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Rehabilitating Damaged Laptops
Rollie Hawk writes "It breaks my heart to see a computer in need of a good home. For years, I've driven my wife crazy with all the 'strays' I've brought home with me. After all, the last thing my house needs is a few more cubic feet devoted to kenneling old and abused computers. That being said, laptops present very unique opportunities. No matter what caused you or someone else to ditch that old laptop, there still may be some way to integrate it back into society. For every kind of laptop lemon, I've found that there's plenty of lemonade to be made."
Isn't most of this stuff a bit.. well.. obvious? The gist of the article appears to be "find a laptop with a small hard drive? upgrade it (through some unmentioned means of salvage from your friends who happen to have old laptop hard drives) or use things that don't require a lot of space!" and "have a laptop with a low resolution screen? run things that are low resolution!"
I mean, the suggestions as to what to run in which situation are helpful, but I like to think that if I were dealing with those problems, I'd be able to figure those solutions out as well.
Oh well, it killed a few minutes.
Schlock Mercenary
Give them to some kid.
I got my interest in computer engineering from taking apart people's old junk. TVs, VCRs, computers, just about anything electro-mechanical.
If anything, i bet you can find a kid who would like to smash it up, but if you ask around, I am sure you can find a kid who would be interested in disecting it.
You never know, you could set some eager young mind on the path to a science or engineering career. And we can ALWAYS use more of us, especially as today's children drift farther and farther from science or engineering.
I've always been fascinated by the possibilities provided by old laptops...I mean, heck, you don't need a 2 GHz P4 laptop to wardrive, word process [ignoring the huge requirements of certain solutions...*cough* MSWord *cough* KOffice *cough*], code [note that I didn't say COMPILE!], act as an MP3 player [assuming you use a decent MP3 decoder, and not a piece of crap], or any of the lovely uses for laptops that people are now marketing in self-contained devices for several hundred dollars a pop.
Honestly, though, I'm curious where you're getting yours...neighbors and coworkers? Or is there some online stash somewhere that nobody told me about?
It's only an insult if it's not true.
High availability? Nup
Router? Probably not, unless you're going to use a combo of PCMCIA / USB eth adapters.
Database server? Nup.
File server? Check out prices of 120G laptop drives vs. 120G desktop drives. Nup.
Laptops are laptops, there were never intended to be servers, and run really poorly when tried to be used as such (in my experience, anyway).
Unless you just want a "server", and that's it. Sure it won't do anything, but you'll have a server!!
"The notebook I bought a fortnight ago already stepped down Euro 199 heading rapidly towards the crap heap."
And the crap heap thanks you for your quick turnover of modern technology. I haven't paid for any of my laptops.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
This guy reminds me of an uncle of mine whose back yard is full of junk. Just because you CAN find a use for something doesn't mean that you've found a GOOD use for it. There comes a time when you need to toss stuff. Bending over backwards inventing uses for archaic hardware just so you can have an excuse to hold onto it just isn't rational.
I do agree that setting up a late model laptop with a cracked display as a server of some sort does make a lot of sense, asssuming of course you have need for such a server. But installing Win3.1 and wordperfect 6.0 on a 386 that's old enough for a bar mitzva is just plain crazy for anyone who has any means of getting anything better. Toss it!
Human beings are aquisitive. We like to get stuff and keep stuff. Some people don't seem to understand that there comes a point at which holding on to something is a detriment because it eats up resources without providing any genuine return. The resources I'm talking about are things like space, electricity, and the patience of your spouse. It is far, far better to periodically do an inventory and toss out stuff. If you don't have a legitimate use for it and aren't going to have a use for it, then get rid of it. If you can't stand the idea of throwing it into the landfill then take it down to goodwill. Just because its useless to you doesn't mean its useless to everyone. Not only will you have more space for new stuff, but you'll find that your state of mind will improve. Lets face it, having a yard, or a house, or even a room filled up with junk creates a problem. The junk takes up space, gets in the way, and is generally a pain, and yet you don't want to get rid of it for some reason. This creates stress. Get rid of the junk and get rid of the stress.
I used to collect computers. Not anymore. I ditch anything I can't put to good use. The only exception I've made is for my old Apple IIe that I've had since I was 12, and if it ever dies I'm ditching it too. Today I've got 2 PC's and an Ultra-10. Actually make that 3 PC's if you count my HTPC that's in the living room. I'm a lot happier now than I was back in my hoarding and pack-ratting days.
I think the author of this piece needs to throw some crap out. If his wife hasn't left him by now then someone need to tell the vatican because she needs to be cannonized as a saint.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Need a simple console emulator machine? run it on your main PC.
Need a MP3 player? run it on your main PC.
Need a word processor? run it on your main PC.
Need a server? run it on your main PC with VMWare or user-mode linux or whatsoever equivalent.
Don't need any of them? forget about it and throw the old laptop away, or maybe give it to some of your friends who wants it as some other usage.
That would be cheaper, considering that old laptops eat up your room space, and here in Seoul, every square feet of your apartment cost thousands of dollars.
Not to mention getting your room full of ancient machines, and the disk+fan noise you have to tolerate every day.
How thin is thin? The primary thing I use my laptop for is email, internet and light word processing. I had a relatively new (p850) laptop with a broken hinge and dead HDD. Got a new hinge online and a 12 gb hdd secondhand at a hardware show both for about $75. Slap in a copy of winme and it runs firefox just fine. I really don't see the need to install any other software.
I don't forsee this machine losing functionality so long as it can run a reasonably modern browser.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
You're assuming that:
A laptop with a 100MB hard drive came with a cdrom
The motherboard supprts booting from cdroms
A laptop with a 100MB hard drive has enough memory to run a modern linux distro.
Beyond all that, laptop hard drives are not designed to run 24/7...Chances are it'll tank in pretty short order.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Laptop battery, about $100 (depending)
144-pin sodimms $113.99/256 (costs may be higher for EDO or propriority memory)
16bit PC card ethernet adapter $30
WIFI to Ethernet Bridge $93 (in case you can't do cardbus)
Laptop DVD rom drive $50 on ebay.
Cost to make that laptop modern $386.99
Knowing you can from Walmart for $598 + tax with all that crap already, priceless.
Sure you can frankentop, just so long as you don't cross the bottom line.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
a 500mhz is overkill for a quake server. You can get a good 12-16 person game going on a 166mhz.
It would work great for lan parties, you could just plug it in and leave it silently running in a corner while all your friends frag away.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
(Assuming you have an old laptop that most of the parts are working.)
Get copies of:
1. all the hardware manuals for all your more modern systems. Particularly, get your mainboard manual, schematics for jumpering and cabling your hard drives and CD/DVD drives, and info on your network, video and sound cards.
2. lists of your bios beep codes, and other startup info if needed.
3. selected software documentation. (mostly for essential parts, such as the OS).
4. If you have any windows boxen, copies of system configuration info, particularly how Windows has assigned IRQs and DMAs, particularly on older systems, and a known good backup or two of the registry.
5. a list of URLs for your hardware and software manufacturers (optional - only really useful if you can get to the internet by some other means without having to lug this laptop to the public library or something just to connect)
These files, with an older OS, will typically come to a few hundred Mb or less. Set up the laptop with the aprropriate software to read them all (you'll probably just need a general text reader and maybe Adobe Acrobat reader for PDFs, not usually much else). Voila! Now when you lose LAN or internet connectivity, or the machine won't even boot right, you have a portable tech support library.
Who is John Cabal?