Handheld Evolution [Private]

[EmKay]

Atretes sat down at his desk and clicked on his datapad for, perhaps, the millionth time now. This time, it was to begin its end, and let a new snippet of technology take its place. He'd grown attached to the little thing, but now in his recent revelations he'd realised that he'd been carrying around a piece of old technology. It needed updating.

The young man pulled the parts together from several storage crates aboard the Hand of Fate and Morvak, and even some spare parts he'd had from droids he dissected to make his armour. He had arranged them all on the workbench in the Hand's hangar according to type, use, and function. He had a notebook to the side where he'd drawn up all the schematics, and a brief description of how it all was supposed to work. He took a moment to open the book and read over his notes.

 

[EmKay]

The prospect of building a pocket secretary with the capabilities I need is, frankly, daunting. However, I am confident in my abilities and will see to it that my needs are met by my own hand. To rely on others is folly, and while others are useful they are not to be depended on so heavily as I have before. I used friends and allies nearly as crutches to hold me up. No longer.

The outer shell should be unassuming. Perforated durasteel with a thin transparasteel screen should allow me the durability and quality necessary for just the exteriour. Next, the circuitry should be insulated, to allow the device to withstand accidental overload -- as well as a memory backup. Something on a closed circuit to prevent total loss. I need to be able to recover the system if something goes wrong...

The process was slow at first. Gathering parts while his datapad finished uploading to an external memory device. Once that was complete, Rhoujen wasted no time disassembling it into nothing, its parts going to the respective piles. He looked over his parts and pulled a red-hued visor from the table and slipped it over his eyes. Several HUD-style readouts played across the band, aiding him in his technical endeavour. He carefully, delicately peeled open several central processor units and used a plasma cutter and welding torch to make a larger processor with more cores. With just as much care as the taking apart, he assembled the new octa-core CPU. After he sealed it up, he set it to a smaller table to his left that was currently empty. He would use this one for completed parts.

 

[EmKay]

The core components will be tricky... I'm not entirely sure how I'll do it, but this technical headband I found will probably help me out while my datapad is out of commission. I just hope I'm not going to break the whole thing, that would be bad for business...

The memory chips were a little tricky. He wanted to reduce their size while maintaining their efficiency, to make the finished pocket secretary as thin as he could. The circuitry was bizarre to him, but the visor allowed him to save patterns and replicate them on a smaller scale. Where there were once long, tall bands he'd now made small, compact chips. The approximate random-access memory capacity had gone up about three-fold, which should have sped up the device's performance speed by a significant amount when coupled with the more powerful central processor. Those chips were then set on the table as well with delicate hands.

 

[EmKay]

The fun part will be the display. I always liked to tweak my own user interface into a device, and now I can make it native with all the programming associated with it. It'll be... hard, to start from scratch, but I've wired enough programmes to know what I'm doing... I hope. Here are the strings of code I'll probably need...

Little bit by little bit, the components were put into place. The solid state hard drives, the backup drive, the camera taken from a tiny droid's photoreceptor, and some spare parts he found like a retinal and fingerprint scanner. Many parts were involved, and as he tinkered them into existence the small piles on the completed parts table began to add up. One would not think such effort would go into a pocket secretary, but Atretes' new determination made him want to craft the best he could with his own two hands.

 

[EmKay]

Now, if I understand the mechanics correctly, the overall construction should run rather smoothly. I mean, it's like a tiny computer, right? How hard can it be.

He began to assemble the motherboard using the best parts he had available to him. The capacitors, circuitry, sockets, everything had to be tailored to the parts he'd made. It was a long process, rather painful, and full of cross-checking, rewiring and testing. After he fried a capacitor or two, the young man finally got the motherboard working properly, with insulated circuitry and all. He even ran a raw current trough it to test the limitations, and it held up like a champion. He smiled, and set the motherboard to the side. Then he picked up some durasteel, transparasteel, and several tools and moved to another workbench.

 

[EmKay]

Sparks were flying, metallic dust gathered around Rhoujen's feet, and the sound of heavy machinery filled the air. Atretes was using spare parts from droids, armour, and whatever random things he could find to construct the housing of the pocket secretary. The shape came out nicely, slowly shaping into the sleekness he desired. It still looked rough, being unfinished, but the shape was already apparent. It would be slim, but based on the many holes for ports and plugs it would be highly compatible to cable hookups. He grabbed a fine sander and smoothed out the metal until it shined on its own, but he wanted a more elegant appearance than polished durasteel. He grabbed a sealant, primer, black paint, and clear sealant, and spray-painted the pieces. The process took a few hours in which he also tinkered away at more internal components and shaped the transparasteel screen and touch-sensitive underlay, as well as the display components and illumination. After the pieces all dried and glossy black, he continued working.

 

[EmKay]

Now the pieces could come together. First, screws mounted the motherboard in place. Nice and sturdy. The shell itself was composed of two thin layers of durasteel with a protective layer of insulation between them, glued in and compressed tightly. While not sturdy against weaponry, it would protect the device against most power surges. He needed to use it for electronic endeavours, not as a weapon. That would be ridiculous.

Next, he added the small chips of memory, graphics, audio, the central processor, wireless connectivity adapter, and long-range antenna relay, among other things. Small nuances that allowed him more connectivity to various things, and the core components that gave the device its might. Next he attached a small chip reader for data stored on external devices such as the one he used to back-up his old datapad, the battery pack, and storage device. Those all connected without a hitch as well. He ran a mild current through the device to test its connectivity, and everything checked out. He nodded to himself, and proceeded with the rest of the operation, tucking away thread-thin wires, attaching small yet effective fans and heatsinks, and then finally setting up the touch display and screen, before closing the whole thing up in its shell.

He plugged it in to charge, and waited for that to finish before he took the next, arguably more complicated steps.

 

[EmKay]

The device flickered to life, and the screen showed up blank. The only indication it was on was a light that shone through the perforations, and the obvious strange glow of the screen. He took the chip that he backed up his previous datapad with and slipped it into the port, clicking it in with the little spring mechanism that held it in place. The device restarted, then showed boot options. He tapped 'boot from external device', and the haptic feedback he'd installed caught him by surprise for a moment. It added a more tactile feel to typing, however, and he quite enjoyed that.

The boot sequence began, and the upload started. It said it would take about two hours to complete and work the old programming into the new machine. He'd have to update everything, but this was good framework to build on. He decided to go for a nap in the meantime, to give his brain a rest from working on this advanced custom pocket secretary all day.

 

[EmKay]

This part was a bit tricky. As all of his parts were custom built, none of them had pre-installed compatibility software with the operating system, not that any of that would anyway, since it was his own operating system as well. That meant he had to code every line of data that told the devices to work together efficiently. The process was long, hard, and gave him several headaches. He had to take frequent breaks, go off and walk around the ship, or even play a little bit of cards with himself to ease the frustration. The entire process took longer than constructing the pocket secretary's components, but after several restarts, installations, and reconfigurations, he'd finally made the device work as he'd intended it to on a hardware compatibility level. He took a long sigh and rested his forehead on the table. He still had to write and design custom applications and interfaces.

 

[EmKay]

Two days. It would have been up to three months, but he got help from the databases stored on the Hand to get some pre-made applications and edit them around to suit his needs. It was tiresome, and more than once he decided to practice his lightsaber on some empty crates to ease his tension. Finally, FINALLY, after about four days of work, Atretes had his finished product. A sleek, compact pocket secretary with advanced security options and highly compatible interface to aid in his occasional slicing endeavours. He sat back, too hard, and fell backward in his chair. It was finally frakking finished. Now onto other tasks... but... tomorrow.

[End]