It was a Friday evening I was at the local Circuit City. I was wasting time before I was supposed to be watching a movie. I spotted in the young kids toy isle a Hotwheels Toy Laptop. The Hot Wheels Accelerator
Laptop is learning device for ages 5 and up, with 60 word and math related games. On simple size comparison I realized it was very close to the size of my Sony Vaio SR33.
After purchasing the Hot Wheels Accelerator Laptop I took it home for a little more sizing up. There are a couple areas the Hotwheels and my Sony are exact.
On the bottom I had to take the little rubber feet off to reveal four of the nine screws. There is a small circuit board that receives the keyboard input and send
that off to the LCD in the top panel. I had to cut though the rainbow wires connecting these parts due to the cemet holding some of the parts and wires to the plastic.
The Hotwheels laptop has a small monocrome LCD, deisplay computer, keyboard, 4 direction
mouse and main computer. All of the above is garbage. The only thing worth while was the case itself. I started gutting the Hotwheels like it was a
fish and saving every part in a plastic ziplock bag. I was not thinking about putting the parts into anything computer related. I just might need a part or two, like screws or plastic
standoffs. I do want to say, there was nothing cheap about the construction of the Hotwheels laptop. Well designed and manufactured. It just would run better with a Pentium processor and 3D graffics chip.
As I ripped through this body of plastic a couple of things occured to me. One, the motherboard from the Sony wouldn't fit perfectly into this Hotwheels body.
Two the clearance is going to be an issue with the super-child-proof plastic top. Three, I should get some safety glasses because the "Name of the Game is Safety" and I was going to a lot of Dremmeling.
As I took apart the Sony I was noticing that the whole underbody 
was a solid
metal plate with metal support posts for the motherboard. Reason for this was heat issues, it would take a lot of thought on how this would work in the plastic body of the Hotwheels laptop. The keyboard of the Sony
is hooked up to the motherboard though a ribbon cable and the touch pad though a smaller ribbon. These are very fragile and could not take too much bending. There were a bunch of items that are not being used in
the Hotwheels latop. The PCMCIA slot was not accounted for due to the inconsistant operational state. I never owned any Memory Stick memory or devices so I wouldn't have a need for a Memory Stick
slot. I had to rework the ON/OFF switch to accomodate the new laptop body and not use the Jog Dial from the Sony.
More to come....
It was a Friday evening I was at the local Circuit City. I was wasting time before I was supposed to be watching a movie. I spotted in the young kids toy isle a Hotwheels Toy Laptop. The Hot Wheels Accelerator
Laptop is learning device for ages 5 and up, with 60 word and math related games. On simple size comparison I realized it was very close to the size of my Sony Vaio SR33.