Since childhood I have always been a big science fact and science fiction fan. Every chance I got I would consume some new science article that was published or find a new sci-if author to read. In my teens I was reading a lot of books by authors of the golden age of sci-fi; Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and their contemporaries.
Always on the lookout for newer sci-if authors I discovered the novel “Neuromancer” by William Gibson in the mid 80’s and was immediately fascinated by his cyberpunk aesthetic. Also being a big computer nerd I loved the idea of cyberspace and the cyberdeck from his novels. I remember pretending to be hacking in cyberspace while sitting at the keyboard of my Amiga 500. I imagined finding some way to convert the Amiga 500 into something resembling a cyberdeck from the novels, but at the time I did not have the knowledge nor the means to do so.
Fast forward about 30 years, technology and my knowledge of it has advanced. Every so often as I see the continued miniaturization of computers I thought back to the cyberdeck concept. I have a bunch of Raspberry Pi’s that I tinker with and I often think about building one into a computer console but my vision of what it would be has never been well defined.
One day while browsing eBay for random computer parts to start a project I came across a listing for a vintage Sakhr AX170 MSX computer. I was struck by it’s quirky design and the neurons in my brain fired up. This was almost exactly the idea in my head of how a cyberdeck from “Neuromancer” would look. I had my inspiration, I purchased the computer and waited for it to show up. When it arrived I tore open the box and placed the computer on my desk, admiring its quirky beauty and planning the details of my cyberdeck build.
I plan on putting a Raspberry Pi 4 inside since I have several lying around. I want to retain some functionality of the slots, I plan on using one for GPIO and USB, the other for USB and maybe battery power.
In my vision of a cyberdeck there is no display as all output would be via a neural interface. That not being practical today I will put some sort of display on this, and I plan on a secondary HDMI port as well as USB and Ethernet out on the back panel
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