Clockwork uConsole – a ready made CyberDeck?

(following on from some DIY CyberDeck-ness from Nov 2022)

So my Clockworkpi.com uConsole arrived earlier this month – I went for the RPi-CM4-lite version to keep the costs down as I already have spare CM4s lying around. I don’t really need the 4G modem option as I’ve got a Particle Tachyon on pre-order that I’m hoping will add portable 5G sometime later… and I always have a smartphone or two with me at all times so WiFi’s just as good 😉 I ordered the uConsole in early November and despite the stated “90 business days” delivery time it actually came early – taking just over 2 calendar months (months that included Christmas/New Year holidays too).

The uConsole device comes in kit form but it is really easy to assemble… a 2.5mm hex-key is included and all the parts are secured using the same 2.5mm hex screws. For the curious there are already a lot of assembly guides/videos out there . The trickiest bit is probably flashing the eMMC stoarage on the CM4 if you don’t use a “lite” version – for this you’ll need a CM4 IO board and some software – guide here.

Unfortunately eMMC versions of the Pi CM4 can’t access the uConsole mainboard’s SD card slot OR WiFi – so I had to buy another CM4 with WiFi, so while I was at it I upgraded to 32GB eMMC too 😉

The uConsole’s mainboard only has 1 x USB 2 socket so using that to house a WiFi adapter would severely limit any future flexibility… Hmmmm?

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I moved the adhesive wi-fi antenna sticker onto a plastic spacer (as suggested in the forums to improve signal strength) then I installed Rex’s latest bookworm image with kernel 6.6.10 and everything just worked…

Still to do: add another USB socket or (internal?) USB-hub via the “Expansion Port” on the left hand side – there are USB signals tracked to the footprint of the 4G chip, some careful soldering can easily pick these up… and there are loads of mods to take inspiration from on the clockworkpi.com forums.

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And of course I had to hook the tiny thing up to the MC400 – a couple of portable computers about 35 years apart in age and depending on how you calculate your benchmarks the Clockwork uConsole (pi cm4 – 4 x ARM cortex A72 @ 1.5GHz) is about 850 to 22740 times faster than the MC400 (1 x 8086 @ 7.68MHz).

I got the old Psion MCLINK DOS software running in DOSBox on the Pi… the serial link runs at 19200 baud and takes about 25s to transfer a screenshot (a massive 31kB!) from the MC to the pi 🤔