The old laptops, depending on the age of the laptop can be used as:
Install linux, and you got a cheap web/print/ftp/file server
Or, to play the games from the old times, before the dark times, before the empire.. install freedos, freedos.org, and all the old games and play the night away.
Maybe use it as a beowulf cluster. Either linux, or freedos, I have lost the url to the project, but else it could be a nice project to do.

Posted at 1:49 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Davse Bamse

I always thought it would be neat to custom machine an aluminum case for my old laptop. Especially since the plastic housing, hinges, and keyboard are falling apart. You could do it case-modder style with windows, or go for the macbook look of solid brushed aluminum. It would also be nice to see a modified cooling system to replace the noisy, aging fans.

Posted at 1:55 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Allen

Depending on the age you can make an mp3 player, a 2nd screen for your desktop, a terminal ( I use a 486 thinkpad to plug into headless machines when they loose network), I saw a nice instructable on how to make a custom wall clock from an even older B/W laptop, you could make a picture frame, if you have an old tabled (like old touchscreen thinkpads) you could add some X10 stuff and make a home controller.

I would like to see more ideeas !

Posted at 2:01 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by icebox

i want to turn an laptop LCD into a LCD Shutter
for my motorcycle license plate..

if it “flashes” at “the right rate” when picked up by speed cameras it will only show a couple of the license plate identifiers. “or parts of”

but for the naked “slower than the speedcamera shutter” eye
it will appere perfectly normal

/Kyndal

Posted at 2:01 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Kyndal

Installing Linux seems like the most straight-forward thing to do. Then you can load (or create) apps to make it do whatever gnifty thing you want done.

In my opinion, at this point DeLi Linux is the best option for truly ancient hardware. I’ve got that on a Toshiba Satellite 490XCDT that I’m hoping to turn into a internet surfing machine, once I get an appropriate WiFi card for it.

Posted at 2:11 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Mike

aside from the obvious (or maybe not) use as a tivo box, it could be used for a million things. hack a coffee maker and a toaster to be turned on by alarm. use it to make a digital table by projecting the screen through an old overhead projector onto an acrylic table and mount a camera to watch for movement (idea from http://www.instructables.com/id/Interactive-Multitouch-Display/). make your own alarm system with ir leds that are interrupted if the door/window/whatever is opened while the alarm is activated. make it look nice again and use it as a prop in a movie so you aren’t breaking a decent laptop, because everyone wants to make a movie. mount it on your wall like people do with their pets after they have gone to the taxidermist.

Posted at 2:20 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Josh

I’ve started work on using an old laptop as a “black box” for my truck. Right now I’m in the planning and acquiring hardware stage, but I think that in the end, it could become something very useful for other people to duplicate and improve.

Basic Hardware:
Laptop
Radar gun
Make controller (or similiar)
GPS (USB/PCMCIA?)
Power Inverter
Mini Cameras (2-4)
Video capture device (USB/PCMCIA?)
Touchscreen LCD
Small character LCD

Tasks:
Instant vehicle stats
Track fuel usage info
Track speed and location
Record surrounding traffic (video)
Collision warning
Advanced cruise control
Wardriving
Instant traffic notifications
Speed/Redlight camera notification
Driving directions

Prolly many more things than that. I don’t really care about multimedia capabilities.

Posted at 2:21 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Sp`ange

Might I suggest tearing the screen open and creating a digital projector, but taking it a step further by adding voice control and full multimedia streamed from another computer on the network. Then taking video clips next time you visit the beach, or finding a dvd of some exotic place that you would like to visit and converting an entire wall into a “window” that looks into another world. Alternatively if your computer is too old for any video (highly doubt it but you never know) you could display pictures downloaded from flickr using a simple script based on a keyword of your choosing. The biggest problem I see with a setup like this is the camouflaging of the projector setup as no one except a major geek wants to have a huge light leaking ugly projector in their living room.

Posted at 2:51 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by N athan

Own personal speedtrap.

Connect it to a webcam and one of those cheap radar guns and keep an eye on the speed demons on your neighbourhood.

You ‘ll get them unless they hav an LCD shutter on their licenseplates. ;-)

Posted at 3:14 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Chris

You could always do the obvious digital picture frame… Build a wood casing, set a picture slideshow on a certain directory, file sharing on the network, put it to sleep at night, Never have to touch the picture frame, do it all remotely, get real fancy and VNC into it. I think it would be awesome to maybe have it networked and setup a program to capture display your current iTunes track from say… the computer upstairs, which is connected to your stereo. Not even a Digital picture frame, just a digital billboard of sorts. You could go even further and have it flash by your latest RSS headlines! I want one in my living room!

Posted at 3:21 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Paul Malenke

My web server is located in my bedroom, where I don’t have room for a full keyboard or monitor, and for a while it kept having kernel panics and other sorts of things, but I could never see any of the output because of the lack of monitor. So I took an old Toshiba 7″ laptop with a serial connector and permanently attached it to the server and it acts as a nice little keyboard and monitor for the bigger box. Also, it fits nicely in the drawer in my nightstand.

Posted at 3:22 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Dan Kotowski

Without getting too tricky, as has been suggested there are plenty of free and not free media centre options you could go for (specially since a lot of laptops seem to come with video-out built in). I’m also a fan of the kitchen PC concept, if you don’t already have one. You could possibly build it into a part of your kitchen and use it to show you the weather, news and such in the morning.

Posted at 3:25 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Greg

i use my old toshiba 4400c (?) to program old radios and some flash devices (its the only machine that is slow enough)

another idea that i read about was using an old machine with a busted LCD as a wifi bridge controller.

they’re also great as servers that you need to fit in small places (like above ceiling tiles)

and lets not forget the best kind of old laptops: the ones that arent too old (IE: my Latitude L400). its tiny, has a great price, and its small (smaller than a pad of paper)

Posted at 3:26 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by abbott

I took an old Sony laptop panel and made a ‘wooden’ TV for my summerhouse/bar that blended into the surroundings. I used a LCD/TV adapter board off eBay (about £30)

Posted at 3:40 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Paul McGuinness

you could always use old p3 laptops as multimedia pc. just download a front end..

or for the older ones, break the hinge and affix the pcd permanently at the back.. insta ebook reader.

Posted at 4:24 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by pogz

I’m working on turning an old laptop (Toshiba 9020CT) with broken screen into an Asterisk PBX – to:
* take my voicemails (and give me web access to them),
* forward my calls to whatever phone I’m near at the moment,
* provide a flexible telephone interface to my weather station (or whatever other hardware I hack together and connect via RS232),
* provide a home intercom,
* conference calling,
* etc.

It not much of a hack though – Trixbox does most of this for me…

Posted at 4:57 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by lwr

Raises a good project, how do you use an old laptop screen as a electronically dimmed window? Is there an easy way to power it and control it to black out all the pixels without it being attached to the laptop itself? This would be most spiffing because there are just so many old dud laptops around.

Posted at 5:02 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by zzzomb

You’ve reminded me to submit a project I’ve been working on for a while. I had an old Libretto laptop and modified it to fit into the case of a ZX Spectrum. I don’t know how familiar it will be to people in the US but the Spectrum was an iconic computer in the UK in the 1980s. Details at http://srimech.com/?page_id=18

Posted at 6:02 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Jim MacArthur

Use 4 with the same screen size and make a ‘window pane’ in which landscape photos are cut into 4 pieces and diplayed on each screen, so as to look like you are looking out your kitchen window into an open meadow with flowers and such.. make those back breaking dish chores a bit more cheerful.

Urinal entertainment: Mount it on the opposite wall of your toilet and read the ‘news paper’ (feeds) or if its fast enough, streaming video.

Embed them into electronic MIDI instruments. Take a keystation and turn it into a full strength Synth.

Apply a touch screen film and turn it into an information access terminal.

Mount it by your door way to allow people to leave you messages when you are not home. Add a USB camera for video door bell.

Just as the screens can be used for projection, they can be used in a similar way as a color changer. Thus, you can have some cool changing mood lighting for a party.. no lenses needed.

A while back there was a post about mounting fiber optics to the screen and using colored blocks to control the light output of a fiberoptic lamp.

Dedicated weather station.

Embed in a robot. etc etc etc.

Posted at 6:16 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by MRE

The obvious use, for me, was for running servers. Laptops get better uptime than desktops in my house because when I blow a fuse, the battery (even most old batteries) give me enough time to make it to the fuse box. And with a cheap surge protector in between the laptop and the wall I don’t have to worry about an expensive UPS.

Going for the cool factor, though. I have a habit of buying more ThinkPads then I need off Craigslist (ok, it’s bordering on addiction…) I’m thinking of getting a GPS unit for one and mounting it upside down on the roof of my car. I’d have a crazy retro-futuristic-post-apacolyptic flip-down nagivation system like you’d expect to see on a the Millennium Falcon or something. I could also hook it into the radio for mp3s on the go. Or use it as a DVD player or game console (MAME in a ‘93 Civic!). What else do people use computers for in cars?

