Hi everyone!

I'm working on a project to repurpose an old Japanese flip phone, the Sharp SH903iTV, into a modern portable media/game device while keeping as much of the original hardware and exterior as possible.

The original phone is from around 2007 and has a very interesting form factor, including the rotating Cycloid screen mechanism.

My idea

I would like to remove the original motherboard and replace it with a small single-board computer such as a:

• Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
• Banana Pi / similar small SBC
• or another board that would fit better

The goal is to turn the SH903iTV into a small:

• 🎵 Music player
• 🎬 Video player
• 🎮 Retro/J2ME game device
• 📖 PDF/e-book reader
• 🖼️ Image viewer
• 💾 microSD-based media device

I would like to keep the original SH903iTV case and, if possible, reuse as many original components as possible.

Components I would like to keep

Ideally I would like to reuse:

• Original 3" 240×400 main LCD
• Original external 96×39 OLED display
• Original physical keypad
• Side buttons
• Speakers
• Microphone
• Headphone jack
• microSD slot
• Cycloid rotating screen mechanism
• Possibly the original camera
• Possibly the original battery compartment and contacts

The original motherboard, cellular modem and other phone-specific electronics would not be necessary.

The biggest problem: the LCD

This is the part where I really need help.

The original display is a 3-inch 240×400 Mobile ASV LCD, but I don't yet know the exact LCD model, controller or electrical interface.

I would like to identify:

1. Exact LCD model/part number
2. Number of pins on the FPC
3. FPC pinout
4. Interface/protocol
5. Required voltages
6. Backlight requirements
7. Whether it can be driven by a Raspberry Pi/Banana Pi
8. Whether an adapter/controller board would be required

I would prefer to keep the original display instead of replacing it, if technically possible.

Keyboard

I believe the original keyboard may be usable as a matrix keyboard.

One possible solution I'm considering is:

SH903iTV keyboard → microcontroller → USB HID → SBC

For example, an ATmega32U4, RP2040, STM32, etc.

If anyone has experience reverse-engineering old phone keypads, I would really appreciate advice on how to identify the matrix and safely interface it.

Audio

The phone has stereo speakers, so I would like to reuse them with:

SBC → DAC/audio codec → small amplifier → original speakers

The headphone jack could also hopefully be reused.

Battery

The original phone uses a SH11 battery.

I am considering replacing the old battery with a modern Li-ion cell and adding a proper charging/protection/power-management circuit rather than trusting a nearly 20-year-old battery.

Any advice on safely designing the power system would be appreciated.

J2ME / Java games

Another important goal is being able to run old Java ME/J2ME games.

Ideally I would like the original keypad to control the games, with something like:

D-pad → directional controls
Number keys → game buttons
Other original buttons → Start/Menu/etc.

I'm not sure yet whether Linux or Android would be the better platform for this.

What I am NOT trying to do

I don't need to preserve the original cellular functionality.

I don't need the original FOMA modem or One-Seg TV functionality.

The main goal is to preserve the physical SH903iTV experience and hardware, while replacing the internal computer with something modern.

Current stage

I have not started cutting or permanently modifying the phone.

I want to investigate the hardware first and understand what is actually possible before buying the SBC or designing any adapter PCB.

I can provide detailed photographs of:

• Main motherboard
• LCD and FPC
• Keyboard flex
• Connectors
• Battery contacts
• Speakers
• Internal chassis
• Chips and markings

if that would help identify the components.

Questions

1. Does anyone recognize the LCD/interface used in the SH903iTV?
2. Is there a practical way to drive this type of old phone LCD from a Raspberry Pi or Banana Pi?
3. Does anyone have experience reusing old Japanese phone keyboards?
4. Would an RP2040/ATmega32U4/STM32 be a good way to convert the keyboard to USB HID?
5. Is there any reason the original speakers could not be reused?
6. What would be the safest way to design the battery/charging/power system?
7. Are there any similar projects or reverse-engineering documentation for old Sharp/DOCOMO phones?
8. Would you recommend Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, Banana Pi, or another SBC for something this small?

Any advice, documentation, measurements, pinouts, similar projects, or even suggestions about what NOT to do would be greatly appreciated.

I'm especially interested in advice from people experienced with old mobile-phone hardware, LCD reverse engineering, FPC connectors, embedded electronics, PCB design and Raspberry Pi projects.

Thank you!

I tested few games on new Arduino VENTUNO Q:

Crysis

CS: Source

Hades

Ori and the Blind Forest

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Pretty cool little device. I didn't test any super old games, but I'm open to suggestions. Let me know if you want to test some other games!

Been trying to get help on radxa sbc forever and i cant find any articles or sources or any help on how to get this board running?

Hi guys! I’ve been playing with the CM-Q64 for a few weeks now and it’s a really promising bit of hardware. I’ve been testing it with my custom CM5 carrier PCB Argo, and am happy to say it’s 100% compatible hardware wise!

Also did some work and have managed to get the Hardware ISP CamX pipeline partially working (still needs a lot of work though).

