Some parts for laptop prototyping have arrived

I have been away on holidays with the family for a couple of weeks, so haven't really touched the C65GS during that time.  

However, just before we flew out I ordered a 15.4" 1920x1200 LCD panel and driver circuit from China to use for laptop prototyping. China air-mail is outrageously cheap to Australia if you don't mind waiting 2 - 6 weeks for delivery.  Since I was going to be away, I figured I could wait.  

So after letting our local post office know that they might need to hold the parcels a bit longer than usual in the unlikely chance that they would turn up early.  

And turn up early they did -- at around 2 weeks including the dispatch time from the suppliers.  Of course, in theory air mail (and sea mail for that matter) from China to Australia should be fast, since we are in the same general part of the world, and their are multiple direct China-Australia flights and sea freight routes.

Here are the two boxes before un-packing:

First, I opened the little one which contains the panel driver:

Then the big one with the 15.4" panel:

The panel is a bit smaller than I expected, being only just larger than the dimensions of my 13" MacBook Pro.  The difference is mostly due to the really fat bezel on the MacBook Pro.

This all makes me happy, because I really want the C65GS laptop to be as compact as possible, especially since I know that it will have to be about 4cm - 5cm thick to fit the full-travel keys, FPGA board and other components in.

I got my genuine C65 keyboard out to see how it compares in width: The screen is only a couple of centimetres wider than the keyboard, so just about perfect.

The next step is to get a 12v UBEC or other power supply so that I can hook the panel and driver up and test that they work.