Man wields soldering iron, welds eight new devices into Eee PC You've got to admire Ivan Cover's soldering ability if not his ability to work out how and then cram no fewer than eight extra components into his Asus Eee PC. He also upgraded the tiny laptop's 802.11b/g Wi-Fi to 802.11n, but that's more about replacing an existing component with a new one rather than adding the functionality …
...but can he install thunderbird without completely borking it?
on a more relevant comment, it would have been cooler to scoop out the feeble contents of the battery case, and fuel-cell it. Ie upgrade from 2.5hrs battery life to something crazy like 20hrs.
He'll need it to run all those extra toys.
It's all very well saying "let this be a lesson to you Asus!" but it doesn't touch on the economic aspects of the modding.
For starters Asus will have worked out what they could fit into the form factor at a certain cost/profit point, and more importantly still be able to provide a warranty for.
Most cars that come to market are build with parts that just about to do the job but can be improved upon, but this does not automatically mean it's a no-brainer for the manufacturer to add it themselves just because an aspiring modder has.
As great an achievement it is we have no idea what knockon effects these mods have to the battery life, the overall heat output or part cost, etc.
What I don't get, is why so many people seem to be modding these little beauties. I mean, sure they're cheap enough, but wouldn't it be more practical to mod the hell out of something that was already a beast, and make it a behemoth?
Still, impressive work, wish I thought of it first.
Also, saw the story on HackADay 4 days ago...
"but wouldn't it be more practical to mod the hell out of something that was already a beast, and make it a behemoth"
Not if your measure of "practical" is how big the thing is.
Besides, any idiot can expand a machine designed to *be* expandable. Sure it might be an impressive performer, but it's not "special".
this was posted on eeeuser's forum
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=6380
A 3G card has been added already, and a touchscreen. (jkkmobile)
Apparently, for optimal use of the touchscreen, the desktop wallpaper of the EEE should be the bikini-clad girlie!
RE battery life, the great thing with this mod, is a bank of DIP switches for turning extra devices off when not required and the fact that the power source was taken from an off in standby pin.
Now if someone comes up with a way to "mod" the shoddy build quality, the Eee PC would definitely be a winner. The form factor, for starters, is perfect for "on the go".
Hmm. Actually, a bit of extra glue and a couple of screws might fix some of the bigger issues, such as the keyboard module sliding under the edge of the case.
I saw one of these puppies in Toys R Us last week (don't ask). Whilst he overall form factor is very sweet, very portable, and emininently suited to my requirements for a simple, portable, cheap, second computer, they're going to have to make that screen bigger before they get any of my money.
tho as a previous poster said, it needs one more awesome hack-a ridiculously overpowered battery.
I'd say, lose the modem, then work at disassembling some model airplane LiPO's into their individual cells and putting them anywhere there's space left. Or something
Solar Cells? One of those MHD generators Voyager uses? A crank system from the OLPC fiasco?
I completely mis-read this line in the article:
"Ivan's running Windows XP on his Eee, which makes driver support a little less hit and miss than the machine's own version of Linux."
Have you actually read the guys Wiki page and seen how much faffing was needed trying to alter Windows drivers from the wrong sources to get this thing working? In my experience, Plug and Play actually works in Linux because it can control a chip and not just the one with the given manufacturer ID.
I think that the only item on that list I'd be unsure about in Linux is the GPS receiver, but since it's running via a USB serial port, I can't imagine any difficulties there either.
You'd really rather hack a Windows driver than plug it in and use it??
Not all of us would want to open up a laptop and commit soldering, though I've had to do it a couple of times on an ancient 486, to fix the power connector.
But some of the ideas are tempting. A cheap USB hub and a USB flash drive, and I could have a useful improvement. And it does have a Mini-PCI slot: do I need a dial-up modem?
Come to think of it, it might not be so hard to combine a hub and a drive in an external case.
Thanks for publicising the ideas.
(You can set up an Eee to boot of the SD card. So your whole OS and data-set can be seperated from the machine.)
"Ivan's running Windows XP on his Eee, which makes driver support a little less hit and miss than the machine's own version of Linux."
what, you mean like running ANY linux box? selecting devices based on the drivers being present in your kernel/distro of choice is something i got used to a few years ago.
you might as well have gone with the tagline: "Linux in not-quite-as-easy-to-get-devices-for-as-Windows shocker!"
Are you still trying continuing with your one-man-campaign against the Eee? If what you described of the keyboard was the norm on these things then people would be complaining about it *everywhere*, so either you're lying or the one you used was badly abused before you got to try it.
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