I agree on that. For now I have spent 50usd on getting an asus 7inch eeepc. I like the size of it. It has a full keyboard. It is bulky. Therefore more likely to have space for building in another mainboard. ... Then lkcl has this argument about reverse engineering a lot of computer devices. I do not understand it. Apart from the display all devices should be usb. Sound, touchpad, keyboard, ethernet, wifi, storage. Display should be hdmi. Rather I believe getting a battery and powersupply solution would be difficult.

I have some EEE PCs (2 working and 2 spares), and I absolutely love them, I spent lots of time growing up with them, and learned to properly use command-line Linux while I was at it. My question - would you be interested in re-making it for EOMA-68 or something similar? I definitely am. EEE 701 has been thoroughly reverse-engineered, there are schematics available, as well as lots of interesting replacement parts. So, my plan: we'll need to re-place the motherboard, with something much more simple and much less power-guzzling. We'll also need to mod the chassis a little bit (to make an opening for an EOMA68 card). That's the extent of what we'll need to do - we won't need to replace anything in the upper half, and we'll be able to reuse many parts from the lower half. Here's how it goes:

Screen: * The screen is RGBTTL, which is the same interface that an EOMA68 card has on its pinout. If my understanding is correct, it should be trivial to interface to. LVDS is used internally (for decreasing EMI, if I understand it correctly), and the upper half has a small board with LVDS2TTL IC - SN75LVDS86A. So, interfacing that to EOMA68 (specifically, the hardware side) would simply require using a TTL2LVDS IC - something like SN75LVDS84A, to convert EOMA's RGBTTL into LVDS. We'll be able to re-use the original LCD cable that way, too! * The LCD panel also has I2C, which is likely used for just interfacing to an EEPROM containing panel's resolution. If it's not only an EEPROM and there's some kind of control data going over there, it is likely sniffable using a 5$ logic analyzer (using all OSS software, too!). * I've got no idea if there's any kind of initialization sequence sent over TTL, but I think it's unlikely. If so, we might still be able to sniff it with a more advanced analyzer, or try to get a panel datasheet&init sequence somewhere (it is a popular panel, after all).

So, we should be able to re-use the screen and all the surrounding parts - win!

Battery: * Connector pinout is known, and desoldering the connector from the board is tricky but not too hard. * It uses a fuel gauge chip accessible over I2C, indeed. Thankfully, as I have two working EEEs (and three batteries), we should be able to sniff enough communication to determine which commands correspond to which data. Alternatively, it's very likely the fuel gauge's datasheet is available somewhere. * Charging the battery and powering the system will be a problem, indeed. Fortunately, the EEE's solution to this is documented, and we could, at the very least, learn from it - it's going to be an interesting journey for me, but nothing that's not been done by somebody else already.

So, we should be able to re-use the battery - another big win!

Other things we can re-use: * Camera is USB indeed, dead simple to interface. * Touchpad is PS/2, but that's not a big problem, PS/2 to USB converters are available cheaply. * Keyboard is a matrix one - but the pinout is known (the matrix isn't known though, but shouldn't be hard to figure out). Again, matrix-to-USB converters are both available cheaply, and DIY-able easily. * Speakers and microphone should be easily re-usable.

Parts we won't be able to re-use: * Original Intel CPU, south and north bridges... We won't miss them, though =) * Embedded controller - the part that controls the power states, power button, LEDs, peripheral power (like, turning off the camera or the SD reader when they're not used). We can, and likely will, replace it with a microcontroller. * SD reader - it's too tightly integrated in the motherboard, even though it's USB. Desoldering lots of chips & support passives, as well as the connector, would be tricky, so it'd be best if we don't go that path. We might be able to use the SDIO from EOMA68 connector, though (alternatively, we could use that SDIO for WiFi). Also, we can simply add a USB SD reader, yay! * Ethernet - luckily, USB-ethernet chips are cheap and accessible, so if we need to add Ethernet, we can. * Audio - either an AC97 solution or a USB one will be suitable. * MiniPCI-E interface - no PCI-E on EOMA, maybe that's for the best, we don't need it for much (PCB layout would be tricky, too). Though I have to admit that a full-size WiFi would be nice to have. * SATA and IDE - again, godspeed, and we absolutely can use a converter chip if need arises.

Lkcl says, should I succeed in building one, only I would benefit. I disagree. I would tell others how to make a similar computer, should they want to.

Totally agree. Once one does something, others can follow. The EEE PC was popular enough so that lots of other people can follow. Broken laptops and replacement parts are still available, too.

How to make the keyboard's matrix, I do not know.

Interfacing to a keypad matrix is very easy nowadays. There are a lot of ready-to-go hardware and software solutions from the DIY keyboard community.

https://www.cnx-software.com/2016/12/05/firefly-rk3399-rockchip-rk3399-devel... has a hdmi port. What should be the difficulty in connecting the mainboard to a hdmi display?

As a rule of thumb, using HDMI internally, or converting high-speed interfaces into similar-but-not-quite high-speed interfaces, comes with an increased power consumption. You don't really want that - and it seems that EOMA68 should work without it, allowing us to use the HDMI for an additional display instead =)

So, here's my summary - it's doable. If you're ready to work for this, we can have it done in half a year. I'll be more than happy to help (and I know some people that could help, too). However, there are a lot of parts that are small and easy, but time-consuming, and time is something I don't have much of, so expect there to be plenty of work for you =) Let me know (maybe email directly) if you're interested and ready to start working on this project together.

Cheers! Arsenijs