The fact that the page points out that the "raptop" has a trackball, speakers, and USB ports makes me think this thing might actually work. The title suggests it may have an (ancient?) NEC laptop at its core.

(If the text is all showing up as mojibake, switch the text encoding to shift-JIS. It's still all strange moon characters either way, but you can still pick out occasional readable bits like "U S B".)

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Looks like the one Brice was using in Max Headroom.

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Did you find this on Make? I looked at the translation of the page and posted on the blog they got it from that I thought there was a Mac in there somewhere. I'm pretty sure it works though - else why would they say that the speakers worked surprisingly well!
http://ccgi.firewyre.force9.co.uk/brassgoggles

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Brazil!!!

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That is 83% awesome.

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I can't tell from the text whether it's real or not, but that's most likely because I can't understand it all.
The top says something like "made from your dreams. notebook." and I think it says he had a spare laptop to hack up. Mentions that this time it's not a mac, which makes me think he might have done this sort of thing in the past.

He makes a reference to Terry Gilliam and Cronenberg at the bottom. Appears to be an artist: http://ironwork.jp/monkey_farm/botoms/nurseglove1.html

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It looks like this was their second attempt. Their first was with a Mac, so that's why there are claims in the text of the page you linked to *not* being a Mac. The first one looks like it was just an art installation, but the second seems a bit more feasible. Still... I can't tell if it works or not. Why are there no pics of the "raptop" powered up?

There are some pics here of their first attempt. They didnt' have a space bar on the "keyboard" so they actually used a sewing machine's foot pedal for the spacebar. From the looks of things, there was all the proper wiring in place...

Here's a shot of the underside of their first keyboard.


and the top side of the keyboard:

MONKEY FARM!
(wtf?)

Apparently they make all kinds of cool stuff.

A Fiat with a bulldozer shovel & bulldozer treads...
A geodesic dome house...

What do you think they'll try next?

...

How about a freakin' Gundam robot?

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That's so awesome. I have an old typewriter, with the intent of doing something like this to it, but after spending weeks on Phase One, trying to make it work just as a typewriter again (it's all gummed up) I kinda stopped trying... I even tracked down a reprint of the original 1920 service manual! Those things are insanely complicated...

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OMG!!!!! i must have one!!!!!

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William Gibson notes this resembles the typewriter he wrote Neuromancer on.

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Ever since I saw "Brazil" in 1985, I've been wanting to make a functional art project out of my old Apple II, an ancient typewriter and a small B&W monitor. Oh well, too late. :)

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This morning, at just shy of 6:00am, this typewriter was mentioned. Story was something like "technology bloggers have been forwarding photos to each-other of spiffy typewriter laptop ... debate as to whether it actually works ... yadda yadda."

They closed with:

"One blogger wrote 'Even if it turns out that this doesn't actually work, I still covet it.'"

Seems you're being stalked again.

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