@NutsAboutAmiga

Measuring power consumption is a can of worms or an expertise of its own.

@TheDaddy

You're gonna want to use 4 in series for that management system I linked to, so you can have either 4, 8 or 12 18650-size cells. I would aim for 8 and keep 12 as a provision with an extended battery compartment. No matter how many hours this gives, you simply do not want to lug more than half a kg of batteries (bare cell is around 45 grams a piece. 12 of those is 540, which really starts to be noticeable.

3x3 could also work if 2x4 is just a bit too little power, but it needs a different charger. Unless I linked to the 11.1V, in which case all of this was 180 degrees out of whack

If this means only 2 hours because the Sam draws too much power, then that's too bad but you'll most likely gonna survive. Not all homebrew electric cars are as good as a Tesla either. Doesn't stop people from doing it

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This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@NutsAboutAmiga

What am I taking about, we do not need touch screen support,
we need a trackball.

(or a touchpad, can touchpads be used as a normal mouse, or do they need spacial drivers?)

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Nov-2013 at 04:20 AM.

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@olegil

Don't we just need the average power drain, to calculate number of batteries,
it should be simple as the PicoPSU has a DC 12V input, that's where I be looking for AMP's.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Nov-2013 at 04:21 AM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

They are normal mice, but some are USB, some are PS/2 and some are SMBus (which is just I2C, basically). So as usual, just pick one that fits, and make sure you can source enough of them.

Same with keyboard. Either USB, PS/2 or controller on motherboard (think A1200 here). Find a keyboard that'll work and base the design around that.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Anyway we need some how to measure the battery level, how do we do that?
To tell the user when to turn of his computer.

We can't measure voltage as HiCads batteries delivers a content voltage.

So I guess its AMP/Hours, that is going to be the way to tell how fresh the battery is.

So we need so electronics that can count hours it has been charged, then we need some software the check the electronics, and subtract the hours the computer is turned on and running (AMP/HOURS usage),

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 23-Nov-2013 at 03:05 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 23-Nov-2013 at 03:00 PM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

hicads? you mean ni-cd? I've just written SEVERAL full pages of text describing how to use Li-ION batteries, and with those a fuel-gage is about as hard as (((voltage / cells) - 2.4) / 1.8). If you want to be REALLY technical you can put in a roll-off function on the upper and lower parts as it tends to stay around 3.6 a little extra time in the middle.

Hardly hard at all. Some battery management systems even tell you the state directly.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

A lot of info there...thanks.

Regarding the LVDS...does it mean you're forced to only use the onboard video card?
I was thinking of using a PCI-Express one...

Last edited by TheDaddy on 23-Nov-2013 at 11:37 PM.

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@olegil

Quote:

I've never had a 4-8 hour laptop myself, is this REALLY a necessity to proceed with the project?

My first PC laptop or two gave about 45 minutes battery runtime when new. It wasn't very useful without a power plug nearby. I hated that.

My iBook G4 game with half its maximim memory, and ran for about an hour and a half on battery. When I maxed out the memory, battery runtime was cut in half. I immediately went back to the original config. Battery time was more important to memory capacity. Now, I got this thing used off Ebay and the battery is likiely old (and since been in storage for a while now so will surely need replaced regardless when I can have it again) and things may have been better with a fresh battery. But going back to the PC laptop 45 minutes or so was not acceptable.

For me, there are two reasons to go laptop for Amiga.
1. Portability. This does not necessarily mean I'll be using it on an airplane, though it is a possibility. The idea of not being shackled to a desk in some "computer room" is most appealing. I have a wife and a small child now, and no longer have the "luxury" of leaving them for hours per day or hours per week to isntead spend time in a computer cave. This kind of portability can tolerate being plugged in a lot of the time, so long as I'm in the same room as the others in the house, and can change rooms with them. I can do computery things while my kid plays in the play room, watches TV, or I do computery things while laying in bed before I fall asleep, or easily take on a trip with me to use in a hotel. I can't do much of any of these things with yet another desktop/tower, and is much of why I don't get much Amiga time anymore.


2. Running without power. Still portability, but now the "use it on an airplane" kind, or bus or train or whatever kind, when no power outlet is handy. The kinds of things that are not at all possibl ewith yet another desktop/tower. What can you do in 45 minutes that doesn't leave you wishing for more time?


While I do want a high-performance laptop, and it would allow me more Amiga time than a desktop, by being easily moved between rooms and general locations, I do want to see enough balance to allow some reasonable and useful runtime. A super performance laptop that runs for 15 minutes on battery will not be satisfactory, even if it's great while it's plugged in to the wall power. At the same time, a laptop that runs for a day and a half, but is so slow as to not really be useful would also be unsatisfactory. For this I'm thinking back to my first usage of MS Word at one of my first jobs, this was Word 6, and took around 20 seconds to redraw the screen if I down-arrowed to show the next line of text off the screen, was not an acceptable user experience. Having said that, I would have bought the fabled "netbook" without question just to get "anything" Amiga that I could use very often, but if it was similarly unable to provide an acceptable user experience then I would have ended up terribly unhappy.


So I hope that whoever actually does something toward an Amiga laptop keeps good balance in mind, and gives us something that is both a joy to use and has a useful battery runtime.

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@TheDaddy

He he... this is going to be big laptop, don't forget we need to put speakers and small amplifier in there too.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 24-Nov-2013 at 12:47 PM.

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@TheDaddy

Of course you'll want PCI-express (how, are you making a lapcube?). And a bluray, 5 speakers (plus a sub!) and a 40-inch screen. And a steam engine because those are frikkin AWEsome.

Dude, don't fall into the "one more feature" trap. It's killed more projects than it's improved.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

No just a low power card, surely we want a bit more grunt than the onboard one.