Posted at 6:24 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Xoring

mount it in your fridge door for a digital post-it note/callender setup, shopping list.. etc
Or if you are a food-aholic have it give you a hard time everytime you come to the door (via motion sensor). (again, using a touch film and stylus would be ideal).
and it will be the coolest running PC in the house!

Posted at 6:42 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by MRE

Tablet for drawing and handwriting:

Use the touchpad in absolut coordinate mode to input drawing and handwriting. Program a (graphic) software interface which let’s you control the padresolution-to-screenresolution ratio(sensitivity) and provides a drawing and writing area for which you can choose between storing the input as an image file or using a textinterpreter to export the input data to any texteditor.

The tricky part is designing the input device, the pen if thats what you wan’t to call it. Due to the capacitive nature of the touchpad which works with the electrical resistance of your fingertip, you will either need to make a pen tip with similar electrical features or the tip has to be made of a highly conductive material and be wired to the position of your fingertip while holding it. Then you have to make sure that the surface of the tip is small enough to use for handwriting but still large enough to create a sufficiant surface for the touchpad to recognize it.

You will be surprised by the resolution the touchpad has to offer.

The whole idea behind this is to use old laptops like digital paper. I.e. writing in steno or using your own handwriting shortcuts and symbols as well as adding scetches of i.e. circuit diagramms to document a lecture but not having to make the conversion from paper to computer all the time. Sure you can draw and write with your mouse, but it’s much less efficiant and natural then with a pen. Keyboard works fine too, but I find my self often getting more hung up in formating and designing the document rather then filling it up with information.

Most of the things you need to know you will find on the synaptics.com website.

Posted at 6:44 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by kulty

I have an old Omnibook 3000 that I use for Seti@home. Slow but it sits behind the tv and keeps churning out the workunits.

Posted at 7:24 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by schism

I really want to make a box dedicated to playing mp3s. I’ve considered getting an old laptop, putting a little lcd display like from an old phone on the outside of the screen showing track title and such (should be an easy mod – space permitting – I’ve seen some tools made precisely for putting winamp meta on phone lcd’s via a parallel port) and moving the inevitable media buttons from the keyboard part to the outside of the screen so that you can use them with the box closed.

For the record I am fully aware that this whole project is obsoleted by nearly every mp3 player ever.

Posted at 7:55 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Aidan

I use an old laptop with Windows 98, and a wifi card. I placed it next to my monitor and installed a program called MaxiVista, it uses any computer on your network as an extended screen or mirror display.

Posted at 8:04 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Jake M

Build yourself a small scale arcade cabinet with controllers then detatch the screen and mount it in the cabinet. The rest of the laptop could be put behind a door for easy access where the coin mech would be in a normal cabinet.
Instal Mame and you have yourself a mini arcade game!

Posted at 8:07 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Paul

#5… I love the idea of a License plate shutter…

I would think the two biggest problems would be to get it to withstand the elements and look natural built into a license plate frame. The former isn’t as important on a motorcycle that rarely if ever sees bad weather but for a car it would have to be a lot stronger. Temperature is another issue as LCDs don’t like extremes on either end.

I could also see the possibility of making it switch activated to fully block the plate on demand. So you could completely shut off the plate when you gun it to make it through that yellow etc…

Posted at 8:07 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by twistedsymphony

I use an old Acer laptop to run media center on a Touch Screen LCD I have mounted on the wall, I simply use this to scroll through music that operates on a wireless setup around my house.

It’s a bit “Star Trek” but hey, that’s what this technology is designed for ;)

Posted at 8:28 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Mr. E

Hmm… well, let’s see. I’ve been wanting to mount one upside-down on a wall(turning the keys around, of course) and using it as a control panel for my home-automation system… unfortunately, I don’t have enough money/parts/time to build a home automation system, so I can just plan.

Alternatively, a laptop with a parallel port or serial port can be used to run a robot chassis- you can access the parallel port from QBasic or something like that, making it easy to program, and run control wires from the parallel ports to the various systems in the robot.

Posted at 8:29 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Skyler Orlando

Install Linux and some sniffer tools. set it up to hide on a network and sniff all traffic, add a wifi card to sniff and crack all the WEP passwords it can. Leave it hidden in an air vent connected to the company network for a few months running your EVIL.

retrieve it 5 months later, OWNZ the company.

Better yet, plant LOTS of them as your relay’s / zombies around town. connect through them to do your hacking so when the cops nail the location they only get a POS crap laptop that is full of insults.

Non cracker/hacker uses….

Laptops are nothing special, they are general purpose computing platforms with low horsepower. use one as a picture frame, router, digital signage, firewall, etherape console, Xterm, webpad, ALDL/ODBII scanner, Car tuning PC, garage laptop (best for old discarded toughbooks), webcam server in remote locations, install Zoneminder an a couple of cheap usb webcams and make a security PVR better than anything you can buy (P-III 500 or higher for this)

non technical uses…

Trebuchet projectiles, deadly frizbies, halloween costume, paint them green for Xmas decorations.

etc…

Posted at 8:32 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by fartface

you could take a decent laptop and mount it inside a cabinet in the kitchen, use it for movies, message board,music,internet device for getting recipes,weather alert, make it run linux and itll run the stuff even if its windoz counterpart cant because of speed.

Posted at 8:54 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by tekky kluge

you can always do what i did with mine [a 300mhz toshiba portege 7010ct]

harden it and use it as a security evaluation tool. it super light, fast enough to do any network task, and you can give a report on bluetooth, wifi, ethernet, etc.

Posted at 9:07 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by david comeau

use it as an ambient display of information. something like the Ambient Orb: http://www.ambientdevices.com/cat/orb/orborder.html.

turn the screen different colors to signal different things. you could even set it up so the screen isn’t visible, but it illuminates a white wall or something similar.

Posted at 9:12 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by wj

Although some of the niftier ideas are suggested above, I see a couple not represented. One is to find any old laptop new enough to run windows xp (450-500MHz, 192MB+ ram, and a network card and use them for traveling web surfing or typing. That way you don’t risk your nice laptop on no firewall setups or water damage. Another option which has been hinted at, but I see no direct reference too, is to add a touchscreen overlay and use it as a portabnle touchscreen for ahome automation system, or even security wall device or touchpad.

Posted at 9:30 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Istarian

put on Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs (WinFLP). Better than win98 and your old laptop will probably be able to run it.

Posted at 10:01 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Darren Kopp

I’m still trying to find a way to salvage parts out of an old blown laptop to make a digital picture frame. Basically everything still works, with the exception of the motherboard. The price it would be to buy an ITX motherboard with LVDS to cram into a picture frame along with the LCD is pretty close to the same price as just buying a comparable digital picture frame. Suggestions? Help? Parts are off an old Dell D600 if it helps any.

Posted at 10:42 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Scott

I have an old g3 ibook that i broke the screen off a while back. I made a wooden frame and a stand for it and turned it into an imac. not very creative i admit, but it looks good and works well.

Posted at 11:18 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Ryan

Though a lot of people mention using the laptop screen as a second screen for whatever purpose, or making a wall-mounted screen out of it, I’d like to see how you’d connect it. I might sound completely stupid now, but perhaps if someone could figure how to connect it to a DVI port, that would really be nice since most modern computers have a DVI port these days.

I have an old Toshiba, Pentium 120 MHz, something like 24 MB of RAM and 4GB harddisk. It has a working CD player, but it’s a useless brick right now. I have a MP3 CD-player that cost me under EUR 100 years ago, now they even come cheaper. So if it would even be able to play MP3 CD’s that’s not really interesting except for the fact that you can display more information on the laptop display. I build a Gentoo Linux install for the laptop, but everything is too slow to be useful. Perhaps some CLI applications that require a lot of human interaction won’t ‘feel’ slow, but there’s no way you’d really want to use it with X, fluxbox and Firefox (way too slow).

Then again, a lot of people were talking about setups where you don’t really have much interaction, as in displaying pictures. That’s one of the few things old laptops might be able to do quite well, but having it as a monitor on a video card with some real power (and not an 1M card as in a lot of old laptops) would really be nicer.

Using the screen and the laptop keyboard and touchpad (or perhaps a tablet layer) it would make for a nice addition to any MythTV box. I hate having to turn on my TV, changing the TV to the right channel and stuff like that just to schedule a recording. But of course you can just as well use MythWeb and schedule it from a browser on a standalone machine.

