ASUS Eee 900e netbook Mod
Background
The ASUS Eee PC is nostalgic for me as it was the first hack I ever
fascinated me as a kid
It was a war driving setup for cracking wifi WPA and modding the firamware on the wifi card to let you send modified packets(details may be rusty)
I love this form factor its so tiny and portable and has lots of ports I would love a modern usable at minimum setup.
my dream is a Linux based very open source modifiable setup, that’s why I picked framework. Lately I have been chasing if Steam Deck is possible as gaming would be hilarious.
I have disassembled the chassis and measured the internal space. Currently, I am looking at two primary candidates for the motherboard but also have considered the display but the motherboard may change that so thats first.
(These dimensions are garbage rough I may redo them later)
After full disassembly I looked at what I wanted to keep. The Keyboard and touchpad are a priority atm
(touchpad buttons are on the old mobo so that’s a later problem)
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Touchpad
The touchpad is what Im looking at now.
(pics later)
12 connections, probably ps2.
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Keyboard
(pics later)
26connections (30 pin ribbon cable) will be on the same micro controller as the touchpad and the left over gpio will be used for extras
I will probably model all this out before I start buying parts. I have not modeled in CAD ever, Blender/maya modeled for a few years but its been way longer since I have done that so Im rusty.
Found a steamdeck “for parts” on ebay for a reasonable price (260usd) they said some screws were missing and the display connector was broken which does not matter to me so way better than buying a solo motherborard. Hopefully it fits and maybe I fix the steam deck if it does not fit.
Keyboard is wired up.
Removed the connector from the OG mobo because Idk how else I would connect to the ribbon cable.
No shorts but Idk if I’m actually making connection to the ribbon cable as its slightly melted. I’ll whip up some test code tomorrow but I don’t expect it to work. Might get lucky though.
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I can’t believe this hand wired shit actually works lol.
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Steamdeck arrived so I immediately check the fit and its wonderful I’ll absolutely get this in there.
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I wanted to do something very similar for ages too. I assume for the display and peripherals, you’re just going to use a USB-C dock to hook up everything and use extension cables inside of the chassis?
One thing to keep in mind with the steam deck stripped down is that you won’t be able to access the BIOS as it relies on holding the volume up and power button at the same time.
You might also need to rely on a steam deck battery due to firmware
I have not figured out the peripherals but yeah usbc hub/dock will be the easiest solution as long as it all fits.
good note on the bios. I did not know lol. Ill maybe need to add the audio board in there. I may just need to find another solution though. I mean Ill have a keyboard hooked up would that not work?
As far as I can tell there’s no keyboard shortcut available for getting into the bios
Maybe time to take a page out of Lenovo’s playbook, make a hidden button that presses power+volume up and have the button hidden behind a pinhole that you can’t easily press without using a paper clip from the outside
Well some progress the steam deck motherboard fits well and its functional booted up to the stock os. Removed some support structures from the inside of the laptop case.
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Been working on reverse engineering the touchpad and its been a struggle but progress has been made, I think.
I realized I need a level shifter because the touch pad is actually 5v not 3.3v so I probably fried 2 gpio and but its not that bad ultimately. will report back when I have the shifter in.
For those curious its the 4-channel I2C-safe Bi-directional Logic Level Converter (BSS138)
it has the pull up resisters I need as well so that kinda shrinks things because I only had the bulky thought hole ones.
just plugged it into the laptop slapped some nvme heatsyncs on the hot parts and killed my RP2040 BUT i figured out its 5v for sure all around, power and clock and data, so the level shifter will fix this and soon I will have the trackpad working on steamdeck.
The trackpad works. I absolutely do not recommend anyone doing that, holy crap. secret codes to get it into modes that are more than just a simple touchpad.
Now it just needs to be packaged up into the laptop. level shiftier did work. BTW
This was a huge step forward the last steps are cooling and the monitor but I think those will be easier. maybe Ill eat those words but whatever.
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So the way I implemented this was I reverse engineered the protocol the driver in Linux uses to talk to these devices. But I realized after the fact that there is literally a driver for this thing and I just programmed my way around it. But I could have just made the microcontroller mimic a ps2 port over usb instead of doing all the work the driver does. Now I did get a fully customized touchpad that has some cool features that will work in any OS but I could have just talked to the driver lol Idk ot seems like I over engineered it in the end. The only downside if having to compile code every time I want to make a change. Vs making changes at the OS level
long time no update, I got the screen controller in and just need to roughly shove it all together for a test run then start carefully laying it all out. I doubt it will fit honestly so I will be gettin creative with removing some bits off the screen controller.
