Commander X16

[mention=3]Perifractic[/mention], would you accept a request making PET chicklet style design? I love its red/blue/silver color scheme with Microgramma font.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/PET_Keyboard_improved.svg/2643px-PET_Keyboard_improved.svg.png

I'm all done with that project for now but I'll keep it in mind if I revisit. [emoji106][emoji973]️

I wonder if they'll make an official Raspberry Pi laptop someday.

I know there are plenty of Pi laptops from third parties, but comparing RPi 400 to other third party all-in-one keyboard designs, I think Raspberry would do a much better design.

2 hours ago, Cyber said:

I wonder if they'll make an official Raspberry Pi laptop someday.



I know there are plenty of Pi laptops from third parties, but comparing RPi 400 to other third party all-in-one keyboard designs, I think Raspberry would do a much better design.

I'd love to buy a Pi 400 for my kids to learn and thinker, but definetively a laptop form would be perfect for them. I'm sure Pi foundation is doing it, or at least testing/validating the idea ?

The 400 has been on my desk a couple days now. Works well as you might expect. The Pi is a mature platform and it shows. They keyboard is usable, but the mouse is truely horrible. Thank god I had a Microsoft bluetooth mouse laying around with nothing better to do ?

Loving my RPi400 so far. It's very portable and I've gotten connectors to connect it almost any display I can 'hijack' (DVI, VGA, DisplayPort).



I've been inside it and see the keyboard ribbon cable appears to be a simple lattice for scanning key states and all the decoding must be on the main PCB. I'm sure there will be some engineering types willing to pull apart the keyboard and get a pinout. I could but I've have had real bad luck with screw/bolt modding IBM model M's and not willing to burn up $100. ?



I will welcome a custom 3D printed enclosure with Cherry MX keys that would accommodate the RPi400 guts. Also, add an audio-out jack hack while you're at it. ?

I have the red and white Official Raspberry Pi Keyboard (UK model) and Mouse, and the keyboard has the same ribbon cable as the Raspberry Pi 400 keyboard, because it is the same keyboard except for some printing (e.g. ScrLk is power). Somebody replaced the keyboard on the Raspberry Pi 400 with the black Official Raspberry Pi Keyboard (DE model). I'm also interested in the pinout of the ribbon cable because I thought of developing my own keyboard controller using e.g. an Arduino. Now the keyboard controller is using a one time programmable (OTP) microcontroller: Holtek HT45R0072.

 

I was wondering about that. Looks good!

I just got mine, and so far, it feels just like using a Pi 4B, but without the extra box hanging around on my desk.

I have a 4B installed in an ArgonOne M.2 case, and that little machine does pretty well. By comparison, this one might be a bit faster on the CPU, but I already miss having the SSD support - if for no other reason than that I like having a separate file system for actually working in. (I actually boot the Argon Pi from SD, then use the SSD for all of my programming stuff.)

So when my 400 arrived, I took the Argon case off the desk and plugged in a 256GB SD card. So far, so good - the system booted right up with the same card I was using to run my Pi 4, and everything seems to be working as expected, so far. Next I'm going to install the Commander X16 emulator and see how it compares to running it on a PC.

 

Good news... the X16 emulator runs pretty well on the 400. 

I used the snap method; I'm not sure how new this release is, but the installation process is simple:

https://snapcraft.io/install/x16emu/raspbian

Some people have been reporting that the Pi isn't fast enough to run the emulation at full speed... so far, my own super-basic test shows that it's a bit slower than on a PC - somewhere between 60-90% for text mode programs.

 

In case someone was wondering, this site has a pinout for the keyboard ribbon cable if someone wants to case / keyboard mod their 400 with custom mechanical keys.



https://www.40percent.club/2020/12/orthopi.html