Also, when you’re not gonna use a laptop as laptop anymore, take of it’s casing. Take out the floppy drive, CD drive and perhaps if possible the harddisk. Take out the battery. Laptop parts are small, really small. It might be possible to shrink the motherboard size a bit too, because you probably won’t be using all of the connections. This way you can get something as small as a Mac Mini, or perhaps even as small as a wireless router, or a normal router for that matter. This is only useful if it doesn’t cost too much though, I bought my Mac Mini with 1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo for EUR 350, new and at a certified Apple reseller.

I think what I’d like to see most is either one of the following three:
- Laptop with most parts removed, rehoused so that it’s smaller, providing some kind of web access. Tablet would be nice, so you can easily navigate. Have it display current playing songs, upcoming myth recordings, program guide and RSS feeds. If there’s a keyboard attached (or it runs synergy and you always have another machine with keyboard and mouse connected which you can use) also allow it for easy access to machines/servers you need to maintain. It’s always a pain that when you’re playing a game someone needs you to change something on a server and you need to quit your game or even reboot… Also messaging could be nice, takes the clutter from your desktop. All in all this way it’ll end up as a home Internet/Media PC and needs quite some horsepower, more than my Pentium 120 MHz anyways…

- An other option I like is having the display attached to another device, in a cheap and reliable way. DVI->LVVDS or something would be really nice, also TV->LVDS is nice, because most devices can do TV output.

- The third option that would be nice is to take only the stuff you can really use from the laptop and put it in a small box, as a silent server, serving whatever you need/it’s capable of. It can serve as Calendar server, perhaps small web server or maybe Network Attached Storage (assuming it isn’t old and slow, with no USB 2 and a slow old harddisk). You can run a Daap server on it to stream music to iTunes and other Daap-capable clients and have it log from remote servers.

Because I bored you all to death I’m gonna stop right now… Hope someone likes all I wrote :)

Posted at 11:22 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by mycroes

embed a screen in a table or counter that can play videos or news or anything. read hackaday while your eating your cereal–like you father used to read the newspaper.
embed a screen on your fridge and a put a digi cam on the inside of your fridge so when you look at the screen you can see inside your fridge.

Posted at 11:29 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by jared

Hmmm. Originally I was going to suggest the TabletPC doorbell idea. But now that that’s beet done, ooooh. What to suggest!?

I’ve always been a fan of the terminals on the later Star Trek series’ – the Information Points as mentioned in a previous post, are essentially the same thing. However, it’s easy enough to get old Pentium 2/3 systems in bulk buy from business resellers these days, and if you’re lucky, it’s possible to get Tablet’s too. Even if the TabletPC’s are a no go, it’s feasible to remove chunks of Laptops, such as the inner casing, keyboard and trackpad and screen hinge – and mount the display above the motherboard.

With a touch panel, or the addition of an old desktop Wacom (see the DIY Cintiq projects all over the intarwebz) will give you a slate tablet useful for many things. With the appropriate application of GNU/Linux, you can even get a comfortable KDE display on these machines – although you will then lose streaming video capability. With a “light” WM, such as XFCE or my personal favourite tiny-DE, blackbox – you have a fully capable web information point. Here’s the easy, but cool bit.

These boxes are perfectly good terminals (especially with a battery in) for recessing into fixtures and even walls! If you live somewhere free from Chavs, Raj’s or well, any general acronym-enabled unpleasant people. You can mount one in a custom built pedestal outside your door. With a little more hacking, you could use a simpler screenless laptop mod to control an electronic door bolt based on the input to this external enclosure. (Of course, this works best if the e-bolt has a manual override, such as a key – and using the WACOM based hacks, since they can be fully waterproofed.)

So you have your neat front door tablet, working as an electronic lock, and with a webcam, speaker and microphone – as a full intercom too. Then you could mount another one, say on a tv mount type boom next to your bed. Useful for accessing the intercom, or checking email, or watching Naruto cartoons on YouTube. Same goes (Without the webcam) for the bathroom, for the kitchen, you could hook up another screenless one to your HD capable TV in the living room, Have a spare running a server (or even being part of a server farm) in the attic, basement, or appropriate closet.

The possibilities are wide. Although here’s another one, for that “$30,000 kitchen” feel.

Take your laptop, and remove most of the components. Attach the hinge to a piece of Aluminium angle, and the keyboard (And perhaps a wacom tablet) into your choice of furnishing material. I personally like glass furniture – tough glass is very durable, and easy to clean. Follow the Multitouch display idea again, and have a virtual keyboard and mouse, too!

Posted at 11:33 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Graham \"Ferret\" Simpson

#2; maybe this would help? http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-removable-laptop-water-cooler!-And-other-co/?ALLSTEPS

Posted at 11:45 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Bard Lund Johansen

I use old laptops for a variety of reasons. I have one running a satellite emulation 24/7. Another (combined with a TV-capture pc-card) is my portable television/pvr. I also have a really really old armada 4131t being used as a permanant dummy terminal for a wrt54gs router.

Posted at 11:50 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by steve diraddo

This “extra monitor” stuff is giving me an idea… I have a screen I salvaged from a Compaq Presario z700. I think I’ll find an S video/VGA cable and hook it onto my current laptop with a hinge. Then I can lay it flat against the top when it’s closed, to read an ebook/watch a movie, for example, or swing out and provide a second screen next to my existing one.

Time to get planning… ;-)

Posted at 11:50 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by Skyler Orlando

any old laptop with a parallel port and some relays can give you control of just about any electronic device. write a simple program that handles remote access or timers, and you got yourself a cheap automated home deely.

Posted at 11:58 am on Nov 12th, 2007 by steve diraddo

I always thought it would be fascinating to hack the LCD to turn it into a really powerful LCD projector system. If you ever try and black out an LCD projector, there is always a little bit of light that gets through.

When working in a theatre, I found one of the toughest things to do was to project a nice clean video or presentation onto a backdrop in an otherwise dark theatre. I would like to try hacking the LCD so you put a theatre light behind it so you can control the fading in and out better to go from totally black to fully bright as smoothly as any other stage light.

Posted at 12:05 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Eliot

a few years ago, back in first year, i disassembled an old XT laptop and hung parts of it on the wall of my residence room and had it running a neat screensaver.

i had heard a rumor that a friend of a friend had somehow done something similar many years before with 4 old laptop monitors running simultaneously with 4 different screen savers off one XT.

Posted at 12:19 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by silic0re

You could allwayse steampunk it:
http://blog.nola.com/bicycleyarn/steampunkLaptop2.jpg
or
http://gaygamer.net/images/271.jpg

Posted at 12:20 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Chris P

I reused an old 486 laptop to bridge my basement network to my wireless network upstairs. It’s been running for 2 years and works pretty well.

http://vapid.dhs.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=vapidlabs:laptop_wireless_bridge

Posted at 12:24 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Larry Cashdollar

I was thinking of taking about 10 or so laptops and putting them together on a sheet of plywood or some such and massive segmented digital picture frame. I think it would be neat to set it up to run different transitions from one picture to another, sort of like the puzzles with the mixed up picture and the one empty square where you have to move them around.
If nothing else it would make for an interesting art project and hacking together the controller code for it should be fun!

Posted at 12:26 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Steve

I’m too lazy to see if anyone has already posted this.
If it’s fast enough and has two built in usb ports, get an eye toy (or the web cam of choice), an irobot create (that cheap roomba that is just a moving platform), a serial cable to connect the laptop to the roomba, and a power source for the laptop. Use them to make a moving webcam.

Posted at 12:29 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by takato

I’m surprised no one has mentioned using it for a robot controller. Older laptops usually have serial and parallel ports, which can be interfaced to relay and sensor boards, they often already accept a DC power so they are easy to power from the lead-acid batteries or whatever the main power source is. With wi-fi they don’t have to be quite so autonomous.

Posted at 12:31 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Rob Ristroph

I think an old semi functional laptop could be revived into a Cintique type drawing tablet with the addition of a touchscreen film to the laptop LCD. There would be a little bit of programming to get it to work properly but it sounds possible to me.

Posted at 12:34 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Eric Morrison

Digital Signs.

I am the Director of IT for a school and for a while now they’ve wanted signs that they can update with current information. I’m hacking together 4 laptops digital picture frame style, with Wifi cards and whatever linux distro I decide. They’re going to run a custom app I’ve written that watches an RSS feed and makes a “slideshow” (think powerpoint style) with updated news, lunch menu, schedule changes, etc. I’m saving us a bundle, a commercial system to do this is well over $5000

Posted at 12:34 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by andrew

You can remove the lcd from the body, turn it around and put it onto the back, then load some free slideshow software onto it, add a stand and voila! Digital picture frame! for extra fun, hook up the slideshow to a flickr account, so grandma can see pictures of the kids right after you upload them to your account!

Posted at 12:36 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by r

I was thinking about taking the screen off my old laptop and screwing it to the wall of my hobbyroom and have a connector of some sort and use the laptop as a electronic datasheet catalog.

