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Project: Retro-Style Tablet Computer
Entry: 0 - Concept
Category: {Electrical Engineering, Retro Tech}


I'm not entirely sure why I'm interested in retro style technology, but
the analog nature of it excites me. Give me a device with a bunch of
buttons, knobs, and switches any day of the week. The more "down to
earth" (manual and least abstracted) the device is, the more interested
I am in it. It is with this thought that I want to remark on a project 
that I've been wanting to tackle for many years, which is a retro style
tablet.

The inspiration for this project came while I was hiding from an alien.
Seriously! I was making my way through the game Alien Isolation when I
stumbled upon a curious tablet looking device on top of a desk. The
design of it, just like the rest of the retro-tech featured in the 
original Alien, immediately captured my attention. See [1] for a few
images of the retro tablet that I scalped from the web-portion of the
internet. Quite a fascinating design, isn't it?

I was immediately hooked on the idea of producing my own tablet like
device with mechanical keys, switches, and low profile thumb
potentiometers. That handle from the Alien Isolation tablet is a nice
feature, though I could perhaps replace it with a solar panel strip, 
such as those you can find on portable calculators. A nice e-ink display
would be very low-powered and amazing to work with.

It sounds like I have an awesome project on my hands, though I still
need to convince myself a little as I'm generally weary of anything
that takes my hands off a keyboard (I'm looking at you, touchpad;
the trackpoint is superior.) A touchscreen device with only a few
buttons on the side is of no interest to me, but a tablet with a bunch
of physical buttons for input would satisfy my preferences.

So, what would I expect out of a device?

At the moment, I, as a user, would expect:
- txt & PDF reading
- Gopher browsing
- Offline OSM support

That above would be more than sufficient project requirements to start 
with for a first model.

What other requirements would I have?
- Low power utilization.
- Clean, and efficient hardware and software design (with a preference
  for as much assemby programming as possible!).

Finally, before I start any basic proof of concept, perhaps I should
look at examples of early tablet like computers from the past.
I found a few that look interesting, even though most of them wouldn't
meet the definition of a tablet by modern standards:

- Dynabook [2]
- Epson PX-8 [3]
- Epson HX-20 [4]
- Radio Shack's TRS-80 [5]
- NEC PC 8201A [6]
- Soviet Sphinx Console [7] 


**** References ****
[1] alien_isolation_tablet.jpg
[2] dynabook.jpg
[3] epson_px8.jpg
[4] epson_hx20.jpg
[5] trs80.jpg
[6] nec_pc8201a.jpg 
[7] soviet_sphinx_system.jpg


#### Page Created: 2023-04-06 ############ Last Edited: 2023-04-07 ####