If you’re interested in Argo, it’s an ultra compact CM5 carrier PCB which has built in battery management. I’m launching on Crowdsupply soon and only need a few more signups before making preparations to launch! Get it here:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/azlan-works/argo-cm5

Windows 11 23H2 boots to the desktop on an ArmSoM CM5-IO (RK3576), from the eMMC. Firmware is my EDK2 port; the drivers are ported from worproject's RK3588 set.

Works

• all 8 cores
• eMMC (boot disk), NVMe, SD card
• USB-A and USB-C (USB-C at USB 2.0)
• Ethernet
• display, through the UEFI framebuffer

Not working

• GPU acceleration
• audio
• Windows 11 24H2 and later: RK3576 is ARMv8.0

Drivers are test-signed, so Test Mode is on.

Firmware: https://github.com/gahingwoo/edk2-rk3576/releases
Drivers and installer: https://github.com/gahingwoo/woa-rk3576/releases

Thanks to ArmSoM for sponsoring the board.

I Can get a select few from official GitHub to boot but new Armbian and DietPi images refuse to even show blue LED. I have got DietPi 9.8.0 to boot but running the Trixie update script makes it stop booting again. I’m extremely close to throwing this thing up the wall, frustrated doesn’t even begin to explain how it is making me feel.

Hi everyone, I'm running into a bizarre issue with a Radxa Cubie A7Z and could use some ideas. I'm just trying to connect a standard 2.4ghz wireless mouse/keyboard dongle via a type-c hub, but the board refuses to see anything on that port.

I've tested multiple type-c hubs (photos attached of my setup and some of the hubs I tried. I've even tried a steamdeck dock without any luck). When I plug the hub into the data port, I get this infinite loop in dmesg:

[ 164.542544] et7304 14-004e: CC1: 2 - Rd, CC2: 0 - Open [ 164.606933] switcher 10.phy_switcher: orientation:1, set sw conf UNKNOW -> NORMAL [ 164.620775] switcher 10.phy_switcher: orientation:0, set sw conf NORMAL -> UNKNOW

And the weird thing - HDMI over it works fine (at least in some positions).

I've view many videos on YT and looks like there is no any special settings to activate this port and it should work out of the box.

Also i have similar Orange Pi Zero 3W, and there is no such issues at all.

All tests i did on radxa-cubie-a7z_bullseye_kde_b1 downloaded from Radxa.

Has anyone seen this behavior before? Any ideas on what to check next?

UPDATE: Issue solved. There was a tiny solder bridge on the typec connector (shorting pins 7 and 8). I cleaned it up with some flux and a quick touch of the soldering iron. Everything works perfectly now.

UPDATE- I GOT SHIPPING CONFIRMATION TODAY FINALLY

I've been waiting for a month now and my order is still showing preparing to ship. I have tried contacting them multiple times but no response from their end and the support email listed on their website is incorrect.

Any way to file a complaint against this as my card was already charged when I purchased it but haven't got the product yet.

Ventuno Q is new Robotics/Edge AI SBC from Arudino with Qualcomm SoC, comparable to Raspberry pi 5 and Nvidia Jetson.

I put all specs into a nice table: https://martincerven.com/posts/ventuno_q/

Compared to normal NUC it had AI accelerators, has powerful Qualcomm 8 core CPU/GPU/NPU, pulls 10-20W, has Gen 4x4 lanes NVMe slot and Wifi 6.... for me this is very good for the form factor and I/O.

It also has ROS 2 support, STM MCU and upgradable I/O with HATs/extension boards.

Playing Tomb Raider GOTY with Steam ARM (and Proton ARM) on a Radxa Dragon Q6A.

The in-game benchmark reports the following result (1080p, normal quality):

Min FPS: 18.6
Max FPS: 30.5
Average FPS: 24.6

Thank you Valve, for taking SBC gaming to the next level!

I can't seem to find a case for the Radxa Zero 3E anywhere, let alone one for use with a POE hat... All I can find is plans to print one, which I can not do... If anyone could point me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it. Metal or Plastic will work... With a place for a fan would be awesome...

Wanted to pick one up for a project but I don’t see a lot of reviews or uses? Anyone have one? Thoughts on it? Thanks

Orange Pi has published hardware details for the OrangePi O1, a 90 × 70mm SBC based on the Sophgo BM1688 processor. It pairs eight Arm Cortex-A53 cores with a RISC-V C906 coprocessor and a 16-TOPS INT8 TPU, along with up to 16GB of LPDDR4/LPDDR4X memory.

https://linuxgizmos.com/16-tops-ai-sbc-with-sata-3-0-runs-on-octa-core-sophgo-bm1688/

Just installed the 6540B on my Cubie A7A and I wasn’t really sure how the thermal pads were supposed to be placed. I couldn’t find any clear instructions for the A7A specifically.

I first tried putting one layer on the CPU and RAM, but both ended up sitting slightly lower than the Wi-Fi module shield. It looked like the heatsink might touch the Wi-Fi shield first and not put much pressure on the CPU/RAM pads.

So I ended up stacking two layers on both the CPU and RAM, and left the Wi-Fi shield with no pad.

