Olimex begins shipping Teres-I DIY laptop kit

Bulgarian open hardware specialist Olimex has officially launched the Teres-I open-source laptop, which now includes 2GB of DDR3 memory and 16GB of onboard eMMC flash storage.

Originally announced back in February, the Teres-I is designed to offer usable - though hardly high-end - performance in a compact laptop housing. The original specifications called for a quad-core 64-bit AllWinner A64 system-on-chip (SoC), 1GB of RAM, and 4GB of eMMC flash storage; in its launch announcement Olimex has shared that the specs have now been boosted to include 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage as well as additional expansion connectors for a future field-programmable gate array (FPGA) add-on which will add oscilloscope and logic analyser functions to the system.

It's this hackability that Olimex is relying upon to really sell the Teres-I. Unlike a traditional x86 laptop, which offers considerably higher performance, the Teres-I is entirely open hardware with both hardware and software design files being published to the Olimex GitHub repository - meaning, if you wanted, you could potentially build one yourself from the component level upwards.

Although the first production run has now been completed, Olimex warns that any orders placed will be entered into a queue following higher than expected demand. 'This project took lot of time and we have long list of registered interest for ordering, bigger than the number of laptops we could build in the first run,' the company explains in its launch announcement. 'Be prepared that after you order your laptop will not be shipped immediately but in 2-3 weeks (or less) depending on workload and number of orders to be processed. Once/if the first run is sold we will make the laptop out of stock and will work on second run which may take few months to complete, but we will produce this laptop until there is interest for it, so if you do not succeed to order during the first run, do not give up.'

The FPGA expansion module, meanwhile, is due 'in the next months', with analogue to digital conversion (ADC), digital to analogue conversion (DAC), and general-purpose input/output (GPIO) functionality on top of gateware files which enable oscilloscope and logic analyser functions.

More information on the Teres-I is available on the official product page, while orders have opened at €288 including VAT (around £256) for the self-assembly kit.