Fair Play Gaming

Discuss The Industry
1

'lo

I’ve been thinking about getting a steam machine and/or building one myself

How feasible would it be to build a fair steam machine?

Generally I mean putting something together using only/mostly eco friendly and conflict free components

Please advise

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I thought that the next thing to build in a fair manner would be printers.

I’d call it fairprint. Features would include open source engineering. So everyone could rebuild the cartridges. Maybe a modular design to make different refill possibilities available. I think a ink certification would be necessary. If the project works, ethical resources can be considered. Not only the printer parts, but also the ink can be optimized towards environmental friendly, conflict free etc considerations. Finally it could break the cartel of printer producers, making printing cheaper and enabling competition.

I think the biggest problem will be the patenting. Would it be necessary to buy patents? Can a printer be designed without foreign patents? Are the technologies for printers free enough to use them without spending a lot on patents?

What do you think?

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It’d certainly be a cool experiment to embark upon. I think your best guess is as good as anyone else’s around here though. If you take the initiative on this, I’m sure many will follow your progress with excitement.

I’ve never built my own computer from scratch, but you’d just have to start with one component at a time and see how far you get, right?

For instance, for the graphics card, there’s at least the Intel Iris to consider. It’s no graphics powerhouse, but at least Intel is known for making serious advances towards conflict-free minerals in their supply chain.

The extent to which the different suppliers will be conflict-free, eco-friendly, open hardware etc. will probably vary greatly. I suspect you’ll have to make a great deal of compromises on your first go at this, but it would be an amazing first step on the roadmap towards a completely fair personal computer.

[quote=“ace28, post:2, topic:8912”]
I thought that the next thing to build in a fair manner would be printers.
[/quote]That’s an interesting prospect indeed, but it merits a topic of its own :wink:

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So far I haven’t heard of any fair computer parts. The only thing comming close is a fair mouse.

This means two things:

  1. The field is in desperate need of someone to push into that direction.
  2. Unfortunately it will be very hard to achieve a noticeably fairer device.

So, go for it and take us for the ride! I’m sure there are many people who would join you on the journey, like @erlend_sh already mentioned.

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Good morning, thanks for the links

I don’t really have any idea now to build a computer either, gonna leave the steam machine idea for now (they are still working on the OS anyway) and have a go at Raspberry Pi homebrew stuff instead

Also, would it be a a good idea to start a new topic for Fair Hardware or Fairphone Modding?

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We could make a wiki post, where we gather fair devices. Just start a new topic and flag it up to the moderators, so we can wikify it.

Besides: There is another topic referring to fair computers, you might want to check that out:

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