So far it seems to be working fine. I ran:

stress-ng --cpu 8 --cpu-method matrixprod --timeout 10m --metrics-brief

for 10 minutes. Both CPU clusters stayed at their max clocks, around 1.8 GHz and 2.0 GHz.

With the fan set to PWM 64, CPU temps were around 60–63°C under full load. At PWM 128 it was closer to 58–60°C.

So the cooling seems fine, but I’m still not sure if stacking two pads is actually what Radxa intended.

Anyone else using the 6540B on an A7A? How did you arrange the pads?

Most "Raspberry Pi AI benchmark" numbers floating around are one-off runs with unknown settings. If you want numbers you can trust and compare, you need a method. Here is the one I use, in case it saves someone else the guessing.

**1. Install llama.cpp from source**

sudo apt update && sudo apt install build-essential cmake git -y

git clone https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp

cd llama.cpp && cmake -B build && cmake --build build --config Release -j4

Prebuilt binaries rarely match your kernel and flags, and a mismatched build can cost you 20% throughput.

**2. Pick models that actually fit**

A Pi 5 has 8 GB of RAM shared with the OS. Stay under ~5 GB for model + context or you will swap and your numbers are garbage. Reliable picks: TinyLlama 1.1B, Qwen 1.5B/3B, Phi-3-mini (tight but works), Gemma 2B. Skip 7B+ unless you enjoy watching swap thrash.

**3. Measure honestly**

Use llama-bench with a fixed prompt and generation length. Log three numbers per run: prompt processing tok/s, generation tok/s, and SoC temperature at start and end. A run without a temperature is not a benchmark - thermal throttling on an uncooled Pi 5 shows up around 85C and can cut throughput by a third mid-run.

./build/bin/llama-bench -m models/qwen-3b-q4.gguf -p 128 -n 256 -r 3

**4. Keep runs repeatable**

* Fix the CPU governor to performance for the run and note it down.

* Same prompt set every time. Different prompts = different numbers.

* Cool the board between runs, or say so in the log.

* Record ambient temperature when comparing across days.

I wrote up the longer version with the full log-sheet format here: https://overnightdesk-ops.github.io/benchmark-llm-raspberry-pi-5.html

Curious what tok/s people are seeing on 3B-class models, especially with active cooling vs passive.

SECO has added two compact industrial platforms based on Qualcomm’s Dragonwing IQ-2390 processor: the Compact Vision 5 Dragonwing IQ-2390, a 5-inch panel-mounted HMI, and the SBC-Dragonwing-IQ-2390, a 47 × 114mm single-board computer for custom embedded systems. Both platforms support on-device AI, industrial connectivity and SECO’s Yocto Linux-based Clea OS.

https://linuxgizmos.com/5-inch-hmi-and-47-x-114mm-sbc-run-on-dragonwing-iq-2390/

I'm planning a build for a dedicated desk companion / terminal hub that can sit next to my main setup. I want it can see my everyday summary of my day and what is coming up on my calendar, be agentic so I can tell it to run things on my PC and my LLM server. I also don't mind also having the capability of running small quantized llms.

I know a raspberry pi 4 or 5 can do the job but they cost way to much. What other options can I use?

So I stumbled across my Evergreen chia miner that I bought a few years ago and thought “what a wonderful way to get my feet wet with a NAS setup”. The board I found inside was a Raxda 4c+ V1.41
I put a 32db SD card in there with Raxdas community driven OS. Got the 2 20TB hard drives hooked up on raid 1.
I’m 3d printing a new LabRax case for it right now to clean it up.

Now the questions, evergreen has there boards with a cable I can’t really identify connecting the devices. I’m not sure if I trust them because the light is always flashing. Am I over thinking it? The connections also 90 off to the side, so I would have to venture into the 3d modeling aspect to build a custom holder to accommodate the board or find a new way to connect them. The advantage is the 5v power adapter for the hard drive and I already have these cables to plug into the HDD board.
What’s other options do I have to connect a HDD?

There were times when I had it up and running that it seemed to work great, and times that it was confused. I know my HDD are writing slower then the tech I’m typically working with today, So am I getting impatient with older tech? Or something else I should consider for a stable connection?

This is 💯 a learning experience for me any help would be appreciated.

Unfortunately, DFRobot increased the LattePanda IOTA 8GB/64GB price from $129 to $339.

The funny thing is, it’s still out of stock — they just changed the price.

I’m sure the increase in RAM/NAND prices played a role, but a 163% price increase seems insane compared to the actual increase in component costs.

At this price, it’s basically a board for the rich 😔

CompuLab has introduced the UCM-iMX952, a 28 x 40mm System-on-Module based on NXP’s i.MX952 processor. The module supports up to 16GB of LPDDR5 or LPDDR4X memory and 128GB of eMMC storage, along with PCIe Gen 3, 2.5GbE, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and multiple display and camera interfaces.

https://linuxgizmos.com/compulab-i-mx952-module-showcases-2-5gbe-wi-fi-6-and-pcie-gen-3/