[Arm-netbook] modifying a 7 inch notebook cabinet to accept a pc card

[Christopher Havel]

Keyboard is easy if you know a little electronics. A laptop keyboard is a
matrix keypad. Rows and columns. One key connects one row to one column.

Look up a little thing called the "Teensy" -- it is a microcontroller
board. You can (if you are *very* good at soldering) connect from the
keyboard's PCB connector (cut the PCB and solder to the connector while
it's still on there -- no shorts, mind you, or it won't work, and the pin
pitch is usually insane...) to a Teensy and make a "custom keyboard" that
way. You will of course have to program the Teensy but that's the easy part
;) an Arduino Leonardo clone from eBay (also try to find, if you still can,
"Arduino Micro" clones -- NOT the "Pro Micro" ones, they won't have enough
pins). Same code will run there and work just fine.

Forget the battery, unless you have a reflow toaster oven (or other
homemade reflow equipment, or access to the professional gear) -- you will
need it for the kinds of chips that let computers talk to batteries, AFAIK.
Too much trouble.

I am designing, for a competition on Hackaday, a "made from common modules"
"laptop" that I'm calling the AnyTop. The goal is that anyone can build it
if they can use a screwdriver, knife, and some sort of drill. (The drill is
only needed in one place.) It won't have a battery... but it will be a
laptop form factor and it will work. Luke, would some discussion of this be
on-topic?
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