Super (Duper) 8 Video Cyber-deck
The Brief
The aim from the start was to make a genuinely usable computer that also looked good.
It's easy enough to shoehorn a Raspberry Pi into something old and call it a cyber-deck - the harder part is making it worth actually sitting down at regularly.
That meant thinking carefully about the keyboard (a kprepublic BM40 orthogonal keyboard with QMK layers configured for mouse emulation), the workflow tools, and what a practical command-line daily driver actually needs.
Before and After
Before: Hanimex film E300 editor(circa 1970)
After: Boostbox
A small computer (running GNU/Linux) that uses a command line YouTube browser to make it capable of playing a billion or so videos. Sound via the built-in speaker or bluetooth.
There’s a video of the finished terminal running on the video below.
Footnote:
Boostbox has grown well beyond the YouTube viewer in the video: multiplexing with tmux, email with neomutt, getting things done with taskwarrior, chat via weechat, and encryption with GPG.
The github notes are an evolving record of what makes it work as a usable terminal rather than a nice ornament.
And because some nice people at r/retrofuturism asked for a clean photo of the Boostbox to use as a wallpaper, here’s a downloadable clean version of the YouTube thumbnail.
