ASUS EeePC at Sea

Read my follow-up report on the ASUS here! 

A FEW WEEKS AGO I was searching the Internet for a laptop computer for my son to take with him on his trip to Santiago, Chile. I wanted something cheap that he could Skype us with so I searched on the keywords “cheap laptop”. I found this little gem called the EeePC. The price point—gasp—was right about $400.00. I ordered it online with express shipping, but it arrived too late for my son, who ended up taking an old Gateway laptop that we had picked up in Spain when, during our cruise, yet another of our boat navigational laptops failed.

I figured I’d just send it back immediately, but you know, I had a 90-day return guarantee—enough time to play with the thing, just for kicks.

When I opened the shipping box, which was pretty much the size one would expect for a laptop computer, I found mostly packing material. I started digging down through the popcorn, wondering if I’d been shipped the wrong order—maybe a book or something like that—but sure enough, with a bit more digging, I found it!

The product box was small—really small, but the EeePC was even smaller than that. The two-pound black box measured a mere 1.4 x 9 x 8.5 inches, but when I picked it up, it felt solid in my hand. I opened the lid. It looked like a miniature version of other laptops I have owned. The first thing I noticed was that it had a real keyboard! True, it was a small keyboard, but they were all there-A through Z and more! And the keys actually had stroke to them when pressed, which is more than I can say for my $2000 Vaio laptop. I was instantly reminded of my much-loved HP Omnibook of many years ago.

Another thing I liked about the little machine was that it replaces delicate and failure-prone hard drives with flash memory. The model I had purchased had 4Gbs. enough for the OS and a bit to spare. I kept thinking, this thing looks and feels as though it might last a while.

(You can check out the EeeePC specifications HERE)

So far so good, but could it do any real work? I installed the battery, plugged in the AC power supply to get the thing charging, and pressed the ON button. I couldn’t believe how fast it booted up on its native Linux OS.

I started playing. I configured the built in wireless and it worked like a charm. I tried out the pre-installed Skype. The built in microphone and video camera worked flawlessly for my first call to my son, now in Chile. I checked out the various open-source applications that came preinstalled and thought to myself, this thing is really a charmer.

I started wondering if maybe I could figure out a good reason to keep the thing even if I do have computers coming out my ears, and then it struck me. If I could get my navigational and SSB radio software running on it, it might be perfect for my sailboat racing and cruising activities.

The first thing I would have to do would be to convert the machine from Linux to XP and sure enough, the EeePC’s user’s guide had a section on installing XP as well as an XP drivers CD. Now I have no illusions about installing Windows XP. I have spent more hours hacking installs into place then I care to contemplate, but let me tell you, I dug out my XP-Pro disk, plugged in my USB DVD-writer, and followed the instructions in the user guide step by step. It was the easiest XP install I have ever done. I loaded in the drivers from the CD, and damn if that little black box didn’t boot up under XP almost as fast as it did under Linux!

The next thing I did was grab a 4-gig SDC card from my camera and stick it into the SDC slot. It would have to do until I could order a 16Gb. Then I installed my trusty old version of Nobeltec’s Visual Navigation Suite, my frequently used charts, Airmail with its weather fax, GRIB, and propagation tools, XP version of Skype, and even a copy of my ancient planetarium, SkyGlobe, directing windows to use the SDC card for all installations.

Now it was time to test my applications. I double-clicked each and each fired up just as I had hoped. I Skype’d Joel again in Chile. “Hi Joel, can you hear me?” I asked. “Sure dad”, he replied. “Can you see me?” I asked. “Yep” he said.

Next, I started Visual Navigator. It came up fine but the 800 x 480 screen resolution afforded a limited view so I clicked on the screen res EeePC Utility on the taskbar and chose 800 x 600. The view was the same but now the screen would scroll up and down with my cursor to reveal the full Windows screen. Not perfect, but better.

Finally I started up Airmail and Skyglobe and both seemed to run fine.

Now it was time to figure out how to get data to my navigation and radio applications. The systems on my boat all require RS-232 communications, so I needed to find a USB to COM port emulator. Impatient as ever, I ran down to Santa Cruz Electronics and bought one for $26. Following instructions, I installed the drivers and plugged in the pigtailed device. The system choked, displaying surprise marks up and down the Control Panel-Device Manager screen.

Undaunted, I searched the Internet for EeePC forum discussions and found plenty of talk about serial port emulators. It seemed that everyone who had used an adaptor based on the Prolific chipset had smooth sailing, so I found one on the Internet for about $16 and ordered it. While searching I had also come across a simple DC-DC power adaptor for the EeePC. The prospect of taking an inverter out of the loop aboard the boat was just too good to pass up, so I ordered it as well.

