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[customportables]

Custom built desktop? Yeah I got one. Who doesn't?

What I really need is a laptop. But I want a laptop I can use to draw- and it feels like my options are to lug along a drawing tablet as well, and find a place to set it all up, or a.... Surface tablet.

Eugh.

But fear not: I have inspiration- and a base.

Enter the Toshiba Portege M780:

This is a pretty unassuming looking laptop- it was released in 2009, and boy does it look like it!

Not a bad thing though! Personally I adore this look- thin laptops just don't do it for me. I want my laptops to have BEEF. I want to be able to hurl it and feel confident it survived! But regardless- what's going on at the bottom here?

Huh. Weird place to put buttons- especially a power button. And is that an extra hinge in the middle? And on the back-

Ignoring the missing piece- What's this on the back over the dock port? Some kind of... What, an extra port? If we take this plastic off...

Nope, some sort of stylus shaped hole. Huh...

Well, if you guessed (or if you know) that's right, this is a tablet! Or at least, a convertible laptop. First released in 1994, the Portege line is only one year older than the oldest convertible, the Compaq Concerto. It also lasted a bit longer, with the last model released in 2017, two years before all Toshiba laptops were axed. This model (again, 2009) is a convertible over a detachable netbook, and originally had a Wacom digitizer built into the screen. It even has pressure sensitivity- or, had. Mine came without a few pieces, like the pen, and anything not soldered in.

You can see the graphic tablet features a little clearer on this M205 I also have:

Regardless, this M780 (while a little beat up and ugly) is the perfect candidate to make my perfect convertible, portable laptop. The heart of all this is the Framework laptop mainboard and the Huion Kamvas. The full list as of right now:

Framework AMD Ryzen 7 7840U Mainboard

1x 16 GB RAM, leaving one slot for the option of later upgrades

1TB SSD

Additional framework laptop components (audio board, speakers, battery/charger, power button, probable antennae, and potentially trackpad)

Mechanical keyboard - likely utilizing Kailh low profile switches, either white or blue.

Huion Kamvas 13" graphics tablet

And the extra features I'd love to implement somehow:

Bluetooth macro pad that snaps into one of my now-empty slots

Built in pen AND nib holder

Currently the plan goes something like this:

Disassemble Portege. Figure out what space I have to work with.

Create internal layout. Requires having parts for measurement.

Model and print brackets for parts. Glue inside case.

Attach everything.

Profit! (not really. This is going to cost over 1k...)

My current next step will be to create a more solid roadmap and plan- then get everything prettied up and shared here for easy access.

I am probably NOT the first to do this, but I'm hoping to encourage more custom laptop builds- or at least make them more accessible. If nothing else, I hope to get a cool laptop out of it!