Lunatic idea or neat concept?

I found a molded plastic housing the same length and width as my 6651, and very thin, but deep enough to hold betteries and electronics.

So, I'll take an ultrathin 40gb laptop drive, the circuit board from my 2.5" USB external enclosure, 4 18650 cells, a charging circuit from batteryspace, the guts of a powered 4 port usb 2.0 hub and a right angled usb connector. Maybe I'd better spec out some flat cells to save space.

I'll fit it all in the housing, using the cells to power the hub, and thereby the drive. I'll line up the hub and drill slots in the housing to access the 3 remaining usb ports. The right angle usb connector will go from the 6651 usb port to the hub. I'll rig a power jack in the housing to handle a charger.

The whole thing will mount with velcro to the bottom of the 6651, adding a bit to the height. The 6651 is no pocket size hpc so adding some height is no big deal.

I have the parts laying around so why not? Can anyone think of a better approach to super mass storage or has a better idea of how to rig things up?

and, no, buying a *real* laptop is not a helpful suggestion.

How about a simple 8GB ATA flash card. You can pick one up for only a few grand....

Love doing mod things...would be pretty cool if it all worked. Be sure and put in a switch to turn the thing off when not needed.

Rich

Good idea! if it works AND Nick can make the USB host card work on 720's, i may do something like that for my J728

oh, btw, you don't need a USB 2.0 hub, as a 1.1 will suffice, because 6651 usb port is 1.1

I'm using parts I have already hence the USB 2 powered hub. This all come about as I had everything as described running on my 6651 and it was a pain to gather it all up to move to another room.

Finding the right size housing for it all was a fluke. I'll post my progress once I choose my batteries and get them.

maybe a weard question, but why do you want three extra usb-ports?? What do you connect to them? I use my connector only sometimes, and one is for me einough.

btw, how do you connect a 20 GB harddisk to the 6651, it can only handles a couple "usb-mass storage" devices with the reg hack and some dll's that is written in another topic.

good question.

I have to power the hdd drive chassis and I have a powered USB micro hub. I figured powering the hdd chassis through the hub is easier as any other high current USB devices will draw from the USB hub and not the intermec port. I use a USB mouse a lot, so there's the need for extra usb ports.

when do you start building it? I realy want to see the results (details, specs and photo's)

I start as soon as I get my batteries and charging unit from batteryspace. I need to find a few bux first cuz I'm also in need of many 18650 cells for my 6651 packs and some other toys around here.

Live every project I dream up, I always seem to be short a few bux to get started. Oh well, I can always get everything mounted in the chassis and plop the cells in when they arrive.

I also think I found a way to mount the chassis to allow my 6651 to still work in tablet mode, which I use a fair bit, especially when in the car with Calligrapher.

Duh, just dawned on me. This will also be a great external mass storage with added USB ports for a "real" laptop. Hmm, I wonder if there's enough room in the chassis for 2 hdds? I'll build with that in mind. You can never have too much storage, CE or otherwise

Maybe you've tested it also, but I connected one mouse and three cardreaders to the Intermec by using a 4 usb hub. It worked all without problems, and the speed was enough to play music from usb1, transfering data from usb2 to usb3 and using the usb mouse without problems.
(usb1 is and cardreader with cf card, usb2 was also a cardreader with cf in it, usb3 was a digital camera with a xd card in it and usb4 was the mouce. The hub was powered with external power)

No, not a lunatic idea...it is something I would also try if I had the spare parts lieing around. Have you ever considered - more bucks, I know - a bluetooth card for it and a bluetooth interface for the hard drive?

BTW, can you get a usb webcam to work on your computer?

Intermecc 6651 has a digital still camera/webcam built-in, so no need for a usb webcam

While we are on the subject of webcams.. Anybody know of a way to get a camera to feed video into an HPC/Pro or HPC2000 device for viewing and writing out on a CF card?

Also, anybody know of a USB keyboard driver for an MP880?

Wally, great hack! You can turn it into a mobile docking station or function extender. Love it.

HP Jornada series can use the Jornada pocket camera, which can take still images or video (via portrait and other software)

Thanks MC.

Does it also work with the 680 series? Has anybody tried it on a mobilepro 780? And most importantly, is there an SDK for it? I'd like to be able to control it programatically.

Alpha revision 2.

Instead of allowing space for a 2nd hdd in the housing, I'm planning to put the guts of a multi type flash card reader in. So, I need to hear from people that have used various types of USB multi card readers that don't need drivers to recognize the various card types. I'll solder the reader direct to one of the ports on the powered hub. I'll still have two USB available ports for whatever.

My desktop card reader (USB) only reads CF cards without drivers. Some of you have mentioned pcmcia multi card readers that work fine on your hpcs and recognize all the flashcards without drivers.

So, can anyone provide a manufacturer name or model for a USB multi card reader that doesn't need drivers

PS. Geez, I hate being broke, between my fridge dying and some major unexpected plumbing problems I have to wait another month before ordering my batteries and charger circit