I have a few posts on various details of this project, but this is is something of a summary/conclusion post as it’s just been finished up.

Hardware Summary

• Pine A64 LTS SBC. This includes the capability to charge and run directly off lithium batteries, and I have some details on that here.
• 4 x 18650 cells in parallel that runs everything for 6+ hours
• 1920×480 LCD from Aliexpress. The height works, but it’s a little too wide. Given I’ll be running almost entirely in the terminal, this was solvable with a “stty cols 170”
• Various switches/wires/etc.

Build Notes

• The 5V supply (including for the USB ports) is constantly active while the battery is connected, and when the SBC is shut down, it sits at the battery voltage (somewhere around 3.1-3.8V) rather then 5V. These two attributes meant I needed to add a switch to the screen power supply – I ran this off the 5V pins on the Pi header, and the switch fits nicely into the old power switch location on the Model 100. I also replaced the old DC jack with another one so I could keep the old motherboard stock.

• I could really do with a shorter HDMI cable, but this one still fits. Battery pack in the bottom left.

• The screen I attached with 3M strips that I could get it close to the original distance from the screen cover – looks good. I also installed a new LED into the old “Low Battery” spot, running off another GPIO pin and indicating to me… Surprise! When the battery is low 🙂 You can see the wires coming off the right hand side of the screen in the image below.

• The ports on the A64 line up OK with the rear ports on the back of the Model 100 so I can still access the USB ports (or at least one of them) and the power button. I was considering breaking everything out and installing new buttons in the holes, but my “workshop” is currently very limited and that would have taken more time than I wanted to spend.

Usability

With tmux and two terminals side by side, this is incredibly functional for me. I spend a lot of time on the CLI of various network devices. I still need to add a couple of characters to the keyboard script so this is 100% usable, but otherwise the feel is great and there’s no distractions. Great battery life also.

A note on modification of old devices

I do appreciate that for some people, hacking on a 37 year old device would be considered sacrilegious. I have some sympathy. FYI I have a second Model 100 which I’m not touching, and now I have parts to keep that running. Also, my new device is something I’ll use every week, whereas a stock Model 100 is not hugely useful to most people (including me), even if you spend a lot of time on the CLI like I do. So to me, my modified Model 100 is actually a much better tribute as something I can regularly use. I can appreciate opinions might differ – if you want to restore and preserve a Model 100, there seems to always plenty on Ebay 🙂