I have just installed Ubuntu on it and it runs a bit slow (Very old machine). It will work as a internet PC whit possibilities for eagle CAD and som other stuff

Posted at 12:40 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Karl K

Old laptops are great as :
- under-the-sofa home server/ap
- VT100 compatible terminal (some frenchie made a floppy named Termux, linux+minicom, I used it some years)
- Car-embeeded PC
- reuse the power supply ! (did this when my Ascienta AST910n died)
- House automation system, old lappys often have a // port, useful for something like a relay board, and serial ports for devices like a rfid reader, temp sensor :)
- Laptop ! who needs tons o’ gigahertz and petabytes of ram ? A PII with 128 Mb RAM is sufficient for quite a lot of things (kids computer ?), and a PIII / 256 Mb RAM can do nearly every task (except gaming, but honestly, who cares)

Posted at 12:46 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Wolf

well from my experience of trying to hack old laptops its sort of difficult to tap into the hardware. The most useful part is the flat screen but even interfacing that and providing power requires a lot of creativity. If you leave them intact and just extend the screen there are a lot of imbeding applications such as bar mounted media control.
good news is that some of the new old laptops have hardware like dvd drives and larger hard drives. Using the device to feed an LCD projector like we saw with the overhead projector would make a quick down and dirty media solution with a strong interface.
I have been thinking about integrating a machine into my car to tie in with my upgraded programmable systems like megasquirt. That two has its own unique set of problems and gifts. Screen and keyboard locations are problems but power supply is easier since you have an almost unlimited DC supply.
anywhere a computer is needed a laptop provides a nice clean package.

Posted at 12:53 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by paige

I’ve already tried turning an old laptop into a internet-controlled, webcam-equipped robot (or rover, maybe – it’s not autonomous). Motor control is through an L298 driven by the parallel port, on tank-style chassis from a R/C robot. Unfortunately, the laptop is a little too old and slow to run any videoconferencing software I’ve tried comfortably along with a VNC session for control, and the webcam’s narrow field of vision makes getting through doorways an ordeal.

I don’t think I’ll be pursuing the project much more, although I’d like to eventually put a microcontroller in the chassis and do something else with it. Still, it has worked to some extent and it’s been an interesting experience. And I’ll take suggestions for lightweight Linux videoconferencing/video streaming software if anyone has any.

Posted at 1:03 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by kwc

>>> 45 RE: robot controller

I was thinking about an old laptop with ports and using it to handle the servos on a telescope to handle aim and focus with a digital cam set up to take pictures over the course of the evening.

Automate your star gazing and flip through the pictures the next morning type thing.

Posted at 1:04 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Blind

I use a old 486 laptop with broken keyboard in my lab. I have wifi access to my lan, a sealed keayboard with incorporate mouse (from symcod) end I use it to stream mp3 to the lab, and , in future, to drive my cnc :-)
Some other ideas for you :

-use 5 laptor , build a cubic box and incorporate on it the 5 display, you can have a cubic super display :-)

-Use a laptop in your car to take a look at the ODB2 values (Fast and Furious school)

-Use it like a monitor for the security camera that you have in the garden, plus a ltp to realis board to trigger some lights or an alarm

- Use like a remote interfacing with an old nokia phone (I’ve used years ago a 5110) in combination with a ltp relais board to swith on/off some lights and to power on the boiler for my shower…

-use it like a super mega remote for your tv,dvd player,vrc, laserdisk and so on with a simple interface to learn all the remote. You can have a real BIG remote to control every IR items in your house :-)

Posted at 1:06 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by RigoR MorteM

convert a laptop into an in-car entertainment system. the lcd panel folds down from the ceiling, and the base is moved somewhere down/in the dash. :)

Posted at 1:26 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by umdk1d3

This may be a bit ambitious, but I’ve always been very interested in the idea of kitchen automation.

Hack the laptop into an all in the screen type thing, ala what some people will do with older mac laptops (I’ve lost the link but the screen ends up being mounted in a thick plexi frame), hook it in to whatever you’ve got around (let it control a toaster, monitor fridge temperature, oven temp, even control the oven if you don’t have an ancient gas one you wouldn’t trust for anything like I do) then stick it on WiFi and give it Bluetooth so you can control/monitor across the network or from portable devices with bluetooth.

With the basic framework set up you could hook it into all kinds of things, the automation wouldn’t need to end in the kitchen. But it would probably be quite a bit of work.

Posted at 1:32 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Tank

These are some good ideas! I have a 5 year old toshiba p4 with a killed over battery and dying video card.

If the video card wasn’t going out, you could make a media center projector (like a lumenlab). You could make a wireless streaming video tv to hang anywhere (or near a plug in my case).

It’s the holiday season, you could mount it in a Turkey with a video of wild turkeys being hunted (morbid I know). Or, if you’d rather have something for Christmas. How bout hanging it on a limb or few of the tree and run a video or dancing lights. Put an elegant tree topper up with a video of an angel or star shimmering.

Put a PC in a PC. Take the laptop screen, attach to the back of the laptop, then make the most interactive side panel to your favorite PC case.

Build a home entertainment control system / Media Center Controller.

Possibilities are endless.

Posted at 1:45 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Jeremy V

While working in a tiny little windowless closet/office, I actually designed an LCD “window” that used screens arranged together complete with molding, blinds, a ledge, etc. that connected to a wireless camera placed outside, giving me a window in my otherwise windowless office.

Then, I realized: why stop there?

Why have a window to your world, when you could have a window to anywhere? Imagine if you had an LCD window that looked out over the New York skyline? Or maybe Tokyo? The Grand Canyon?

Imagine looking out over a beautiful Parisian sunrise while you sip your morning coffee…

You could either have 24 hours of footage loaded into a hard drive discreetly hidden in the windowsill, or if the project really took off, maybe even connect wirelessly to a live streaming camera.

It would be timed to correspond with the system clock so that what you saw always matched up with the current time.

Other options could include:

a)Weather mode – you would have several instances of weather conditions loaded on the computer (light rain, heavy rain, overcast, snowy, windy, stormy, etc) and depending on your local weather (pulled wirelessly from the internet) the screen would blend into that mode. If it was raining outside, it would be raining onscreen.

b)Sound mode – designed to further the illusion of actually being in another part of the world, you could also have authentic sounds of your chosen location played lightly over a set of speakers (also embedded into the windowsill), so that the sounds of New York traffic, or the wind whistling through the Grand Canyon could be quietly overheard.

This would be perfect for home offices, cubicles, kitchens, small apartments, and generally anywhere that you want to escape.

Posted at 1:53 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Peter

the best hack for old hardware hands down is to load your fav linux distro on it with openoffice and donate it. you would be surprised how many local low income families do not have pc’s still. I’ve gotten more pc’s to churches and charities this way that redistribute them to low income families that use them than i can shake a stick at.

Posted at 1:55 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by chewy

Turn it into an automatic wardriving machine, with auto wep and or wpa cracking, with no or minimal user input. And maybe an auto e-mail notification once a wifi location has been hacked.

Posted at 2:14 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by pablo

Not terribly sexy, but how about installing linux and handing it off to an aspiring hacker?

Or mom, so she can check her email and surf the web.

Posted at 2:15 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by BII

Create a Pong clock!!!
Just download the pong clock screensaver and hang it on the wall. There is simply no coolest clock around.

Posted at 2:21 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Juan Cubillo

I absolutely love Kyndal’s idea on a license plate shutter so that speed cams can’t read your plate.

Posted at 2:34 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by mike

a duck!

I…i mean…robotics!

Even a low power laptop could probably handle enough to make for either an autonomous robot _or_ an able co-pilot to monitor sensors and systems on board an ROV of some kind.

Webcams, wifi connections and other stuff being more common means some cool potential!

Posted at 2:58 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by strider_mt2k

I use an old Dell Inspiron laptop as a car computer.
I took the screen off (I might use that in another project), and resealed the laptop. It fits perfectly under my seat. I made all the wiring as a “quick disconnect” type, so I can take the system out from under the seat if I need to. I wired the reset and power buttons to a remote that is a part of my center console.
For a screen, I got an 8-inch SVGA touchscreen that allows me to interact with the system easily while I am driving.
Two 7 port USB hubs are connected to the laptop’s two ports. One of these hubs is located inside the dash, and connects the GPS, IR remote, car audio, engine sensor (OBD-II), forward facing webcam, touchscreen, and a spare cable for a USB thumb drive or USB Wi-Fi which allows for an external antenna. The second hub is located in the cargo compartment in the center console. This hub will eventually incorporate additional sensors, such as a multi-axis accelerometer (For location fixing with intermittent GPS signal), enhanced “quick controls” through re-wired USB keyboards, an EV-DO modem (when I start making money). Both USB hubs are powered using the same DC-AC power adapter (Which is also controlled by a dash switch).
Using an open source “Front End”, the system has an easy to use graphic user interface that allows me to access common functions while I’m driving (Navigation, Music, Engine Diagnostics, and eventually web cam recordings with speed and location overlays).

