Say I had a - possibly two - old laptops in various states of derp. I'm planning to hack them open with a bit of crowbar and plywood, then see what I can salvage.

Rather than just sell the parts, I'm curious as to whether the craftier side of DLP has any ideas for new projects I could make with the components. I'm already planning to renovate the hard drives into external storage, but are there any other simple, nifty little things I might be able to build out of the debris?

My technical knowledge and skill are absolute zero, but I have the disposition for learning new things, as long as they're not impossibly beyond somebody with access to a willing mind, Youtube tutorials, and a working knowledge of where all the CCTV is in Homebase and other nearby hardware stores.

Side question: has anyone got some cool projects built from scrap like this? I'm not talking fixing up a broken machine, but rather making something new out of the broken crap you have lying around. I know we've got a techie crew here and some crafty, DIY types, so I'm sure there's a creative overlap.

 

If I had a couple of laptops lying around, I'd start meddling with the software (and I plan to very soon. My laptop is 4 years old). I'd install Linux on both of them and then set them up for media streaming and whatnot.

I know it's not exactly what you're thinking about, but maybe you'd like to try it out with one of them?

 

That's a sweet idea. I've wanted to do the opposite for a while. Sort of the opposite.

Normal desktop monitor, but all the other components, boards, circuitry, etc, mounted on the wall above or nearby, spread out over a large area. I've been trying to figure out a balance between keeping dust out, keeping it cool, and keeping it looking cool. Maybe I can add a small duck pond or similar water feature near the CPU and GPU.

Noob question: an old 'friend' with far more technical expertise than me has claimed that some things like the GPU can't be salvaged from a laptop because they're hooked directly into the system board or some such. I trusted his knowledge, but he's recently been revealed as a bad bad man who sends unwanted dickpics around, so now everything he says cannot be trusted.

It sounds reasonable, but is he right, or could I carefully pry out such components with the right technique?

 

Eh? Of course not. GPU is a separate unit, which can be plugging into a motherboard that supports the slot (currently, PCI-E for both Intel and AMD). What usually happens is that the industry trends move fast enough that older cards tend to get obsolete if the standard slots change. This tends to happen faster with CPUs compared to GPUs though.

 

Laptop GPUs tend to be soldered on and cannot be repurposed to another system. Some very high end laptops will use the MXM standard, and those can be installed/uninstalled in another MXM compatible laptop.

 

Yeah. Last time I bought a motherboard though, it didn't have one. I don't know if that's the trend all over, but apparently most and more vendors are relying on just a separate unit and don't provide a video card.

It's the reason my computer is shit now. bad GPU == fail

 

If its an old Laptop, GPUs are not reusable. They come as Chipsets, basically integrated on motherboards.

What you can re-use though are RAM, Hard-disks, the optical drives if it has one and the cooling fans. RAMs need to be compatible though. Check before re-use.

If you have a heavy desktop PC and it needs some serious cooling, then these fans are a gift from the heavens. Where you'll have no space for Push-Pull configs in your normal cases, these fans will slide in like they always belonged there. Extra GPU cooling, Push-Pull for your heavy duty processor, etc,etc. Dem fans be useful.

With slight tinkering with a solder and a few wires you can turn just the screen into a secondary Monitor.

You can easily make portable Hard Drives out of the old Hard disks by spending under $20 (Not sure about the price, I'm roughly converting Rupees into Dollars).
Its easier to do if your hard drives are SATA.
Other wise, its around $20 for 3.5 IDE to USB conversion options.

If your laptop has good enough space (Or you could add this), say around 250 GB or higher, my suggestion would be to turn into a Home Server using something simple like Ubuntu or other Home Server distros. Useful for a number of purposes.

If you go with the option of turning the screen into a secondary monitor for your desktop, then you could turn the, err, rest of the Laptop into a media server/streaming machine connected to your Television.

If you're willing to go deep with some electromechanics/Robotics + Assembly Code and you have some stuff lying around...well, the WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER.

... the shit I did with an old P3 chip is just cash. Really useless, but cash nonetheless.

 

Perhaps it shows how little I know that I don't get why something couldn't be soldered back off again. Then again, the limits of my soldering skills go back to an Electronics GCSE, and even then, I mostly painted my nails with lead and branded my initials onto cattle.

 

This should clear up why you can't easily solder it of. While you can get it off it's not exactly easy without special equipment. If you're interested, you can find a bunch of videos about how to do it on youtube.