Selfhosted @lemmy.world Presi300 @lemmy.world 8mo ago

Ideas for how to repurpose a half broken laptop

Due to unfortunate circumstances (me dropping the laptop) I have now ended up with a half broken laptop that has a broken screen and a dying battery. I could repair it, however, I don't wanna bother as I'm very likely gonna be getting a new one soon.

The laptop itself still works fine, however the broken screen and dying battery make it pretty much useless as a laptop and I already have a home lab NAS thing, so I'm kinda out of ideas on what to do with it. Any ideas?

Here are the specs:

CPU: i5-8300h

GPU: intel HD830/GTX1050ti

RAM: 16GB

Storage: 128GB SSD

63 comments

Remove the battery, take the motherboard out of the case. Plug the motherboard in, and voila you have a larger and more powerful raspberry pi. You could use it as a second node for control, management, observation purposes, etc.
- Great suggestion, but I'm not entirely sure it's 100% possible on all models? Some models are built so that it won't turn on without a battery installed (much like phones) and that the power has to pass through the battery before it reaches the motherboard.
  
  I believe that scenario would take much more knowledge of electricity plus some soldering skills to bypass the battery. They gave specs, but not make and model. I don't trust companies like HP to not take the route that requires you to send it in to them for servicing.
  
  It does work without the battery and the model is: dell G3 3579, I just didn't think the model was that important to mention.
  
  Not really necessary to take the mb out of the case, but removing the battery is a good idea. Tuck the laptop somewhere out-of-the-way and install your preferred Linux (like Debian stable). Set up some services on it, and enjoy having a nice, decently low-energy server.
- Why remove the battery when it is a perfectly working built in UPS?
  
  Because over time the battery degrades, swells, and becomes a fire risk.
  
  Keeping it only 80% charged can help mitigate it but not fully.
  
  Because it is a safety issue and the battery isn't designed for that anyway. A UPS is designed to stay charged for a long period of time and laptop is not.
- If you remove the battery it will either A not work or B run extremely slowly. Always have a functional battery in your laptops.
  
  Ideally find a way to limit the charge of the battery. But if you can't nuking your battery is better than running at 800mhz or whatever your lowest clock speed is.
  
  I've run laptops before without batteries a few times and never had issues, is there a reason for the slowdown?
- Make sure you have a cooling solution...
  
  you can keep the fan and heatsink on the board
Had a similar incident with my son's hand-me-down laptop. It just sits on a desk with a monitor and what-not plugged into it. It's now a wide flat desktop.
Retroarch box for your TV?
- I'd also glue it to the back of my TV and install Kodi or Batocera on it. Next option is give it away if you don't need it. Either to someone who is still in need of a homelab or to recycling.
What is the motherboard?

I would pull out its guts and then come up with a solid cooling solution for the CPU. Be extremely careful of the battery and make sure you dispose of it properly.
- Yeah, that's another thing I was gonna ask about... How does one properly dispose of a battery?
  
  Find a recycling center
Services: DNS (Pi-Hole for example), DHCP, or NTP, off the top of my head.
- Already got all of that from a VM off my homelab
  
  Sounds like you’re looking for a solution you already know the answer to; recycle the laptop if you’re not going to repair it.
  
  Web server for a Smart Mirror?
  
  https://magicmirror.builders/
  
  I run my mirror locally, but you can also pull it from a separate server.
  
  Install Proxmox on it and it could be a second node for anything that you want.
What your situation for data backup? You mentioned a homelab and a NAS, are you running regular backups to an off-box store? You could mate it with a few TB of inexpensive USB disk, maybe some software RAID, and use it for off-box backups. Doesn't have to be fast, just reliable.

Specs like that, you have some options. Virtual assistant, IPCam NVR like MotionEye or Frigate, media server for your car (takes DC voltage, right?), weather base station, ADS-B feeder, smart mirrors.

Or (if you're in the US) you could repair it and then, if you donate it to a suitable charity, you could take the the cost of the repair as a deduction on your taxes. Probably doesn't help you that much, but it could maybe really help someone else who needs it.

Or, just wipe it and send it to e-waste.
- My situation with data backup is... well I have none, nor can i really afford to invest into more hardware at the moment. I am running RAIDz1, on my NAS so that gives me a small amount of protection in case a drive in it does go bad ig.
You could try to convert it to a "headless" laptop.

Some cash savvy people have been buying M1 macbooks with broken screens and converting them into headless laptops. For the price of a broken MacBook and some tinkering, you can get what is essentially a Mac mini with a touchpad and keyboard.

https://youtu.be/uOigVjqW7hc
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  
  https://piped.video/uOigVjqW7hc
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- That is one of the things I've thought of doing with it, like a dedicated game streaming machine. It's got gigabit LAN and a dedicated, even if not latest gen GPU, so yn
Take it to an electronics recycling center. Seriously.

If you already have a homelab, you plan to replace it, you don't want to repair it, and you don't have an obvious use case for another machine (it's just another computer; you either have the need for another computer or you don't), then holding onto it is just hoarding.
- I mean, ultimately, if I can't find anything else to do with it, I might do that.
It's can be a useful server with a built-in UPS if there's any services you'd like to isolate from the rest that you're running. One example is backups as you want a backup system to be fairly well isolated but anything sensitive would qualify.

You could also make use of it for purposes where the hardware can speed things up, I think that GPU could help with encoding etc.

@Presi300@lemmy.world @selfhosted@lemmy.world #selfhosted #repurposedhardware
- I wouldn’t suggest a dying laptop battery as a UPS, especially if it’s old. You’re just asking for a spicy pillow in a never observed, enclosed area.
Do you have a media center and/or server already? It's a bit overkill for the former but would be well suited as the latter with its dedicated GPU that your NAS might not have/you may not want to have in your NAS.
- That is a neat idea, however I don't really have a "media center" or a TV for that matter, as I always just watch stuff on my PC... That and I am not the type of person who's gonna go buying movies on disc... ~~I just pirate that sh!t~~
Looks like you have a brand new dedicated porn viewing machine
- Nah, that's what my phone is for :)
Install a Linux Distro. Connect to external monitor, plug power into wall.
Use it for a dedicated torrenting machine or use it as a test machine for whatever you like. If you kill it, whatever.
Otherwise I would just take that SSD out and recycle the machine.
I usually just harvest usable parts like the hard drive and camera and call it a day.

Alternatively, if you're able to plug an external monitor in and get it to work for setup, you could install some sort of Linux distro on it and run it headless for lots of different purposes.
- Camera?
  
  Like a Webcam camera? What's the use case? Can you map the pins to a SPC like a raspi or ardrino?
  
  Yeah it's relatively easy to reuse most webcam cameras, you just have to get them connected to a USB cable, then most computers will immediately recognize them as cameras.
Sell or donate for parts. If you don't have a use for it, someone likely does and it's better than landfill.

63 comments