The best thing about this system was that it cost me almost nothing to get it together. The big ticket item was the display. I’ve got a geardo father who got me the display as a birthday present. I spent $18 total on the USB hubs. Everything else was already lying around from previous projects.

Taking apart the dash was the most daunting part of the project, and running the cabling was probably the most difficult.

Posted at 3:19 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Static

I have a pair of laptop monitors which work, but the motherboards are toasted. A digital picture viewer which _doesn’t_ use the laptop to drive the images would be neat.

Posted at 3:26 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by J T S

I have a few limping laptops, some I nursed back to health and others hingeless or screenless.

I’m working on a paperless workflow project, so I can scan all of my notes and paper into the computer and toss them.

The iBook G4 (with the classic Apple colors added beneath the apple on the lid) is aiming towards having the touchpad from an old PDA embedded into the palm rest, for taking notes without a really expensive touchscreen.

[allen]’s comment is interesting since I’m currently machining a case for another iBook from aluminum. This is going to be one piece, tablet style. It will network with my desktop for mouse and keyboard control, and will control the Velleman K8055 board I bought for my dorm room automation.

The third, screenless iBook is tentatively going to be stripped of everything but the important bits and stuffed into something awesome. Current ideas are: remote control helicopter, weather balloon, kite, Apple TV cousin, or web controller for a more complicated lighting project I’d like to do in the future. I’ll probably mill a case for this one too, so it will be interchangeable between several projects.

I managed to snag handfuls of *useless* parts when I was gutting laptops at my middle school. Laptops are excellent sources for great LEDs, fans, and most importantly, microphones! I have a bag of laptop microphones that I’m going to work into projects sometime. I’m planning on a pocket sized recording set up. I may use the stripped laptop to record with the microphones, or create individual modules for each microphone that could write to a USB drive or send signals back to a main computer.

I’m not doing this myself, but one idea I’ve heard thrown around for laptops is an organized Roomba colony for efficiently vacuuming large areas and buildings.

I really like the window dimming idea! Sounds like a bit over the top, but it could be really good if done right.

Posted at 3:48 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Dean Putney

I’ve got an old laptop dismantled as the pretty banal digital photo frame. It boots windows 95 (!) and reads photo cds… Pretty unremarkable.

However,

a table top MAME arcade machine, complete with arcade style joysticks, but with a form factor small enough to fit on a dinner table…. Now that could be something.

Posted at 3:52 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Harel Malka

Hello!
My idea:

slim-sized HTPC-system with

-remote control over ir (any remote)and network
-possible to view EPG (Electronic program guide) and set recording timer with gsm-phone
-video streaming (multicasting) over LAN,
-using self made smartcard reader with pay-tv cards
-sharing pay-tv cards over LAN to other computers
-digital TV (DVB-t in europe) (3 tuners for multiple concurrent recordings)
-recording to network server
-passive cooling
-RGB-scart for TV

I have this system already working with normal ATX-hardware. It would be nice to build smaller version with parts from laptop… I have code, you have hardware =) Interested?

Posted at 4:18 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Supercool

I’ve always enjoyed the hype around RFID. How about creating an RFID transmitter that would transmit several different frequencies depending on the command given. These different frequencies could trigger events such as locking doors, turning on lights, etc.

This is possibly a better project for a PDA given the size/portability constraints. However lacking usefulness, I think it would be interesting.

Posted at 4:22 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Keith

I have always hated 3 things about laptops.

1: Price

2: Screensize

3: The keyboard/mouse

One thing I have wanted to do for a while is take two older laptops, strip the plastic shells, and mount them inside a regular size briefcase.

After stripping, take the screens, turn them sideways, and mount them adjacent to each other on one wall of the briefcase. Directly in front of them, on the sidewalls, hardware to store your slim, but full sized keyboard, which doubles as a protective shield to keep other things int he briefcase from destroying those precious (not so much anymore) LCDs.

Ideally, you may even have room to cluster those two old Pentiums to make for a machine that will run all those “briefcasey” things. Palm pilot kinda stuff, but with a web browser that works, and an interface you don’t need a microscope to see and Umpah Lumpah hands to use.

Posted at 4:22 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by KErry

I used my old Compaq as a secondary slide-out (using a keyboard tray) computer with an adjustable lcd screen mount to position it above my current laptop. Since the original screen died I had no qualms with striping it off and making a nice thin system, and then clocked the cpu down to keep noise/heat low. Using Synergy I used the old laptop as a sort of low load web browser and media player so I could work on my main system without gunking it up with small processes.

Thanks to easy adjustments to KDE’s theme and colors I was able to mimic OS X well enough to match the main system too so that it really felt like a second display more than a second computer. It also came in handy for times when I didn’t want to unpack my laptop just to check my email.

Posted at 4:28 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Virion

maybe boring, but useful: put linux, openssl and tinyca2 on it and use it to manage your self-signed certificates. for added security, you can lock this box away.
and then there are lots of industrial applications – all that stuff that needs real parallel/serial ports and ancient operating systems, like eprom writers, control unit programmers.
or use it as a data logger with built-in ups.

Posted at 4:37 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by hartl

sorry if someone already said this, I don’t have time to read all 65 prior entries:

Tape two laptop screens to the front and back of a business suit. Then connect two webcams to each side, and feed the input to the screen on the opposite side: the result, a see-thru outfit. You’d have to hide the batteries (carefully) in your pants or make flat battery packs lining the inside of your jacket.

Posted at 4:39 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Mike C

I am currently using an old pentium 100Mhz laptop running windows95 as a watering system controller through its parallel port. Made up a simple relay circuit which activate solenoids. It turns the water on and off in 3 areas of the garden at the moment which I will expand as I get time, I have plans of also adding some moisture sensors so if the moisture in the soil is over a certain level it will skip the days watering in that area.

I also have plans of adding a swimming pool temp and if possible chlorine and PH sensors and later put it all on a local webpage so I can keep an eye on the pool and watering system from any computer.

Still got lots to do but slowly getting there.

Posted at 4:43 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by David Roberts

There are at least 3 ways of making an LCD screen from a laptop into a
monitor.

1, easy: loading specialized software to let you have a
virtual-monitor-over-ethernet.
2, hard: hacking the LCD driver chip to accept a DVI signal.
3, harder: Same as 2, but VGA.

Posted at 5:07 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Shadyman

What abut using the collective power in all those four and five year old laptops that people are ready to just chuck out to make a really freaking powerful cluster based computer. The other option is to is to use the screens as a cheap source for flat panel monitors to case mod.

Posted at 5:22 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Mike L

absolutely low-tech use for broken displays: replacing the lcd panel with a tranparency of your choice gives a nice backlit sign.

Posted at 5:45 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by hartl

Simple: Install DSL(Damn Small Linux), give it an all new life!

Posted at 5:53 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by oldhat

You could make it into a homemade projector that was featured on engadget some while back. Something along this:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/17/how-to-build-your-own-hd-projector-part-1/

Posted at 6:01 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Sushi

I turned my old 333mhz notebook into a phone system, complete with voice mail, call recording, call forwarding, VoIP connections. All you need is a program like Trixbox: http://www.trixbox.org. Add on some accessories like a Linksys SPA3102 and it can handle all your landline calls too.

Posted at 6:36 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Danno

lots of great ideas, I would like to expand on a few.

for the office “window” you could hook up some webcams or the like to strategic locations around the office, so that you know when the boss is comming, or that annoying guy so that you can hide under your desk/ stop playing games. you could even hook up a motion sensor outside your office so if someone walks in while your away it switches the pic to something else. Or if your still living with your parents you could use it in your room for pretty much the same thing.

I also like the case-mod idea, if you hid it well enough you could make it look like your compy is completely cable free, or maybe so it looks like an empty case. or just have it running a continuous loop of pong/space invaders/ even lemmings. Or if your good with video editing , make it look like some rodent is running in one of those wheels and turning your cpu fan, or hook some temp sensors to it and if your cpu/vid-card gets hot enough they just burst into flames. You could even use the speed line to sync the video with the fan. If your computer happens to be water cooled, take some video of an aquarium and overlay it into your case, so that it looks like you’re truly water cooled.

I don’t know exactly how lcds work so forgive me for any stupidity but I’ve always wondered if it was possible to decrease the ammount of power used by replacing the backlighting (i’m assuming thats what it is) with a mirror to use the ambient reflected light to illuminate the screen, would be nice for the still picture frame thing so it uses less power if its on batteries.

one last idea, if you have a wall safe you could make it more high tech by using the lcd as the picture thats in front of it and even add touchscreen to make an interface to open the picture part of the safe. or throw in some palm reader stuff and get a picture that reads your palm and opens.

hope to hear more good ideas.

