Eee Tablet

[foothead]

This thread is going to be my log for all work I do on my newest project... an Eee PC tablet.
I saw the apple iPad, and decided to make my own. It will be made out of an Eee 900 netbook with an intel atom CPU, 1GB RAM, and a 4GB SSD. I plan to buy the touch panel kit a little later on when I've got it more complete.

Will post pics in a few.

Work so far: I completely took the netbook apart to see what I had to work with. This thing is very minimal in its build, everything is integrated if possible. I used a pair of pliers to crush, then remove both 3.5mm jacks because they were blocking the screen from being flat. Next, I put some heavy duty thermal pads on the exposed processors (unsure what they are specifically) and reinstalled the motherboard to the bottom of the case. Next I taped down the lcd panel and plugged it back in to the motherboard. I aligned the lcd bezel with the lcd and then taped it down. (note: this will be redone with no tape later. Its just experimental right now) I go to power up, and backlight flickers. but then goes out.

It turns out the solution was to plug it back into the wall, so it took the AC power profile, then get into the OS and adjust it.

Anywho, thats where I am now. It works, but I have to have a keyboard and mouse to control anything. When I get the touch panel, I'm gonna write a startup script so the on-screen keyboard is automatically enabled. Eventually, I'm gonna put OS X on it because, after all, this is my improved version of the iPad.

EDIT: pictures









Yes I know it looks like hell with all that tape, but this is only the beginning.

[Cabbs]

Interested in seeing how this turns out!

[Neodude112320]

Coming along quite nicely actually! If you wanted to install OSX on it,you might have wanted to do this with a Dell inspiron Mini 10 as all of its hardware is full supported by OSX. Im Not sure about the EEEPC.

Just a couple of questions though,how do you intend to make the case AND why didnt you just De-Solder the Headphone jack,solder some wire to the terminals on the PCB and the other end of the wires to the headphone jack and just relocate it?

[foothead]

The headphone jack never worked, and I'm lazy.
Desoldering it would have put the soldering iron directly on top of a few caps, among other things, so I didn't want to do it.

The case is actually very easy. If you look at the pictures, it is simply the bezel with a few mods, forced into the netbook base.

The Eee does work with OS X, it juist requires more tweaking than the dell mini.

EDIT: ordered the touch panel. It'll be here in 7-15 days.

I did some google-ing and found a couple people who did this... WTF?! Am I the only person who has thought to actually tablet mod the whole thing so its lighter/thinner instead of simply reversing the screen and filling in the gaps with plastic epoxy?

[foothead]

Just got my touch panel. Driver disk was blank.

It took me an hour of looking but I think I found one on rapidshare that'll work.

EDIT: The driver is corrupt.

Looks like I have to put windows on the netbook. I have an iso left over from nlite. How do I boot it off a flash drive? unetbootin only works for linux.

[esa193]

cant wait to see how this comes out!
where do u get the touch panel from?

[foothead]

eBay!

It works on windows and mac, but the linux drivers are waaay too dated to work. My stepdad is trying to get me a USB CD drive.

omg. I should buy one of these and an Eee surf bezel to have a dual-screen netbook.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/usb-gadgets/c609/

Thoughts?

EDIT: Is it just me, or does that appear to be 16:10 despite having a 16:9 resolution?

[Legodude522]

Good work!

I've seen the touch screen kits done before, I actually considered doing the same mod you did to use as a car computer. The screen in my Asus 701 has a slight crack in the screen. I actually have no idea where it came from.

[foothead]

That sucks.

Can you please measure the dimensions of the lcd for me?

And the bezel if possible.

[foothead]

I got the dimensions of the Doublesight (the 8.9 inch usb lcd) and they are the same as the Eee's.

Looks like I might be doing that for the sake of consistency. It'll be $50 more but I think it'll result in a much more clean final product.