Why PotatoP?
- The word "Potato" is often used to describe an underpowered/poorly performing device. "This video must have been filmed with a potato!" This device is intentionally underspecced to ensure long battery life.
- The "toP" suffix refers to the intended eventual laptop form factor
- The suffix "p" is used for LISP predicates - functions that return true or false, like "evenp" or "primep" for numbers. Is it a potato or not? It depends on your point of view!
- It lets me call the OS PotatOS! (Or maybe I won't after all, it seems to have been taken by another very cool project)
This project is heavily inspired by Technoblogy's super cool Lisp Badge, the Lisperati 1000, the Open Source Autarkic Laptop and ei2030 working groups, the playdate, various projects featured on r/cyberDeck and lots of other cool stuff I forgot about already!
This looks great! Reminds me of my PalmPilot, which makes me think AA batteries would be best :)
Have you considered attaching two 4.4" LCDs? I'm thinking that if you stack them vertically you'd have the best setup for text as you could effectively have one long display. Of course, you could also do cool things like having the REPL in the bottom half and the graphics display in the top half (Apple ][ Logo?), having two files open at the same time, etc.
This is making me want to learn how to do hardware.
EDIT: looking at your artist rendering, seems like you've already had the 2 LCD idea. Carry on!