Hey! I found this old laptop for $500. Do you think I should buy it? Can I run Linux? Arch obviously.
Hey! I found this old laptop for $500. Do you think I should buy it? Can I run Linux? Arch obviously.
;-)
$500 might be a stretch, It weren't for the horrible keyboard, and horrible screen, it might be worth putting a raspberry pi into as a sleeper project.
Yes I realize it's a joke.
"It belongs in a museum!"
Just hang it on the wall
You belong in a museum.
I don’t know. You should make sure it doesn’t have a Realtek Wi-Fi card. Otherwise, it looks fine. I found the Linux Hardware report for it here: https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=7144bb41
I think the price to performance doesn’t look the best, though. Maybe go for a Thinkpad instead?
Bravo.
I'm in tears, I've finally found the version of this toy I had as a kid.
Thank you so much for this shitpost, sincerely.
One person’s shit[post] is another one’s childhood 😘
If it’s like the older vtech educational toys it uses some z80 processor, so you won’t be able to run Linux but you can a few different hobbyist microcomputer operating systems like zeal8bit and fuzix.
Man, I had a vtech “computer” as a kid in the later 90’s. I don’t remember what happened to it or what it was even actually good for.
Pretty sure this is what I had.
...that's the POWER model: the unit posted above is the consumer version with the SX chip, no math coprocessor and fewer function keys...
Temple OS or bust
Terry would be so proud. And racist and scared. But also proud.
Oh, now you’re talkin!
You joke but it would be an awesome project. Maybe replace the screen with a real LCD, shove an rpi inside etc.
It does seem like it'd be pretty cool, though much rather them than me lol. I think shoving an rpi inside though would really betray the implicit spirit of the project. That would just be "can a raspberry pi run linux when I put in a plastic case shaped like a children's toy?" The answer would pretty obviously be yes. People are saying the processor in it means it probably couldn't run Linux which would make it a bit of a non-starter but there apparently other OSs that could be made to run on that kind of processor and that'd be cool to see.
"diy dr.k" on YouTube did something similar with a barbie kid's laptop
Yeah, it’d be really cool if it could run real OS inside it, and can play sound from the builtin speaker it apparently has
Bet it can run doom.
You may want to also post this to [email protected]
Hanna Montana, and you're good to go.
Someone with NetBSD is already scouring eBay.
I wonder what CPU it has. You should tear it down and see if you can get some custom code running.
What I should do it toss a pi in there and tease everyone
this might unironically run linux depending on the specs
On a Z80?
Unironically, of course.
Hey, if you can do it on a 4004.....
(Yes yes, you'd have to write an x86 emulator and it'd be slow as heck but I mean, you could.)
Is that just a model, or is there actually a display in the middle that does something?
Yes, there's a monochrome display in the middle. It's kinda like a TI-86 calculator aimed at children.
There is a small LCD in the middle. This is a different brand, but the same idea.
FYI you can trim 80% of that. https://www.amazon.com/LEXiBOOK-Educational-Activities-Mathematics-Dactylography/dp/B0B6HKB3JF/ Amazon sure loves its tracking data.
@ravhall half a kilobuck just to make it happen? guess if that floats your arch boat, go do it and report back on your success!