Posted at 6:41 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by the dane

For those looking on info for media car PCs, I worked on a project like this last summer. Even my old dell (700mhz) was able to do voice recognition. The pc ran some software I wrote which interacted with winamp. I have a video on youtube demonstrating it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=bMsIlKk1cE4.

If you want some details you can contact me at sbben@comcast.net

Posted at 6:49 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Benjamin

Old laptop can be used to test Your hacking skills. Let somebody to change BIOS passwords without telling You. Then try to unlock it.
I have one such laptop (100% legal, with all papers), but with corrupted CMOS-RAM data makes me to reverse engineer the BIOS or most likely to throw it into junk-box to wait better times.

Posted at 7:01 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Madis

A Bomb… Yeah thats the first thing that came to mind…
or you could turn it into a rediculous calculator, or if you have a touch screen one make A DDR pad using 4 of them…

Posted at 7:05 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by A_Blind_man

I have an old Toshiba that I turned into a picture frame holder.. Using Windows 95 i have all my pictures and some of the videos i recorded to loop and all my friends love it.. Or, I am in the stages of using the laptop to put on my FIRST robotics robot.. TO make a fully atomous functioning robot…

Check it out at http://www.myspace.com/teamtimrobotics

Posted at 7:10 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Tim Desmarais

I had an older laptop that I toyed around with hacking for a while.
I finally settled on the perfect hack: sell your old laptop on ebay and use the proceeds to buy beer.

Posted at 7:49 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by andrew

Permanently mount it in your car or van as a war driving and entertainment center. Upload music, and movies and older games or emulators. It would be great to play some X-wing or Sonic the HedgeHog while on a long trip.

Posted at 8:07 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Will

If you take an old laptop and a wireless card, you can rig up a way to hang the laptop upside-down on a shelf above your workbench. This allows the screen to function like one of those flip down DVD players in your car. You have to rotate the image on screen so you can see it “upside-down”. This allows you to check out a wiring schematic without a display on the work area. When you are done, just flip it up and its out of the way. Hook up a crappy stereo and you can even stream music while you solder! This also work in the kitchen for recipes and such. I just have been to cheap/chicken to try it out. Good luck everyone!

Posted at 8:09 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Dan

could be used as reactive targets….. Especially the old compaqs with their loose hinges. Just throw a piece of, well any metal really, and fire away!

Posted at 8:37 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Julian N

I already use a laptop as my firewall / caching internet access server with Microsoft ISA Server. It uses less power than a desktop, produces less heat and has a built in UPS! Most newer laptops already have an onboard network adapter so with the addition of a PCMCIA network adapter its easy to create a firewall with whatever OS of choice (freesco for example).

Posted at 9:33 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by ciper

#64: …I’m going to make a briefcase using that exact principle.
Showing up for an interview for an internship with that? Awesome.

Posted at 9:53 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by adam

Possibly add a massive hard drive, then use the laptop as a torrent downloader. Keeps your primary pc free, while still getting the content you want.

Posted at 10:31 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by Scott

i have a screen from an old hp jornada sub-notebook that i’ve been hanging onto for a project idea.
i want to connect it directly to a pin hole camera on the end of a flexible shaft. the plan is to use it to inspect the inside of my parrot nesting boxes to check for eggs or hatchlings to reduce the stress on the adult birds who could destroy eggs or hatchlings when they feel treatened.

Posted at 11:20 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by tzarkyl

Hollow one out, except for a battery pack and peltier cooler/fan unit, and then use it to discretely carry around sandwiches and/or packs of Capri Sun. . . practical AND delicious!

Posted at 11:44 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by chris

Where is a tutorial for wiring a vga adapter to laptop screens? I wouldn’t know where to start… I’m sure the video is easy, but how do you wire a power cable to it so you don’t need the moboard or powersupply…?

Posted at 11:51 pm on Nov 12th, 2007 by kozan

Would it be possible, with three identical laptops, to use them as a triple screen display, moving between the loaded operating systems with synergy? Aside from the power cords, ethernet, you’d need little else, giving a very clean look.

Posted at 12:38 am on Nov 13th, 2007 by Tavor

Here is something that I am thinking of doing with a few C18 Toughbooks that I have laying around…

Bash up an interface for the PCMCIA port using a FPGA, include a few PWM modules, mabey an ADC and external H-Bridges. Include the ability for switches and other sensors to be attached.

Strip the case from the laptop and mount it all on a platform with a bigger (7.2AH SLA) battery. Use some decent motors to drive wheels and/or tracks. Connect up a USB webcam and replace the HDD with a large CF card with Linux on it. I may even add a spare WiFi card to the spare PCMCIA slot.

Have it drive around the house annoying people, hooking up the sound card to speakers/mic would allow for voice/sounds to be played. The mic/line in port could be used as an ADC if only 2-Channels are needed. The screen could be maintained for interaction and the display of pictures/whatever (touchscreen).

Sure it would be work to make the interface (haven’t googled anything yet) and to write drivers and software but it would make for a decent and fairly indestructible platform for tinkering.

Posted at 12:40 am on Nov 13th, 2007 by cr_lawless

Assuming that you can wire up a decent power supply, either a workable solar cell arrangement or a decent battery set up, you could rig up an easy enough day bag for data gathering while hiking. It won’t be a light package since the older laptops weren’t big on the whole ultralight thing, and the batteries won’t help, but a more recent laptop might improve things.

Anyhow, we have a laptop that should be able to run for a couple hours. Attach to it a gps, heart rate monitor, altimeter, barometer, etc etc. Have the laptop sample everything at a reasonable rate (heart rate should be sampled more often then air pressure for example). It’s a bit of overkill really, but you could also stop and pull the laptop out to take notes or dump pictures off of your camera as well (or have the camera download while you hike) and link the pictures to the data gathered at the points that they were taken.

Between the weight and the bulk, I wouldn’t want this on anything where I had to pack much otherwise, but for a day trip where you might not pack anything other then snacks and water, shouldn’t be that bad. Then get home and dump all of the data to your main box for later examination (or upload it to a web page tracking your hikes or something)

Posted at 12:55 am on Nov 13th, 2007 by Blind

Reverse the screen so you can fold it back on it self (Like a tablet). Put a nice wooden frame around it and hang it on the wall, add a remote and you’ve got a very nice TV(PVR extender)/DVD player/Video player/ Slide Show. I’ve already made this: you can see it here:

http://mcraenz.googlepages.com/mppvr2

Posted at 1:28 am on Nov 13th, 2007 by mcraenz

1 idea. A dedicated Skype for linux Videophone.
Like a Photo frame DIY Mod with webcam hanging on the wall with the RJ11 connector electronically modded to interface with a normal phone that will remain on the desk, so you can make Voip w/video, and normal calls.
Make two and send one to your grandparents
2 idea. Use the motherboard, and a flatbed scanner to make a Standalone network scanner with its own storage space/shared folder.

Posted at 4:35 am on Nov 13th, 2007 by Rasti

Make a noise monitor. Check for characteristic volume and duration to identify loud planes and then email the noise complaint department of the local airport.

Posted at 4:44 am on Nov 13th, 2007 by Andrew Yeomans

I’d like to see a guitar effects processor. LADSPA and JACK rack could handle it. SooperLooper alone would be worth dedicating to the machine.

Posted at 10:31 am on Nov 13th, 2007 by Jonathan

Make an acrylic case for it and mount it on the outside of you door. When people want to leave you a message, they can type it up on the keyboard (which is exposed) or leave a video message with the screen-mounted webcam. Since there is a webcam on it, it can also be used as an electronic peephole. When in screensaver mode, it can show different cool animations, or maybe a picture of yourself so people know who lives there.

I have an old 233MMX laptop that I was thinking of doing this to. Got the idea after seeing the limitations of the whiteboard on my door.

Posted at 11:25 am on Nov 13th, 2007 by costas

Old laptop maybe is a beautiful mp3 jukebox (with MPD and a web frontend) or a itune music storage (whit firefly) or a lowpower NAS

Posted at 12:26 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by emuboy

May be we can use old laptops to build very cheap Mesh AP Routers with http://locustworld.com software, it is open source and free…

Posted at 12:27 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by VicosHack

I believe I got the oldest laptop/notebook of all, but I just can’t throw it away. So I am waiting and from time to time thinking about what one could do with an “Olivetti Quaderno” subnotebook (V30 8MHz, 1 MB RAM, 20 MB hard disk, IIRC). That thing is just too pretty and too cute to throw it out, and it’s in perfectly working state.

