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Pocket 386

hunterjwizzard said:
Heck even just a simple monitor/keyboard/mouse with USB & HDMI leads(basically a micro crash cart) would be a really fun tool.
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Something a bit like this?

(Looking at it I'm actually badly torn myself whether it's a dumb toy or potentially super useful. It has an internal SSD slot in it, so for the "crash cart" role I could imagine loading that with a Linux distribution set up to do diagnostics and OS imaging. Just plug this thing into a new server, boot it off the SSD, and go to town imaging it from a library of software you're carrying around in in your goofy keyboard dingus.)

Downside: apparently its mechanical switches are linear, not clicky. Boo. Consider this deal BROKEN.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Something a bit like this?

(Looking at it I'm actually badly torn myself whether it's a dumb toy or potentially super useful. It has an internal SSD slot in it, so for the "crash cart" role I could imagine loading that with a Linux distribution set up to do diagnostics and OS imaging. Just plug this thing into a new server, boot it off the SSD, and go to town imaging it from a library of software you're carrying around in in your goofy keyboard dingus.)

Downside: apparently its mechanical switches are linear, not clicky. Boo. Consider this deal BROKEN.
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Well that's a neat little thing whatever it is. Would definitely work for a really janky pi laptop or a number of other uses. And actually looks well-made for the price!

But yeah, linear mechanical switches, not clicky? What were they thinking?
 
VERAULT said:
I hear you. But its what i need.
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It actually might work for an unrelated application I've been looking for.

So here's the rub - my wife is, for better or worse, a "laptop gamer", infofar as she prefers to play reclining on the couch. That's fine for now but even a halfway decent gaming laptop costs 3 times as much as a good gaming desktop, and I can engineer a working system for even less.

My solution? Find a laptop-like package(like the CrowPi, but better?) that's just monitor/keyboard/mouse with a USB and HDMI cable I can take to a nice desktop sitting on the floor. Kinda surprised such things aren't more common, but meh.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
It actually might work for an unrelated application I've been looking for.

So here's the rub - my wife is, for better or worse, a "laptop gamer", infofar as she prefers to play reclining on the couch. That's fine for now but even a halfway decent gaming laptop costs 3 times as much as a good gaming desktop, and I can engineer a working system for even less.

My solution? Find a laptop-like package(like the CrowPi, but better?) that's just monitor/keyboard/mouse with a USB and HDMI cable I can take to a nice desktop sitting on the floor. Kinda surprised such things aren't more common, but meh.
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Here is my take. I dont need anything substantially great. I just want to take a good raspberry pi and have it in an enclosure with a decent resolution screen. Im not going to be gaming really no watching video (to any extant it would impact me that is). A decent laptop keyboard and touchpad would fine. Some USB and IO routed somewhere convenient and thats it. I have a nice linux terminal I have take anywhere. I cant believe China hasn't done anything like that considering all the parts I just mentioned cost very little on aliexpress. Bundle them in a Chassis for $115 to $150 and the competition will have to lower thier prices to something affordable (yeah affordability is subjective...... but then again no it isnt).

I mean a real POS unit for $50 would be fine with me too. I can throw a raspberry pi original in it and load up retro PI and use it for classic games and the cost is worth it.
 
Yeah, when I originally looked at CrowPis they were still 3d printing the outside(very expensive at industrial levels) and cost even more for something relatively cheap-looking.

Seems like someone willing to injection-mold the same thing and do a big production run of the plastic parts could easily put the finished product on sale at $115-$150.
 
Im really surprised in all the years the Raspberry PI has been out this hasnt been made to fill some niche.... And made cheaply. Am I one of the very few who thinks this would be useful? Imagine giving these to kids to construct and load up in schools! Instead they use taxpayer money to buy chromebooks and Ipads... So stupid!
 
VERAULT said:
I mean a real POS unit for $50 would be fine with me too. I can throw a raspberry pi original in it and load up retro PI and use it for classic games and the cost is worth it.
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It's not a Raspberry Pi, but if you want a disposable Linux laptop fast enough to emulate some classic games get yourself an "expired" Chromebook and hack an alternative BIOS onto it. As an example, the 2016-ish vintage Lenovo N42 based on the "Braswell" platform (these things were sold under the "Atom", "Pentium", and "Celeron" names) scores around the same ballpark performance as the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (or the Pi 400 keyboard computer) or a first-get Core2Duo laptop, and, well, I got two of them for free at a school district giveaway. Scrounge properly and you should be able to find something like it for well under $50.

VERAULT said:
Instead they use taxpayer money to buy chromebooks and Ipads... So stupid!
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I'm not so sure about iPads, but schools buying chromebooks isn't stupid at all. The hardware is practically free, the ones the schools buy are actually *reasonably* durably built, and Google provides an extensive suite of centralized account management services, email and messaging, realtime data backup, office suite software, courseware... etc, etc. There are things about all this centralization and single-vendor dependency that make me a bit uncomfortable, don't get me wrong, but "wasting taxpayer money" is the absolute worst angle to try to attack this with. Schools would be spending gobs and gobs more money if they were all having to set up and maintain these kind of services on their own.

