ClockworkPi's Hal Showcases the Delayed DevTerm's Capabilities, Says Buyers Will Get It Soon
Having missed its April launch, the DevTerm is now due to start shipping this month — and its creator has shown off what buyers can expect.
ClockworkPi's delayed DevTerm kit-form cyberdeck looks like it's nearly ready to ship, with pseudonymous company founder Hal showing off the gadget's capabilities in a series of photos and videos.
Unveiled last year as a successor to the modular GameShell open source console, the DevTerm takes its inspiration from the TRS-80 Model 100 and other portable computers of the 1980s. "DevTerm is a post-modern, digital minimalist lifestyle," the company wrote at the time.
"The A5 notebook size integrates complete PC functions with a retrofuturism design, a 6.8-inch ultra-wide screen, classic QWERTY keyboard, necessary interfaces, high-speed wireless, long battery life, and even includes a practical thermal printer."
ClockWorkPi opened pre-orders for the device, which comes in kit form and with a choice of main boards from Raspberry Pi Compute Modules up to an in-house design based on a six-core chip with 4GB of RAM, at $219 with the promise they would ship by April 2021 — but a little global chip shortage put paid to that plan, with the company now saying it aims to begin shipping this month.
Production would appear to be complete, at least, with ClockworkPi's Hal taking to Twitter to show a fully-functional version of the compact computer running a range of workloads — from Google Sheets and Google Maps to Visual Studio Code, RetroArch, Inkskape, and Cave Story.
In one image, Hal even showcases the device running two emulators side-by-side: DOSBox with Microsoft Windows 3 and Basilisk II running Mac OS System 7. Other images show the system running the PICO-8 fantasy console, and the popular though long-since-abandoned Minecraft Pi Edition.
The images follow on from shots posted last month which showed the compact DevTerm next to a real, and considerably larger, TRS-80 Model 100 — with the former running the Virtual T emulator, giving it compatibility with software written for the latter.
"Sorry to keep you guys waiting," Hal says to those who had pre-ordered the device. "I'm sure you'll receive your DevTerm very soon."
The company is still accepting pre-orders for the device through the official website.