I have an old laptop with heating issues and no screen. I would love the ability to make it a wireless controller for my desktop PC, which happens to be hooked to my TV for media playback.

Anyone know where i can find such a program?

@Jeremy V – Video cards are usually dead or alive, they rarely transcend that gap. Your LCD is most likely dieing. The best way to determine this would be hooking it up to an external monitor. If the display looks fine after a couple restarts, then it’s your LCD, if it’s still messed up it’s most likely your video card. You should also check the connection of your video cable, make sure it’s seated properly.

@thewiz453 – How do you expect to power such a creation? Cars sometimes sit idle for 12hrs+ at a time. The car battery would most likely drain if not started after 8 hours or so.

@Madis – Disconnect the laptop from every power source(Battery + AC Adapter), then disconnect the BIOS battery for a couple seconds, poof no BIOS password. If that doesn’t work you will need to find the jumper(s) associated with the BIOS and pull those.

@Dan – I love that idea, maybe even incorporate a wireless mouse and keyboard that can be stashed out of the way until they are needed.

Thanks.

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.

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.

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