It is certain that there are plenty of folks on the planet who would gladly give up a chunk of raw performance and trade it for longer battery life. The Evertop PC, an open-source project however, takes battery life to a new extreme by packing 80's hardware and an ever-so efficient E-ink display.
As mentioned, the project is open-source and is freely accessible to anyone who deems it worthy of interest. Retro fans will be particularly pleased with this IBM XT clone, and according to its creator, @ericjenott, the system is capable of mimicking an actual IBM XT clone equipped with an 80186 processor and a whopping megabyte of memory thanks to the ESP32 controller. Unsurprisingly, choice of operating systems is limited to its era, and the list includes DOS, Minix, as well as a few others. Needless to say, the vast majority of DOS software from the 80s is supported, contingent upon their being IBM XT compatible.
At the top, a 5.83-inch display with a resolution of 648 x 480 is on offer. Being an E-Ink panel, the display requires absolutely no power when not refreshing. Storage requirements are taken of by a 256 GB SD card - perfectly fast enough considering the rest of the hardware. Thanks to its massive 10,000 mAh battery and low-power hardware, the system is capable of extremely impressive runtimes away from the wall - somewhere in the range of 200 to 500 hours depending on intensity. Moreover, solar charging support has also been included, allowing for 50 hours of use from a single hour of charge.
As far as connectivity is concerned, the Evertop boasts a decent array of ports including PS/2 for mouse and keyboard, an ethernet jack, USB for transferring files, serial (9-pin RS232 and TTL). Video output is made possible by CGA ( Color Graphics Adapter), MCGA, Hercules, as well as partial EGA and VGA support, likely with resolution and depth limitations. A cut-down variant with fewer ports, dubbed the Evertop Mini, is also in the works. All told, for retro computing enthusiasts, the Evertop sure does appear to be a fun project to contribute to.
Source(s)
GitHub, spotted by Liliputing