Last edited by TheDaddy on 24-Nov-2013 at 02:28 PM.

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@billt

iBook G4 with new battery (which can still be bought quite easily) should run atleast 2 hours under load, getting it to 3.5 hours by dimming the backlight and reducing load should be possible.

Mine still has the orginal battery and manages 2 hours with fully lighted display easily (that SSD I have in there may also help) while running MorphOS.

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No DVD drive but I would say a better gfx card don't you think?

Speakers, SSD, board, gfx card = Watt required?

Last edited by TheDaddy on 24-Nov-2013 at 04:14 PM.

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I'd go for an Amiga laptop that doesn't even have a battery and needs to be plugged into an electric socket. Portability is my main concern.

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X1000 with 2GB memory & OS4.1FE

@olegil

Quote:

Keep an eye out for T1023. Core from P5020 and the peripherals of P1025. Good match, awesome price as far as I've heard.

Expected fall 2014 so probably for 2015
Source: http://www.freescale.com/files/training/doc/dwf/DWF13_APF_NET_T0809.pdf

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Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
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@TheDaddy

You don't need to include speakers in that list, a USB mouse will draw far more than any laptop speakers.

I imagine graphics card and SSD is something you can get from the manufacturer, but I will repeat myself in that adding a graphics card when you're aiming for long battery time is very very silly. You're making a laptop, BE PREPARED TO COMPROMISE. This is something I've never gotten any Amigan to ever understand. Amigans lack the compromising gene, I suspect.

If you can't live with the onboard graphics you've moved from laptop to "portable desktop replacement" already. Completely different class of device. In which case any old suitcase will do the job nicely, probably much nicer than something bent out of cut alu sheets.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Quote:

This is something I've never gotten any Amigan to ever understand. Amigans lack the compromising gene, I suspect.

Bwaahaahaa!

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All glory to the Hypnotoad!

@Olegil, billt et al,

This is the most interesting thread I've seen here for years. Just a thought or two:

1) We don't need a graphics card. We're not going to be playing resource-hungry games on it.
2) We don't need speakers or an audio amp. A pair of cans is quite enough (and better to listen to).
3) No mechanical drives: too heavy, too hungry. Use an SSD.
4) No CD or DVD. That's what USB is for.

I've never had a Pico PSU, but I have done a lot of work with a similar device bought from Jaycar. It basically needed 12V DC input, then derived everything else from that. The 12V had to be regulated, as it was passed straight through. As a result, all the caps in the device had only a 16V rating, so when I modified it to run from a 16V laptop supply, I had to replace them all with 25V caps. I made up a separate 12V regulated supply and switched that for the 12V output.

I use that PSU with my Sam 440ep in a suitcase. The 16V laptop PSU runs the "Pico-like" PSU and the Acer monitor mounted in the lid of the suitcase. The monitor's original PSU generated +16V for the backlight and +5V for everything else, hence the choice of voltage.

I had to add a choke (yeah, I know) in series with the 16V supply to the monitor because it draws a lot of current at about 600 Hz and the noise got into the Sam, appearing on both the VGA and audio outputs. I had to be very careful with earth loops for the same reason.

If we are going to use Li-ion cells, we had better use a well-designed charger. We don't want the whole thing to look like a Boeing Dreamliner on fire. Maybe Olegil knows where to get suitable charger modules - I don't.

Last edited by tonyw on 25-Nov-2013 at 01:44 AM.

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tony

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Seeing as no-one has mentioned it yet (unless I overlooked it), a monitor/screen seems a big oversight :)
Comes in handy when using a computer :)

Nah, seriously though remember to include it when considering power consumption.

@tonyw

Quote:

1) We don't need a graphics card. We're not going to be playing resource-hungry games on it. 2) We don't need speakers or an audio amp. A pair of cans is quite enough (and better to listen to). 3) No mechanical drives: too heavy, too hungry. Use an SSD. 4) No CD or DVD. That's what USB is for.

Different people have different opinions as to how to do such a thing. If there was enough market to be worthy of real business participation (not just hobbyist designers and non-profit projects by corporate businesses hoping to do one laptop and never expecting see another config materialize from anyone) , then this is where different ideas compete and consumers vote, or have options to choose from for different needs.

I don't know what you mean by a pair of cans. You mean the kind on each end of a string?

My personal vision, if I was to design an Amiga laptop, is quite opposite of yours. I would fit as much as possible into the thing, with as much performance, features and capability as possible. Why? I wouldn't expect to see many successful Amiga laptop attempts, so I'd want it to be useful and relevant for as long as possible into the future. While a single core is "enough" for now, and OS/software can't use more than one core today anyway, I prefer to make as much hardware as possible and let the OS/software catch up when they can. If you make a single-core laptop, then you can never do better than that. I want to watch DVDs and Blurays someday. I want the capability of playing Doom3 someday. A Sam460 in a briefcase will never allow that, a T4240 with MXM slot might someday. SSD aren't very big. I struggle to fit within the 1TB drive in my current PC laptop. (Though lots of stuff that wouldn't carry over to Amiga, such as Virtualbox machines, and lots of data in FPGA projects at university right now, and downloading lots of videos from Coursera type places) I think people tend to fit whatever hard drive capacity is available... My personal goals would also include mSATA, wifi, HD_Audio, SDXC-UHS2 and USB3. Build it and software can come later. Leave it out, and, well, it's just not ever going to be there.

If someone does a GOOD job of a Sam460 equivalent laptop, without any other choice I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But I'd really prefer much more, for today and for 8 years from now.


As Olegil has suggested to me in the past, TI has a great deal of good stuff, and is very easy to get documentation for it. I'm also making my way through this book.this book on the odd occasions that I have free time for such things.

Last edited by billt on 25-Nov-2013 at 05:05 AM.

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