Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life
51 comments
·April 21, 2025jmward01
I think there is a class of device here that is missing. Low power but forever devices that have some basic functionality. Over time I could see this taking over laptops and the like as ultra-low-power became more and more capable.
nine_k
Most people sell or give away fully functional, very powerful mobile phones, because of the end of the software support.
Hardware is more than capable for a long time, and is often very durable. But it takes a special kind of audience to put up with decade-old unsupported software, let alone with IBM XT-level software (which I remember using).
Security is not a consideration for such devices, because of their very limited number. Nobody is going to crack into your internet-connected Amiga except maybe some of your friends, as a prank. But a forever-device used for something substantial, something touching money in any way, would have to be much more up-to-date.
Retric
I’ve never dumped a phone over its software. Ware, damage, swapping networks, meaningfully better hardware, or just losing the things explain basically all the replacements me or my friends / family have done.
Sure, eventually people stop updating software to work on old devices but that’s because the overwhelming majority of people have already stoped using that hardware for other reasons.
MiddleEndian
I dumped my last phone, the Palm PVG100, because software updates made it too slow and ate up its battery life too quickly. It's too bad because the updates didn't improve anything and the PVG100 has the best form factor of any phone I've owned.
idiotsecant
There are a lot of 'forever devices' currently touching money in major financial institutions.
bigfatkitten
I spent a good chunk of my career in banking. I had many conversations to the effect of “see that RS/6000 in the corner of the network diagram? It processes $45bn in payments every day.”
gtirloni
Yea, and armies of engineers supporting them.
ct0
There are a few commercial products popping up and marketing. I think youll find what you find here interesting: https://old.reddit.com/r/writerDeck/ Im using a Boox palma 2 on a stand, and a Thinkpad Keyboard 2 to emulate the same thing. The battery life may not be 100 hours but considerable.
jmward01
I'd love something ipad size with an attached keyboard/trackpad that did the very basics of compute but on a more modern stack. I think the biggest thing that would hold me back would likely be the slow refresh rate/no color in the display. I bet a setup like that with solar so is trickle charged could be built and have an effectively unlimited runtime. I wonder when high refresh rate/color e-ink like displays will finally make it?
chneu
Low power consumption. slap a small set of solar panels on there like Garmin watches, and possibly add a wireless power generator. I could see a device like that having standby battery measured in years.
kstrauser
Take my money.
No, really, this is precisely the sort of thing I've wanted for ages, and I don't have the time or resources to build it myself.
keyle
I don't know if you've seen the videos, but the latency from input to result on the screen is, very, very bad. I don't think this is actually what you want.
We all want low-power retro computing but expect reasonable latency in usage. We also want WIFI working in every room and e-ink that doesn't suck and doesn't cost half a car... And the ability to browse the web (HTTPS). It's just not there yet.
When someone will make a product this good with all of the modern life "requirements", that will be a vastly successful product I imagine.
kstrauser
Rats. Those are good points and you're right. I do so want that, though.
bombcar
This is basically the HP 200LX on steroids.
userbinator
This is running under emulation, but I wonder if the power savings would be even more (an order of magnitude?) if the hardware was "gate accurate" to the original but shrunken down to a modern CMOS process.
I find it amusing that the keyboard has a Windows key. Does anyone recognise what laptop it was originally from? It can't be a Thinkpad since there's no pointing stick, and I seem to remember some early Dells having a similar odd layout, but it's definitely an older one given the keys aren't islands.
genewitch
Intel makes the quark which is like a 486dx that runs on a watch battery. There are a few models now, but I think that qualifies?
pmcjones
The Quark was discontinued in 2019.
31337Logic
It's called a TrackPoint. ;-)
sedatk
Not an XT clone per se. XT had 8088 CPU, CGA/Hercules display adapter, and a 640KB RAM with a PC speaker. This one has 80186 and 1MB RAM with MCGA (VGA) and Adlib emulation too. It's better than an XT.
rubyfan
I was thinking the same thing when I saw 80186 and the display.
I had an XT in high school and used to hit up the BBSs at 2400 baud watching each character light up on my green monochrome display. It was glorious!
nine_k
It's some XT++, but it's below the AT specs. That's the material difference.
It also sort of sets the expectations for the sloooow screen.
sien
The idea of a laptop with an e-ink display running Linux and having days of battery life is really interesting.
To save others doing what I did there is an Android tablet like this called 'Daylight'
xattt
> solar power
Tangential, but what happened to Intel Claremont, the solar-powered CPU? Did this project go anywhere or was it only a tech demo?
tomrod
Pretty dang cool. Well done.
My ideal setup before eyeing the e-ink space was a linux-based netbook and occasional internet access to offload heavy compute to powerful servers. I could see using this sort of setup in a similar fashion.
knowitnone
Chromebook with linux installed?
tomrod
A bit clunkier compared to a clean ARM or AMD linux install, but still more or less useful.
Asus' eeePc was awesome!
shdon
Surely that's Doom8088 rather than the original version if this thing truly emulates an XT level machine (or rather an 80186 CPU)?
d3Xt3r
This is awesome, only wish it was a 486DX2 with 4/8MB RAM instead, that would increase the possibilities of running more heavier operating systems, like Windows 95.
Also, is there a mention of the refresh rate of the display? I wonder what gaming on it would be like. They provided a screenshot of Test Drive and Wolf3D running on it, but a video would've been nicer.
girvo
So it's not quite that, but the Pocket 386 exists right now today, and is quite excellent!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/a-few-weeks-with-the...
You can buy them off Aliexpress etc. quite easily
billyjmc
There’s a video, too, but the framerate wasn’t usefully playable. I’ve seen worse, but you wouldn’t ever want to play it this way.
mulmen
> Also, is there a mention of the refresh rate of the display? I wonder what gaming on it would be like. They provided a screenshot of Test Drive and Wolf3D running on it, but a video would've been nicer.
There's a 2:30 video of Wolfenstein 3D gameplay on the linked README page.
saulpw
Man, I want this, but IBM AT level, 32-bits with at least a 386 and 8MB of RAM.
bombcar
There were a bunch of those appearing on the various Chinese sites recently.
https://www.tindie.com/products/cycle/pocket386-retro-dos-co...
userbinator
Looks like someone found a good way to get rid of a bunch of new-old-stock embedded/industrial boards and/or SoCs that were sitting around in a warehouse somewhere in China.
lanna
The IBM AT used an Intel 80286
hyperhello
Can you make one that emulates a PowerBook 100?
unleaded
can you? There's a MAME driver in macprtb.cpp you could work off—might want a few hacks in your implementation which is nothing new to Mac emulation. also this: https://github.com/evansm7/pico-mac
Love it! Any idea how long the display can last? I've been playing around with e-paper (nothing as impressive as this!) dashboards. I use Waveshare displays that has a max of 1 million refresh cycles. The display you've used seems more capable.
My own humble e-paper projects:
https://www.asciimx.com/projects/e-reader/ https://www.asciimx.com/projects/etlas/