Once I get a head of steam up, I have a hard time waiting for stuff to come in the mail, so I ran off to the local Circuit City to see if they had the right adaptor. No joy, but while there I saw this $36 Earthmate GPS. The package consisted of a hockey-puck USB GPS receiver and Street Atlas USA software by DeLorme. I whipped out my check card and bought it.

Once home, I installed the map software and plugged in the hockey puck. A little LED on the puck blinked red. I took it into the backyard and waited. After a while, the software kicked up a message asking if I wanted to initialize the GPS. Sure, I answered. I entered a rough estimate of my latitude and longitude. A minute later, the puck blinked green. Cool!

I grabbed my EeePC and hockey puck and jumped in the car. A few clicks later, the Street Map program displayed a map of Santa Cruz with me and my car driving down Bay Street dead center. I pulled over and clicked a few more options. Now the EeePC was talking to me—”Turn right in 500 feet”. Once again…Cool!

A few days later my serial port adapter arrived in the mail.

This time the installation was smooth as glass. I brought up Device Manager and there was my new serial port. I set it to COM1 and headed for the boat.

My DC-to-DC power supply cable also showed up.

I got down to the boat and started by plugging in the power adapter. Oh joy! The taskbar power icon showed the message “Plugged in”. That meant I would no longer need to switch to batteries to use the SSB radio. I would never again have to reboot the computer because the mouse-cursor starts jitterbugging to square sine waves. My autopilot would no longer complain about AC interference.

Next I installed DeLorme’s USB emulator software, plugged in the hockey puck GPS and fired up Visual Navigation Suite.

Visual Navigator’s GPS indicator gave me the green light and positioned my boat (Songline) at dock B15, Santa Cruz Harbor. Nice! Now I had a nice little navigation tool for whatever boat I might be on. Better than my handheld GPS, I thought to myself—real chart plotter to go.

Now I unplugged the hockey puck, disabled DeLorme on the task bar, plugged in the USB serial port emulator and connected to my boat’s radio/nav serial cable. I turned on my Console GPS, instruments, and SSB radio, and watched the Visual Navigator console. The GPS blinked on, then, thanks to my trusty old NEMA concentrator/multiplexer, each of my instrument readings blinked to life on the console—speed over water 0, compass heading 375, depth 15, and so on. “It’s lives!” I whispered to myself, rubbing my grubby hands together in satisfaction.

Finally, I started up Airmail, having already configured it for my system. My Pactor II modem blinked to life. I switched a few channels from the software interface. A complete test would need to come later, but the indications were good.

Now it was time to turn the whole mess into my long haul offshore navigation system. To do this I plugged in my big LED screen with a VGA connector, a mouse, and a full keyboard. Then I set the EeePC to stay on while the lid is closed. I powered everything up and sure enough, everything worked.

I am now in the process of cleaning up my navigation station for my new system. If everything goes well I expect to set things up as follows:

1. Create a well under the lid of my nav table to stow the EeePC while in operation aboard my boat.
2. Lead VGA and USB hub cables out from the nav table for easy interconnection of peripheral devices including my monitor, serial cable emulator, and a pocket hard disk (Western Digital has a nice 250Gb at Costco.)

For starters, here’s what I am hoping to do with my new on-board setup.

1. Run my navigation suite,
2. Run my SSB radio software,
3. Play MP3s to amplifier I have had installed on my boat,
4. Surf the Internet and get email from harbor hotspots when available,
5. Skype phone calls when harbor hotspots are available.

Of course, that’s just for starters. I mean, the imagination reels at what might be possible. And of course, it’s just a matter of unplugging the EeePC from the nav station to take it on the road. Here’s what I’ll be taking with me to the Heineken Regatta in March. Nice!

 Once I had confirmed that everything actually worked, I made one more stop at Santa Cruz Electronics and bought a 1Gb RAM module to swap with the 512Mb that comes with the computer. This should do much to insure stable XP operation when I get carried away with multiple applications.

There’s a little warning label on the access cover that says opening it will invalidate the warranty but ASUS has publicly acknowledged that opening the back to install new memory is acceptable. The installation was easy.

So there you have it. I can’t honestly say that I tested everything. There have been a few glitches along the way thus far, but nothing out of the ordinary when messing around with Windows XP. I expect that some hurdles remain to get the little box to the place I want it, but I definitely get the feeling that the EeePC is an eminently hackable little box, designed and executed in a manner that lets you turn it into a utilitarian delight. It’s been a long time since I have enjoyed tweaking a computer to get it do the things that matter to me.

At $400 before modifications, this is an incredible product that is perfect for my boat…and my car…and for traveling…and…?

I will keep you posted as I continue messing with my EeePC. In the meantime you can search the Internet on EeePC to read some of the technical articles written about this new product.

Read my follow-up report on the ASUS here! 

Tags: asus, boat, eeepc, electronic charts, gps, navigation, navigation software, sailboat, ssb radio

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 10:45 am and is filed under Features, Random Images. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.