The best idea I have come up with was extending its parallel/serial ports, reviving my leet DOS programming skills, and turning it into an aquaristics control computer …

Posted at 1:23 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by drmr

It might be kind of fun to make a control center for your car. Have interior climate sensors and exterior climate sensors with climate controls for your heater or A/C, your entire mp3 and movie collection, rig it up to your GPS and have a nice big map, and use your cellphone as a gateway to get to the internet where you can watch real time traffic cams while you sit in grid lock.

Posted at 1:58 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by Mike

attach the laptop to the underside of a kitchen cupboard then use software to flip the screen and use it as a kitchen pc, easily hide able just close it up. What can be done with a laptop screen with broken laptop (power book g3 screen) could it be hooked up for use with car pc via (VGA)for a giant GPS.

Posted at 2:21 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by daily

Hmm,
most obvious to me is as a Media center, thats what i used my old box for (500mhz system) just for playback, home control and such
Car pc is the best one ive seen, GPS, music and video playback

Posted at 2:44 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by Eyuras

1. Cut it in two pieces using saw-cutter and make a video of it. (that’s my best guess for laptops aged 4yr or more!)
2. Use its hard drive by buying an cheap external HD enclosure.
3. Use it as a streaming server for my nokia N800. I use orb.com, may not work on very old machines.
4. For very old ones as file server for remote access to your files or as backup server, you may use any open source tool that backs up file shared through your (new)laptop.
5. Create home server. It should have remote logging, can have attached wireless camera’s [+$60] so you can view your home from anywhere or your street, attach an fm transmitter so you can enjoy your music (shuffle mode) anywhere in house, run torrent which can accept request from your home PC/laptop and download files to your (home)HD.

Posted at 3:44 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by Dhval

I’ve got an older dell pIII laptop that I use as a wireless webcam. I modified knoppix (aka Darnix) and compiled in my webcam drivers and added palantir for the streaming video. It now sits behind my couch pointing at my digital thermometer. The lack of hdd makes it far more power efficient as well.
Old pentium laptops make great lpt/serial port controllers too (with linux of course).

Posted at 5:40 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by Dar

1. Add a pcmcia usb card & a couple of external drive boxes for a homemade NAS. FreeNAS works nicely.

2. Cheap IP-camera; use the parallel port for reading temp or other environment monitors (i.e. Dallas 1-wires)

3. Scanner server

4. Replace the HDD with a Compact Flash card, add Puppy Linux and surf forever without recharging. Okay, not quite forever but pretty darn long. My record is 8+ hours.

5. Anyplace you need a quiet, cool, low-power single purpose box. Remove the screen for even less power and run headless.

Posted at 6:00 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by ScrappyLaptop

step 1)
install linux or some other low speed OS that you can control wirelessly

2)
take the screen completly apart, extend the ribbon tape and remove any plastic or metal coverign the back

3) connect it to your wireless network and make sure it all functions and you can use remote deskop functions or something similar

4) place the screen over a projector or similar light soure, make it look nice and build it into a piece of furniture, wall, etc.

turn this comp and your main comp on to throw movies or whatever you want up on the wall :)

simpler than it sounds.

i take no responsibility for stupidity … NONE
So chill out on the power tools.

Posted at 6:45 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by pistolpete

crap, someone posted something similar … =/

Posted at 6:46 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by pistolpete

use an old laptop as a microwave drill controller
microwave drill(http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2002/103002/Microwave_drill_melts_concrete_103002.html)
its a drill that can melt concrete, essentially, a hacked microwave oven with some automated parts and a computer to manage everything…

Posted at 6:46 pm on Nov 13th, 2007 by sempri_fi

I have an oold ACER extensa 500 (‘96 – ‘98) in working condition with both the serial and parallel ports! Screen hinge is gone, so its a bit squeaky. Otherwise, this one gave me the most company on my first year at college.

the best thing, as many have said, linux, since I am an Elec. Engineer (final year) all I’d love to do is use it as a very advance I/O sys with serial and USB input too, and maybe, just maybe, try RTOS linux to utilize full potential of the CPU.

Posted at 12:05 pm on Nov 14th, 2007 by xheavenlyx

I once saw a pretty cool project using an old laptop in a record store. This developer guy had taken an old laptop and webcam, and written a program to record a-la 2.75 hours of video to the laptop, and then after the memory was full it would play back the recorded video many times faster(in about 25 minutes), then start over again. It was a pretty cool art piece if anything.

Posted at 12:11 pm on Nov 14th, 2007 by M4CGYV3R

You know whats cool is setting your dns to 72.32.247.239 and watching the ads on this board go away and turn into another microblog

Posted at 12:51 pm on Nov 14th, 2007 by eatdns.com

I have always thought about using an old laptop with a dailup modem and a wireless setup as a secure drop point for info. Take the laptop and secure it in a spot that makes it safe and difficult to find and plug it into a wired phone line. Enable the wireless to allow you to connect as you come by. Using a remote session, then you could kick off a dial up connection to a (free) isp, then you can e-mail, ftp, telnet, etc. whatever you like around. This way you could put a file or script on the box to do whatever task you would like and it can go on doing it while you are miles away. You never have to deal directly with the laptop again and you have a hidie hole for info drop off. You could even share the info with others who could pass by and ‘pick up’ the info. You could also schedule any dialup work to be at night so as to not interfere with the phone line’s normal use. The connection would not be fast, but most older laptops would not make full use of the speed of a fast connection anyway. On a roof in a weatherproof enclosure is a good idea of where to put it. Make the enclosure look like any other electrical generic box. If you need a better wireless range, just tie in an antenna mounted in a spot that does not draw attention. Other expansions of this can be taken from things people posted above. You could have it a security cam. Have it take video, compress and upload to a site you can pick it up from, or just connect and watch it over the wireless. Your uses are many and not all have to be so ’spyish’ or nefarious.

Posted at 1:11 pm on Nov 14th, 2007 by Ronald_55

I’m in the process of hacking up an 15 inch laptop right now. Probably will make some sort of aliminium frontplate and make it hang on the wall. I’m considering a webcam in the plate to make some cool “mirror” effects, also the usual picture frame option, and maybe some monitoring of wireless clients and perhaps an alpha blended syslog from the computers on the home network on top :)

Posted at 1:27 pm on Nov 14th, 2007 by Andreas

Hook up a bar-code reader, make some software, hang it on the wall near your food storage and use it to keep track of what you’ve got stocked.

Expand it to print out or mail you shopping lists on a daily/weekly/whatever basis whenever something is needed.

Combine with recipe list to get a list of what you can make with what you’ve got, or what you need to make a selected recipe.

Posted at 4:00 pm on Nov 14th, 2007 by Chris R

I’m actually experimenting with a linux distro called ThinStation Linux right now. Its supposed to let me use any old x86 machine as a dumb terminal to connect via RDP, VNC, and a whole bunch of others. I have a W2k3 terminal server and an old Sony Vaio 505FX, so I’m gonna boot the Sony right into an RDP seesion on my TS and get full speed of the session (instead of the super low speed of the 505FX proc).

Plus, if you wanted to make a digital picture frame, and you had a terminal server, you could still use this approach and have your slideshow start at login on the TS. Its great! You can have 1 image of thinstation using different user accounts to get to RDP and you can make all kinds of gadgets!

Posted at 4:14 pm on Nov 14th, 2007 by Joey P

I use a Compaq Elite 486-75 as a really big caller ID box. It sits in my entertainment center and can be seen from 30 feet away. I have also used really old laptops as print servers, web servers, and consoles for routers network switches, and “headless” Unix servers.

Posted at 4:41 pm on Nov 14th, 2007 by microdot

What does anybody suggest I do with my working TRS-80 Model 100 Laptop?

Posted at 5:53 pm on Nov 14th, 2007 by trader

Donate it to someone who cant afford one.
Imagine how many people would benifit from a program that distributed used laptops to the needy. Buy a new laptop get a deduction for a trade in that is refurbished and given to someone who would otherwise go without. Feel good twice !

Posted at 1:34 am on Nov 15th, 2007 by TMOC aka Elite_Geek

Most older labtop screens are high resolution screens. It would be possible to convert the screen into one of those DIY projectors that people built. it would produce a pretty high native resolution screen 1080i? Convert the whole unit into this player – use as a media all in one projector box. Throw a bare bones operating system and make it into a dvd player/media player projector.

example of a diy projector –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6n6jW0XIV0

-or-

waterproof it put on one of those microsoft fish screen savers and throw it in a fish tank.

- i really like the licence plate dimmer idea!

Posted at 1:53 am on Nov 15th, 2007 by vr4

I say rip the back of the screen and use it as a fighter-jet-style heads-up display in your car. You could even have an IR camera facing forward for a night vision overlay, as well as turn-by-turn GPS direction overlay with a bit of creative coding ;)

It’ll even go to sleep and stay ready for action on those short around-town trips with the laptop battery.

