These days, laptop computers are all more or less the same, at least externally. Some are thicker than others, they might come in different colors, or with a 360° hinge that lets you flip the screen around the back and use it as a tablet, but overall they’ve all got the same shape and proportions. The industry, and indeed the users, eventually agreed on the best way to make a computer portable and are now fully committed to it.
But that wasn’t always the case. In the 1980s there were a number of laptops from the likes of Toshiba, Tandy, and even IBM that took a slightly different approach to the clamshell design. These computers featured ultra-wide displays with a hinge located closer to the center of the computer, giving the machine a distinctive “trunk” in the back. It’s these classic machines that clearly inspired [Michael Mayer] to design the Portable Pi 84.
[Michael] says that the 3D printed enclosure was largely designed around the 40% ortholinear keyboard, which itself is based on the Happy-Keyboard from [Luis Alegría]. The rest apparently just fell into place, such as the fact that the 1600 x 600 Waveshare 9.3 inch display happens to be almost the perfect size to cover the keyboard below it.
Compared to many of the other custom computer builds we’ve covered, the rear compartment of the Portable Pi 84 provides ample free space for the various system components. That includes the Raspberry Pi 4 that runs the show, a UPS “hat” that powers the system via a pair of 21700 batteries, and even a set of ampl ..
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