Old laptop: what to do with it?

[b.i.o]

So my dad's laptop's hard drive recently died and since the thing is quite old, he's looking at getting a new one. So I'm getting the old one.

It's an old Dell--PIII 800MHz, I believe, integrated video, not sure how much RAM. Suggestions on what to do with it?

I don't really need another computer right now (have a laptop and will have a KPC very soon). Perhaps something could be done with the screen?

[niko7865]

I installed one in a wall in my bathroom with some nice speakers, only the speakers are visible. I then installed apache + pitchfork + mpd on it and have all my music on an nfs share. Now when I want to take a shower I load up a webpage and make a playlist to listen to! It is lame but fun, I'm going to eventually install them in all rooms/hallways and add bluetooth proximity so the music will stop/start when I leave/enter a room.

[Axman]

A long time ago I came across a project where a dude hacked his laptop to bits, got it to network boot without a hard drive, and turned it into a digital picture frame. I know those are common now, but this is still cooler in all kinds of ways--obviously getting the photos wirelessly from a share is cooler. Because the whole thing was pared down to a motherboard, a wireless card, and a display, he actually powered it with a single twisted pair from a length of cat 5; I think he used blue and you couldn't see it on the wall. And, you know, he made it hisself.

[Toeofdoom]

You could also attempt to make a projector using the screen and an overhead projector meant for transparencys, if you can figure out how to make it work with a d-sub connector or something.

[Awia]

Use it to run the lights and other electronics in your house, get some mics, some voice recognition, and somehow wire it into the lights.

"computer, lights on in room 3"

"computer, turn the oven on, 200 degrees"

This would be awesome, one step closer to an automated house.

[NieXS]

Isn't there already something that does it? I guess it was Pluto or something, and automates your entire house. And it ran linux.

[Awia]

Isn't there already something that does it? I guess it was Pluto or something, and automates your entire house. And it ran linux.

That is awesome! sadly it costs upwards of 15k...

Edit: just watched their flash sales spiel (Which you can find here http://plutohome.com/index.php?section=what_is_pluto), I defiantly want one now, damn you marketing!
Apparently you can download the software they use and put it on a machine, you'd just have to buy all the stuff separately, and wire it up yourself, which could get...expensive.

[b.i.o]

Yes. Unfortunately I live in a dorm room and so something like that's not very practical. Which is really too bad, because it'd be awesome to be able to control stuff in my room with a computer. Hmm. I may just end up installing a minimal linux distro on it and giving it to a friend who can't afford a laptop. I'll have to see how the battery life is.

[Scythe]

I can only suggest this: http://www.tjhowse.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=91.

Amazing win.

--Scythe--

[aleflamedyud]

So my dad's laptop's hard drive recently died and since the thing is quite old, he's looking at getting a new one. So I'm getting the old one.

It's an old Dell--PIII 800MHz, I believe, integrated video, not sure how much RAM. Suggestions on what to do with it?

I don't really need another computer right now (have a laptop and will have a KPC very soon). Perhaps something could be done with the screen?

Put it in a giant hamster ball, silly! Or just generally some kind of robot.

[spdqbr]

If you don't already have a dual monitor setup (or perhaps even if you do), you could do something like this. There are some free alternatives out there, but I can't remember their names atm!

[pyroman]

Put it in a giant hamster ball, silly! Or just generally some kind of robot.

beat me to it! = (

although heres the link for you! http://xkcd.com/413/

[codyhotel]

I installed one in a wall in my bathroom with some nice speakers, only the speakers are visible. I then installed apache + pitchfork + mpd on it and have all my music on an nfs share. Now when I want to take a shower I load up a webpage and make a playlist to listen to! It is lame but fun, I'm going to eventually install them in all rooms/hallways and add bluetooth proximity so the music will stop/start when I leave/enter a room.

This was exactly what I was thinking of doing with a old laptop that my dad had sitting at work

I've got most of my plans for it down pat, but if you could give me a little insight as to how you went about making yours succeed it would be much appreciated so I don't spend 3 or 4 weeks of trial and error trying to get it to work.

I was planning on going with a wireless network between the laptop and my main computer and just run file sharing and bring up winamp with all the songs on my main on the laptop somehow. my uncle is a bit of a techie so his help is a major part of the plan.

[niko7865]

It's not very hard to set up at all, the hardest part is cooling it the dang thing. I'm actually looking at via itx boards or some other small system to keep it from needing active cooling and be ok in a small enclosed space.

The software part is the easiest, just install linux, then install apache, mpd, nfs-common, and then pitchfork. Mount your music share, tell mpd where to look, and then you can control everything from pitchfork (rescanning, volume, ff/rw, pause, etc.) Setting the wireless to connect on startup was a little more tricky, I don't even remember how I did it, but I don't think it was that hard.

I haven't set up the bluetooth stuff yet, and I currently have no idea how to get the music to follow me, maybe having the music play on the central server and use pulseaudio to map other computers as sound devices. I have even less of a clue how to make it follow more than one person. Blueproximity is set up on my laptop, however my cheap phone sucks at bluetooth and looses the signal every few seconds, but when it does work, i can get it to pause/resume audio when I leave/return to my laptops vicinity.

I'd be more than happy to answer any other questions too.