@omamated

Im almost done with the USB hubs, all of the USBS are wired up and the crystal clock is all thats left.

Finished up the USB2517. I wired everything up (hopefully correctly). All I have left is connecting actual USB ports and I also have to choose what chip to connect the prt power to.

So I made some headway on the USB2517 USB hub for the laptop. I connected it to upstream and figured out how to connect the power. A lot of it was very confusing as the symbol I used was different from most, but I found the datasheet, which helped a ton. I also learned that maybe I can connect the USB ports to USB-C so I can actually have some modern plugs which would be nice.

In my last post, I worked on converting a PCIE to M.2 to eventually convert to more USB’s. I did some more research and learned that this could easily be cut down if I used a microchip. Using the Microchip USB2517 (symbol shown below), I can convert one Usb2.0 to 7 others, this seems overkill, which it kind of is, but I will use the USB for the keyboard, speaker, and other things. Also you can never have too many USB’s, maybe I could buy some converters and turn some into USB-C. There is a problem I’m facing while making this, it’s that this is probably going to bulkier than a macbook or a dell latitude, it’s probably going to end up looking like a Lenovo Legion or LOQ. I will try to shrink some stuff down, but I’d rather have a big laptop with nice features than a basic thin laptop, at the end of the day I am making it.

I decided to turn my PCIE slot to M.2. I don’t really need the PCIE slot but I need more USB slots. Turning the PCIE to M.2 allows me to interchange it for M.2 expansion slots like USB expansions or more SSD’s.

I worked on the Motherboard, I deleted items I wouldn’t need like the PCIE slot and the USB-C power as I will be using a battery. I found various resources including the official Lattepanda Mu motherboard github (Opensource FTW). I also found a whole course on how to make carrier boards for it. I still have a lot more work ahead of me as I barely have much. I am starting to realize how hard this project will truly be, but there needs to be an easy, open source, and up to date laptop. The screenshot includes all my notes and resources for the motherboard.

I’m working on a custom laptop, I started this a while back (fallout), but I didn’t have enough time so now I’m doing it here. My laptop will have a Lattepanda Mu and a detachable keyboard. I’m hoping that it should be able to be used as a flagship device as laptops keep getting harder to fix, while this has many open source parts. For example, want to switch the CPU? just buy a new LattePanda Mu and plug it in. I still need to figure out how to transfer my 10 hours and 40 minutes worth of work onto here.