Posted at 1:57 am on Nov 15th, 2007 by InsatiableAmos

take apart the screen, hook it up to some kind of timing circuit so the LCD flicks between transparent and opaque really quickly (probably a variable rate) and mount it infront of your camera to take stroboscopic photographs.

Posted at 2:19 am on Nov 15th, 2007 by akeroyd

KVM

I’m not sure where to start on something like this, but I would LOVE to be able to use an old laptop as a Keyboard / Video / Mouse to connect to systems that stay interfaceless 99% of the time.
Every now and then, you need to see what’s really going on, or access the boot/bios screens, instead of remotely connecting.

Picturing being able to plug a little laptop in, instead of lugging over a keyboard, mouse and MONITOR.

Posted at 9:11 am on Nov 15th, 2007 by Dave G

Take a grandfather clock, mount the screen in place of the face and wire some rubber-tipped solenoids to the parallel port in order to strike the chimes – Then re-implement the clock face: in place of the lunar-phase indicator, use a faux rotating weather indicator. Link it into your schedule, so it knows when to keep it’s chiming mouth shut. Bonus points for a program to play the Solenoids from a MIDI file.

Posted at 3:24 pm on Nov 15th, 2007 by Orb

Second on the e-reader idea. I’ve got an old NEC versa laptop (celeron 366mhz) that is gathering dust. I would really love an e-reader, but you can’t buy them yet where I live. So I thought about turning the laptop into a reader by getting rid of the keyboard (replaced with a usb connected one), optical drive, HDD, floppy drive, making a new case for it, installing some flash memory and loading DSL (damn-small-linux) or something similar on it. Though I don’t have no where near the knowledge or experience to pull off such a job yet, but maybe someone out there who could might be interested in such a task and creating a tutorial for it :)

Posted at 7:13 pm on Nov 15th, 2007 by matt

I’m not sure if this was mentioned, but I’d throw some simple linux distro on one and put it in that pull down shelf that you normally keep a cookbook on in the kitchen. Then I could just keyword search recipes on it and if it was wifi capable browse the net for recipes.

Another good use for 4 of them would be to mod them into the surface of a square table with glass over the screens and network them for a good tabletop gaming table. little network IM clients for private messages and GM ability to display info on all screens would be awersome.

Posted at 9:50 pm on Nov 15th, 2007 by andraon

I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while. This is really stupid, but my idea was to remove the screen, and mount some sony glasstron (or similar) glasses and a head mounted webcam for vision on a helmet; then install linux, and stick it in a backpack. Then just plug in a usb handheld keyboard, and word process while you walk. :)

Posted at 10:03 pm on Nov 15th, 2007 by Fwirt

Home automation, because laptops are of course flat in there design they could be fixed to a wall, then using an appropiate piece of s/w (homemade possibly) you could interface with the lights, fit electronic locks even attach actuators to the doors thus meaning you could open and close any door from anywhere. also considering this you could incorporate voice recognition, thus meaning you could open doors simply by voicing the word ‘open’ likewise you could close them. Another aspect you could incorporate would be motion tracking. in each room you could have motion sensors which relay information to the central computer (old laptop) which rooms are ocupied. this in turn could take the idea of home automation one step further in the sense that the computer could automatically turn lights on and off therfore saving on energy bills. another possibility would to automate blinds/ curtains, home entertainment heating infact almost anything in the qhole home that is electrical or could be made electrical.

Someone try this, it would be ace to see it happen!

Posted at 9:57 am on Nov 16th, 2007 by Ben

I’ve a couple of old laptops around but since I’ve no network in my home, around 90% of the abovementioned suggestions are useless for me. Alas !

Posted at 6:14 pm on Nov 17th, 2007 by Peter3D

This is probably mentioned before, but I really like the idea of a general-purpose PC just for email, flash games and the like. I have a Dell C400 which is pretty much useless since it has 1 USB1.1 port and 1 PC card slot, no optical drives.

I’m thinking of doing the reverse-screen idea mentioned earlier, putting a touchscreen kit on it, and putting it somewhere so it can work as a picture frame, but for email, general browsing and other usual activities as well. It pains me everytime i hear my family powering up the noisy old P4 just to check a little email.

More useful things to do with laptops definitely exist, but I think I’d start with this first.

Posted at 7:56 am on Nov 18th, 2007 by kureshii

run win 98 , netmeeting and wifi – you have a remote control computer, hack an interface to a couple of motor/wheels, add a camera – and there you go a remote presence rig!!

Posted at 6:55 pm on Nov 18th, 2007 by brian laffoley

This is actually original:

With some electronics and an old pc that can be on permanently, you can put a mic and a speaker on every room, connect the doorbell button to the computer, and read constantly the noise level in each room, and if anyone knocks, play some sound thru each speaker according to the noise level that you got from the mics… that way you will never miss someone calling at your door when you’re using your big azZ speakers, but if you are on a silent moment (or asleep) it will not scare you

Posted at 1:08 am on Nov 20th, 2007 by DioXide

I use an old IBM Thinkpad 600 for a car GPS. Bought a SIRF III usb GPS on ebay and Delorme Streets & Atlas 2007. Running Windows 2000 (no updates. S&A gives voice directions. Issue with Pentium II speed when making many turns in short space. Also Delorme S&A does not match residential areas well (S&A street maps are not geographically accurate).

Posted at 5:16 pm on Nov 20th, 2007 by Jacques

I think number 138 is BRILLIANT!! I am thinking about trying this, if you don’t mind!

My best idea (kind of covered already) is to use a laptop with a shattered screen as a in car entertainment computer. Use auxiliary displays instead of the shattered screen. I would use it for DSMlink (or Crome or Uberdata with an ostrich) to tune my engine on the fly, with infrared foglights and some weatherproof webcams for night vision, with pvr software for back/up camera and race recorder. I would have a wireless access point in my garage and a script running to update my mp3 collection from my desktop every time I park within range. As a bonus, I would run a SNES emulator.

Alternatively, when I DJ i would like to have a terminal set up for the crowd to automatically browse my song collection and make requests. There would be a mysql database of all my songs on my DJ computer and a web server on that computer sharing a search page. When a user made a request on the search page, scripts and an xmms plugin would automatically add the requested song to my playlist.

Posted at 1:52 pm on Nov 23rd, 2007 by redleader36

It would be great if someone made an older laptop into a homebrew navigation system for the car. im not sure if there is an opensource alternative to microsoft streets, but that would just be great.

Posted at 11:39 am on Nov 26th, 2007 by gr33n

I had the KVM idea, too. I used to work in a lab integration environment and always wanted to hack some old laptop to use on the servers in the lab without having to haul a monitor, keyboard and mouse over.

This also reminded me of a project I tried starting on a while ago. I’ve purchased old/classic video game systems (Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, etc) from thirft stores (dirt cheap). I wanted to hack the parts out of the laptop leaving only the frame and the monitor. Then I wanted to create an “insert” out of each of the gaming systems. This would change the former laptop into a portable, swappable console game system.

The hardest part about it is getting the LCD to work. I envision converting the video out to VGA or something like that. I would love to see this picked up by someone. I just don’t have the time or resources to get it done for a while.

Posted at 7:10 pm on Dec 3rd, 2007 by japkin

world community grid uses computing power to help solve and find cures for diseases such as cancer and AIDS through distributive computing…hook up the laptop to the internet, lock it in a closet, leave only the WCG software running, and save the world for the cost of electricity

Posted at 11:17 pm on Dec 6th, 2007 by nibsyy

I have an old Hitachi 8mm vhs camcorder still in good working order. Since I recently purchased a new DV camcorder, I’d like to find/get some ideas on how to convert/hack the Hitachi for other uses, perhaps even the possibility of converting it to a digital camcorder.

Thanks.

Posted at 7:49 am on Dec 15th, 2007 by Raul Botello

how about a car alarm ran from and secured from old laptops …with gps . cameras for all situtations …now with the wireless anywhere anytime tech …it would be an ideal test for the durability of hardware

Posted at 2:20 pm on Sep 19th, 2008 by thewiz453

I’ve found that a touch screen computer (Fujitsu LT-500 500MHz) and a gps with DeLorme maps makes a great Mobile GPS and mp3 player for my car. With Foxit PDF reader and two gigs of PDF’s it becomes an ebook reader. And I have Artrage for making sketches. Cheapest and most useful thing thing I ever bought.

Posted at 5:32 pm on Dec 20th, 2008 by Randy

Man, I wish I was remotely technical so I could think of something new. I have old laptops strewn around the house!

Posted at 5:26 am on Mar 26th, 2009 by Portable Wireless Speakers