Raspberry Pi's are great for robotics class and other STEM courses, but having the kids build and maintain their own stand-alone laptops to use for all their other classes just wouldn't scale at all. Just imagine the level of hand-holding it'd take to get everyone's machine working in the first place, and *then* think of what a nightmare it's going to be to get them all locked down so the kids are actually using them to do what they're supposed to be doing most of the time. (A thing Chromebooks make absolutely trivial.) Not to mention the fact that Chromebooks' real-time backups are amazing at eliminating any "the dog ate my laptop" excuses.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Raspberry Pi's are great for robotics class and other STEM courses, but having the kids build and maintain their own stand-alone laptops to use for all their other classes just wouldn't scale at all. Just imagine the level of hand-holding it'd take to get everyone's machine working in the first place, and *then* think of what a nightmare it's going to be to get them all locked down so the kids are actually using them to do what they're supposed to be doing most of the time. (A thing Chromebooks make absolutely trivial.) Not to mention the fact that Chromebooks' real-time backups are amazing at eliminating any "the dog ate my laptop" excuses.
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So that kind of "hand holding" was fine for us in the 80s but not for kids today? Honestly if you cant tach kids basic computer skills now when can you? Why do you think we have so many nuckleheads out there who dont even have the faintest idea of what file management is.

The taxpayer jab was mainly pointed at ipads.(since they serve no real purpose)

My kids got chrome books. They were given no reak instruction on it.. and st the end of the year most of the kids kept them and they never asked for them back.. seemsa waste to not give them to the next years kids.
 
VERAULT said:
My kids got chrome books. They were given no reak instruction on it.. and st the end of the year most of the kids kept them and they never asked for them back.. seemsa waste to not give them to the next years kids.
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You would have to disinfect them, not worth the effort.
 
VERAULT said:
Im really surprised in all the years the Raspberry PI has been out this hasnt been made to fill some niche.... And made cheaply. Am I one of the very few who thinks this would be useful? Imagine giving these to kids to construct and load up in schools! Instead they use taxpayer money to buy chromebooks and Ipads... So stupid!
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I spent $20 on a 5" touch screen, $10 on a keyboard, and another $30 on a good external battery pack that could run the pi and the screen for 4-5 hours. And of course $40 on the pi itself. That's all paying retail. A mass-produced plastic clamshell case capable of holding all that should cost about 12 cents a unit to manufacture. The keyboard could also be made much cheaper since mine was by necessity wireless(and thus had to have its won battery, transmitter/receiver, etc).

Conservatively, a cheap, modable case complete with just screen, monitor, and mouse should all cost less than $50. Leave enough room inside for the pi, some breakout boards, and a user-supplied cellphone battery, and you've got a great product for all ages.

Well shoot. Now you've got me looking into injection molding!
 
Man, you know what would have made for a really awesome class in highschool? At the start of the school year, you give each kid a really old, beat up computer, a stack of driver and OS CDs, and a screwdriver. The class has weekly assignments to be done using said computer, and the kids have to keep the old beaters running the whole year to pass. Leave a big pile of spare parts on the back table.
 
VERAULT said:
So that kind of "hand holding" was fine for us in the 80s but not for kids today? Honestly if you cant tach kids basic computer skills now when can you? Why do you think we have so many nuckleheads out there who dont even have the faintest idea of what file management is.
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We don’t live in the 80’s anymore. Most school computers didn’t even have hard disks, and if the kids were ever typing their homework in school “file management” meant not accidentally writing your book report to the AppleWorks disk instead of your data floppy. Kids these days are expected to find assignments and resources online, submit work electronically, and are supposed to be allowed to do certain things on the Internet while there also being a binding legal requirement for the schools to make at least token attempts to keep them from going to giant-huge-boobs-dot-com on their government supplied equipment. And all of this needs to be as reliable as reasonably possible.

In short the level of complexity here is absurdly higher, and, no, expecting every third grader to be their own sysadmin isn’t going to work. It hurts how obvious that is. They *are* learning computer skills by using those chromebooks, in that they’re learning how to use computers as day-to-day tools the way millions (billions?) of adults have to use them every day to do their jobs. Back in the 80’s we didn’t expect kids to pulp wood to make their own college ruled notebook paper, that is the role the Chromebook fills today.
 
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My kid takes a robotics course in her Middle school, and in that class she’s messing with computers at a roughly equal level to what we did with the Apple IIs back in the day so, yes, I disagree. Outside of computer/science class the kids need a reliable tool to do their other learning with, not an always broken project that both they and their teachers don’t have time to babysit.
 
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I suspect a lot of us here got more out of babysitting the always broken project than the course work we were supposed to be using it for.
 
There aren’t “computer skills” as we used to think about it anymore. As fun as it is to me, I don’t think kids should understand how to assemble their own computer to survive, just like not many people really understand how car engine works, which was requirement for car ownership not so long ago. It’s sad that we have less and less knowledge to survive an apocalypse when everything either just works or in the cloud, but that’s how it is now.
 
Maikudou said:
There aren’t “computer skills” as we used to think about it anymore. As fun as it is to me, I don’t think kids should understand how to assemble their own computer to survive, just like not many people really understand how car engine works, which was requirement for car ownership not so long ago. It’s sad that we have less and less knowledge to survive an apocalypse when everything either just works or in the cloud, but that’s how it is now.
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I always found it odd that high schools will teach advanced subjects most people will never use, like chemistry. But not "survival skills" like changing a tire, plumbing and electrical repairs, etc.
 
Yeah, that's strange, probably because everyone hopes to get higher paying job and pay for everything else, I don't know.
 
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