Open Source Notebook Novena Gets First Motherboard

Huang said that he is only using hardware components with blueprints that are available free of licensing charges. Called Novena, the design of the device will also be made available free of charge.

Huang already published an image of the custom motherboard, which sports a 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9, a Vivante GC2000 OpenGL ES2.0 GPU, 64-bit, DDR3-1066 SO-DIMM, upgradable to 4 GB, two internal and two external USB 2.0 connectors, as well as a 3-axis accelerometer. He mentioned that the design began in June of this year and the first prototype motherboard was shipped in early December. According to Huang, the board is booting Linux at this time.

With a size of 121 mm x 150 mm, Huang says that the board fits "comfortably underneath a standard-sized laptop keyboard". The height is 14 mm, which is comparable to boards used in today's mainstream notebooks.

While Huang said that he will allow his design to be used 1:1 by others as well as for improvements, he said that not many people will want to go through the rather tedious process of having their board actually manufactured. In this case, he suggested to launch a Kickstarter campaign, if we can find "a few hundred folks" that are interested in the design.

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