[Arm-netbook] Future case idea: subnotebook/PDA with QWERTY keyboard

[Paul Boddie]

On Friday 2. September 2016 18.50.50 Adam Van Ymeren wrote:
> 
> You might be able to get a good head start by taking the GTA04
> schematics (basis of Neo900) and looking at modifying them to accept
> an EOMA-68 computer card rather than having an onboard processor.
> 
> The GTA04 is a fairly mature schematic, the latest revision GTA04A5 is
> going through the final stages before a production run.
> 
> http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/

It may be worth having a conversation with the Tinkerphones community [1], 
which is really just an umbrella entity for a bunch of related projects 
including GTA04 and Neo900. The community mailing list [2] might be a place to 
ask about this kind of thing.

The GTA04 still has the OpenMoko FreeRunner hardware profile, so it doesn't 
have a physical keyboard. The Neo900 (and Pyra) have physical keyboards and 
might be informative, but the Neo900 is based on an existing product and 
therefore probably wouldn't be the best choice for the basis of a new design 
for that reason.

The Pyra [3] is supposed to be modular (having, for example, a replaceable CPU 
board [4] and potentially other boards), but it isn't certain that the 
hardware (above the component level) will be libre [5]. But it might be worth 
mentioning in any arguments about modularity because the designers clearly 
think that something fairly similar to EOMA68 is worthwhile.

Paul

[1] http://tinkerphones.org/
[2] http://lists.openphoenux.org/mailman/listinfo/community
[3] https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
[4] https://www.pyra-handheld.com/wiki/index.php?title=CPU-Board
[5] https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/hardware-license-terms.76944/