue, that is solved by the Protected Battery Boards, which are available as a drop-in replacement, but also standard in Reforms shipping now
Not certain, I just saw some videos saying that the batteries would bleed empty over several days in power-off state because the management processor was still running in an idle state (waiting for the keypresses to turn everything on, obviously).
@RL_Dane@mntmn I would doubt that's fixable, given the management processor is going to need power? I presume the way to solve that is to take out the batteries if you're not using it for a month or so?
That's why I was thinking some kind of battery kill switch would be a good hack. Something like a pin that could get inserted into the back or bottom to engage some kind of switch. I dunno, I'm not really an electronics guy, but I wish I knew more of it :D
I'll have to thank Forrest M. Mims III someday for his excellent 1980s hand-drawn Radio Shack electronics books for what little I do know.
Those books were amazingly good :)
Sweetness! What's the firmware and blob situation looking like on the rockchip? I know the PinebookPro doesn't really have a usable webcam because of drivers (not that I mind, ha)
Thanks for bringing sweet open options to the community and happy hacking!! :D
P.S. do you know about #uxn? Even a really old and slow machine would be a lot of fun for writing code for that vm. I really DO wish I still had my 1997 Dell laptop for playing with, ha.
@RL_Dane i don't know the blob situation with RK3399 (in pinebook pro), sorry. the Amlogic A311D option for Reform has a blob in the TF-A, for DDR memory things.
yes, i know uxn ^^ trivia: the author also designed the MNT Reform handbook cover
@RL_Dane
> Even a really old and slow machine would be a lot of fun for writing code for that vm
It runs (well, uxn11 runs, so no sound) on my 2001 128MB of RAM Dell Inspiron 8000 (running on TinyCore 6.3), so I can confirm that it doesn't need many resources...
Part of it is that it reminds me so much of the Dell Latitude XPiCD I loved so much as a young guy in the late 90s. I gave it away around ten years ago (along with some other classic hardware) and I'm still kicking myself for it.
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