Right now, Steampunkish Too, my steampunk-y "DIY laptop" aka cyberdeck, is down for the count. This issue is explained in proper detail elsewhere, go look if you're interested -- you want to look at the most recent project logs in "SETEC Astronomy" and in "The Steampunk Laptop v2", the latter of which is the build log for Steampunkish Too. I see no need to duplicate that information here, and therefore I'm not going to.

However, what *is* relevant is what Steampunkish Too was meant to achieve, by way of roles, and how it's failed in most of those respects, as well as what I plan to do about that... and that has *not* been discussed previously in any real depth, at least not publicly, so that I will put here.

Steampunkish Too was meant to be a portable main computer, basically. I like to write, which mostly involves a computer running LibreOffice and a keyboard mouse and screen with which to use it. I also like to draw, which involves reference images of various sorts being displayed on a screen -- often a gaggle of them, in fact, that I can [ALT] + [TAB] between. Further, every Monday when my life isn't a flaming bag of hot mess like it is right now, I tend to do my grocery shopping -- it's a simple routine, catch a bus at roughly noon over to the local Walmart, do my shopping, relax in the Subway restaurant inside for a few hours (grabbing lunch as well as doing either some writing or some drawing) and then catch the bus back home at roughly 4pm.

Steampunkish Too was meant to be hauled along on these Monday sojourns so that I could write or draw in the Subway on the same system that I use for everything else. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons that result from unfortunate design decisions (some of which were involuntary), it cannot fulfill this role. For one, it's too large -- the copier drum and encoder knobs, which form an important aesthetic point, make it too wide to fit in my little personal grocery cart, which I use because the public transit system here quite understandably requests that their drivers not have to assist with loading and unloading riders' groceries. I have a little plastic bin that I put in the top of that cart for personal effects such as the computer, and it sticks out badly when I try to fit it in. The screen is too dark, and the way the cables are run, and the resulting orientation of the control board, there's no way to access the buttons that fix that without partially disassembling the system. Lastly, because most of the hardware wound up in the lid... it's top-heavy in a *very* inconvenient way.

It has further become apparent that I really need three computers --
1) a portable system to carry with me on errands and longer trips / vacations / etc
(2) a stationary computer, primarily for writing
(3) a second stationary machine, primarily for viewing reference images and Internet content, and possibly doing some gaming and programming

The first spot, I plan to fulfill with a new cyberdeck (not this one) that "pulls out all the stops". It's going to be named 'Vyxen' and will be a proper laptop, complete with a power system that not only includes a battery but the ability to charge the battery while the computer is running (if I can make that work lol). If I can pull off the build, Vyxen is going to be *amazing*, trust me... ;)

The second and third machines, upon contemplation, have essentially been swapped in my mind, at least in part -- the writing system was originally going to be Steampunkish Too, and then it was going to be the one that did gaming and programming -- but I want a writing box that's actually for *writing*... and maaaybeee a little 'Net surfing for research. This will be a relatively simple box, almost certainly around a MeeGoPad T02 board. The third machine is another "pull out all the stops" build -- a sixteen inch wood-and-brass cube, resting on one corner somehow, with lights and all sorts of gadgetry, based on a Socket 1150 Mini-ITX board I got recently. It will have an i3-4160 CPU and a discrete graphics card.

But until I can build those... I need a box I can use, because this Win7 HP Mini 5102 is so incredibly slow that it's almost literally physically painful. *This* project page is about that stopgap machine.