mmm, sholder buttons would be nice. alot of people would like psx emulation (including me, i want FF7) so maxing the layout close to a PS controller may be worth taking into consideration (but might have to drop one anolog pad, how many games use 2?, thogh virtual on at the arcades was great with its 2 joystick setup) or you can just get a ps3 controller with bluetooth
i personally dont use fwd and rewind but you can use the buttons for whatever you feel like, how many buttons and where we put them is the issue
i think if we went the sidkick format we wouldnt have the sliding screen as i always use my Z in clamshell mode to protect the screen
vibro alert is somthing that i will not drop as i use it instead of ringtones
ACX100 is B the ACX110 ro ACX111 is 802.11G, personally i like ralink as they seem to be fairly open source friendly with their wifi stuff so i am leaning towards them but the zydas stuff is a close second, it depends on what we can source and which has better driver support. hopefully without binary blobs
speacking of HDTV i found an all in one chip that even does the encryption part with no software required so that means we get digital DVI and hdmi, no analog (sorry) but i might be able to hack somthing together for those who need analog compatibility (breackout bok or somthing)
im still in two minds about the laptop (and desktop) version, do i make them a docking station that provides power, a larger screen and some other misc goodness (usb hub and usb ata drive) or make a diffrent version of the board that can be used in a laptop form factor (a small one) that dosent need the PP in any way but can use the PP as a 3G modem and touchpad as well as some other stuff.
there will be a docking station for it to charge and provide breackouts for the sound and screen + usb so you dont have to plug it all in when you get home.
as for the SK form factor, try gripping the Z and crossing your fingers over, you find they overlap alot, now that is very good on my Z with 2.6 as i dont have sticky shift and i dont use capslock because its 2 button presses (and no sticky Fn) but if they are sticky then you dont really need them to overlap that much, i find that the way i grip the device leaves alot of area between my hands and the case where i could stick a bit more cassing
Hold is a given
dual proc if posible would share the DDR bus (can anyone say performance hit), might mention that there is a slicht problem with the blades, how to get them to talk to each other, im thinking usb ethernet unless i can fing somthing with a higher speed
The more I thought about the PDA sliding into the case of the laptop, the less I liked it. When they can communicate wirelessly at 54mbps anyway, it seems kinda a waste of time. Better to use the Laptop almost-separately, but do a wireless resource share (Via Samba and X11?) to access the files and hardware on the pocketpenguin.
why not usb as its faster and you can also charge from it, the good thing about a dock in the laptop is that you then dont have the PP dangling around, it all depends on wether the laptop gets a cpu of its own or not
cost of production goes down with higher densities but the time i spend on it can go up exponentially
actually in its original Z form i was going to have 2 scroll wheels one for volume and one for next/prev track, alot of disceions come down to the form factor ill list the advantages of each below and leave it to you guys to battle it out (thogh i seem to be the only one to like the SK form factor but i guess its because so for im the only one who has to design the PCB)
CONCENTRATE ON THE BATTERY LIFE (ommmmmmm smile.gif
this is a non issue as everything has the ability to turn itself off and enter low power mode, its you usage patterns not the hardware that will detirmine current draw, if you dont turn off wifi there is nothing i can do about that. anyway everything except wifi is very power efficent
one thing i do want to do is put an 8 bit micro between the trackball and one or two other components to help the PP stay in low power mode for longer, anything that needs to be polled will be given to the 8 bitter so the main cpu can stay in suspend with the uC waking the cpu up when needed
add on graphics cards are very hard to do as this thing has no pci bus and there is no real embedded standard, if you can find me a chip i will do it no problems just find one quickly
the baseband issue is a huge one, forget qualcomm as i rank them as linux hostile, plus the chip you link to is an all in one chip not really designed for having other cpus
i have seen SPI at up to 25Mbps
the sound chip needs more research, that chip isnt a 100% solution, its mainly for the headphone sockets only, we may need another chip (like the power managment chip mentiond eairlier) but we will see once i get the wiki and do some calcs on form factor and bouard space
