Worklog Pi CM5 board for a Vaio P Computer

[MatthewCampbell]

I have one of these old Sony Vaio P laptops, and I just put together a little board for putting a Raspberry Pi CM5 into it. The goal is to keep the original shell, screen and keyboard but give it a modern brain so it's actually usable again.

What the board does

• Holds the CM5 and fits into the original mainboard space
• Drives the original display through via an RGB bridge on the GPIO Ports
• Wires up the stock keyboard and trackpoint over I2C to usb converter
• Handles power from the original battery, but I don't have charging yet, I have to still hack the sambas
• Breaks out USB and HDMI

Where it's at
It boots Raspberry Pi OS on the internal screen (photo above). The screen and the keyboard and mouse are working. Still to do battery charging, sleep, case fit tweaks.

Hardware notes
It's a 6 ayer, designed in KiCad, made at JLCPCB. The trickiest part was getting it to fit inside the tiny Vaio Case.

I'm planning to open-source the KiCad files once it's cleaned up. Happy to answer questions, and I'd love suggestions on getting the SMBUS and battery charging working.

 

[Archoni]

ive never owned a vaio laptop but ive always liked how they look. im excited to see how this goes D

 

[MatthewCampbell]

ive never owned a vaio laptop but ive always liked how they look. im excited to see how this goes D

Yeah I bought 6 now becoming a collectors item. I want to do this for some other laptops later also

 

[MatthewCampbell]

I started with an off the shelf battery board to debug it. Sony uses a proprietary SMBUS for their batteries, had to reverse engineer it. Now I can charge and discharge and get battery state and even thrimristor data. I have made a prototype of my battery board and sent to off to be made. Anyone have any advice on designing safe laptop battery boards?

 

[Urban]

Hola si eehm lamento la molestia de que tengas que usar Google Translate pero tengo una pregunta yo quiero hacer algo parecido de Encoger una pc o laptop a una BK-GPS4350BT para poder usarlo para uhm cualquier cosa o lo suficiente para jugar Isaac Recomp o The bonding of Isaac en general, podrias relatarme si es posible Achicar una Laptop Gama baja como una placa G4? solo necesito que sea x86 y que se pueda usar la misma pantalla, es como tener un pc en miniatura, porque ya se que puedo usar el Celular pero siento que ya no hay chiste de tener un GPS/Pc que pueda correr un Isaac o que se yo, Navegar en la web aunque dudo que pueda aunque me guste, se que Windows trae una funcion de touch, asi que eso ay no se no tengo mucha experiencia para no decir que nada para hacer este tipo de cosas pero quien no podria con una guia paso a paso y si es demasiado ambicioso o imposible al menos tratare de experimentar jeje la humanidad aprendio en base a prueba y error, asi que porfavor ayudame y es Un GPS este dispositivo jeje por si buscas imagenes ponle GPS BAK BK-GPS4350BT

 

[MatthewCampbell]

Hi, yes, I'm sorry you have to use Google Translate, but I have a question. I want to do something similar to shrinking a PC or laptop to a BK-GPS4350BT so I can use it for, um, anything, or at least enough to play Isaac Recomp or The Bonding of Isaac in general. Could you tell me if it's possible to shrink a low-end laptop like one with a G4 motherboard? I just need it to be x86 and have the same screen available. It's like having a miniature PC, because I know I can use my phone, but I feel like there's no point in having a GPS/PC that can run Isaac or something like that. I'd like to browse the web, though, although I doubt I could, even though I'd like to. I know Windows has a touch function, so... I don't know. I don't have much experience, practically none, doing this kind of thing, but who couldn't with a step-by-step guide? And if it's too ambitious or impossible, at least I'll try to experiment, haha. Humanity learned through trial and error, so please help me. And this device is a GPS, haha. If you're looking for images, search for GPS BAK BK-GPS4350BT

Yeah there are mini x86 boards but a lot less flexible size wise. It’s better off to just emulate what x86 games you want to play on arm

 

[MatthewCampbell]

Before we were using the stm dev board, we got our personally made battery dev board and now we have SMBus (Sony battery protocol) working on it and charging our main board. Now I need to do a final iteration of the battery and main boards