Well, I did it!
What did I do? I successfully added on a touch-screen to my EEE PC, that’s what!
I ordered one off Ebay (for those keeping track, I ordered kiddshop’s, the transmittance and slim screen sold me), and I had to solder some of the wires and connections (FIRST TIME EVER), and it totally worked!! Yes, I am proud of myself. I would like to add that this little machine is simply beautiful. It was so easy to mod, and is so easy to use, anybody could do it. The 7″ screen leaves enough room around the edges to add little circuit boards and lay some wires down. I would not want the 9″ version, not when the 7″ is so easy to work with.
One sour apple, tho…the driver/calibration situation for the touch with the default Xandros Linux OS is a bit buggy, and was a complete pain in the arse to set up. Also, the kiddshop team speaks very poor english, so getting help from them was a frustrating experience. I plan on publishing a nice, comprehensive english version of some installation instructions and sending it to them as soon as I work out all of the bugs in the driver (for instance if the EEE enters suspend, it turns off the webcam port).
Next?? I plan on fabricating a tiny, internal 4 port usb hub to go INTO the EEE, and put in a bluetooth adapter, a really big flash drive (or sdhc card reader) for extra Internal storage, and a GPS receiver (ohhhh yeah!). Oh, and I plan on putting the GPS and the blue tooth on switches, so I can manually turn them on and off!. Of course, I still need to purchase the GPS and flash drive (or sdhc card reader).
Well, so far, so good. I haven’t messed about with putting a different OS on it, yet (some flavor of Ubuntu, be certain), but right now it’s a 4G ssd, 2G ddr2, 900Mhz intel cpu, 7″ touch screen LCD, bad ass little machine. When I complete my mod, I will post detailed instructions explaining just what went into the whole process (including cost), and just what I was left with.
By the way, I was so freaking impressed with the touch action, and the ease of setting it up, I have decided my next “toy” will be and extra 10″ to 15″ touch panel monitor for my desktop, it’s going to sit off to the side and mirror the existing monitor (a 32″ wide dell lcd ultra sharp). That will be cool…totally unnecessary, but damn cool.
EDIT: Click here to learn how to install drivers for kiddshop’s touch under the defaul XandrOS, and click here for the same under Ubuntu 8.04!