After stumbling across this site, I decided to dig up my old eMachine M5310 laptop and see what I could fashion out of it. Fair warning, I was lazy and didn’t feel like getting out a real camera. All of the pictures were taken with my iPhone 3G.
My old eMachine has been a pretty trusty old laptop. The original motherboard in it died about 3 years and 10 months into the 4 year warranty. The original 40GB hard drive died somewhere in the 3rd year as well and was replaced by warranty with a 60GB hard drive. Other than the usual stuff dieing over the years due to use and abuse, it has been a very good laptop. The battery was completely dead, so I recycled it to reduce weight on the thing. One of the two hinges on the screen also broke, so it was a little flimsy. Ever since getting my new unibody MacBook Pro in November, I haven’t touched the laptop. It’s been collecting dust under the end table for a few months now.
So I was bored and stumbling around and came across the page mentioned earlier and I decided to try my own laptop photo frame project of my own. However, most laptops turned photo frames are typically 13″ or smaller. My old laptop is a 15.4″ and widescreen, which, I think, might make it a little more difficult.
Step one was to disassemble the laptop. After about 20-30 carefully removed screws and some carefully pried plastic (due to adhesives), I had the thing apart on my coffee table. Some parts were kinda tricky, but it was mostly time-consuming and tedious (but easy). The only problem with screws I had to worry about is how to get the heat pipes re-mounted over the processor. They originally screwed through the motherboard and into the case. Without the case being there, I had to come up with something else. I got out my computer screw box and found 4 long screws that fit through the motherboard and conveniently screwed into standard case mount screws. This gave me an idea to use a little later on.
The next step was to come up with a template or prototype. I snagged some big cardboard boxes from work and decided to use them as easy-to-use material for crafting the template. I knew I needed a mounting board because the motherboard is a little flimsy. I also needed a way to help secure the CD-ROM drive and hard drive with the case mounts mentioned above. At this point, I had 6 mount screws already attached, so I put more screws through the holes in the motherboard and secured them with the mount screws. I also used one of the holes off in the corner to mount the LED “status board” (with the hard drive and power blinky lights) on the board.
Next, I traced an outline of the motherboard on a piece of cardboard and cut it out. I made sure to trim back a hair to allow the ports on the back to be exposed. Once I had the cutout, I basically mashed the motherboard on its mounts into the cardboard to make holes for the mounts. From there, I use more case mount screws to help mount the ones connected to the motherboard to the piece of cardboard. At that point, things were feeling pretty secure. All I had to do next was make one more big cardboard cutout to go between the mounting board and the LCD so things didn’t puncture and add a little more rigidity to the whole frame. Without the extra piece, I think the whole thing would be pretty wobbly and wouldn’t stand up very well.
So far, all is well with construction. However, as everyone knows, as soon as things start going right, something is bound to go wrong. I decided I better check and make sure the darn thing still turned on! I went ahead and stacked it up flat and tried to turn it on. No go. For some reason, it would not turn on with the wireless antennae hooked up to the wireless card. As soon as I unplugged those, it turned on like a champ. Since it has to be plugged in all the time anyways, I decided wireless wasn’t a very important feature. If it’s tethered with power, it might as well be tethered with ethernet. That, or I could try and find a PCMCIA wireless card (with better Linux compatibility) later.
If you’ll also notice, I had the motherboard facing the wrong direction. I wanted the exhaust fan to be at the top (heat rises) and to be able to cut some ventilation holes at the bottom to create a bottom-to-top airflow. This required the LCD to be flipped upside down, which actually turned out to be beneficial. The original orientation had the LCD cable being wrapped over and around the USB ports on the back. The new way just required me to cut a slit in the already blank space on the mounting board and all was well.
The final few steps were to cut out the actual box the whole mess would fit into. I basically took measurements and went and cut them out of cardboard. Then I lined them up to the sides and made marks and took measurements of the cutouts I would have to do for the ports and whatnot. I also cut out a frame to go around the LCD and one large back piece to cover the motherboard. I made the circular cutout for the fan by tracing a tea candle. After liberal amounts of masking tape, it was all put together!
As you can see, it’s not perfect. Nor was it meant to be. I wanted to use the cardboard to get the basic construction down. From there, I will be able to refine the measurements and probably build a final design in Google’s SketchUp. For the final version, I’m thinking about trying out Ponoko or maybe keep going with the DIY route and buy a Dremel and some Lexan. I think this would be a good way to test out Ponoko (assuming they’ve got their shipping prices down). If not, I’ll just make it super-geeky and transparent. For the final product, I also plan on cutting out the power button panel (with the power button, volume up/down etc) and the status LED panel to make the unmarked buttons and LEDs a little more informative. The speakers for the laptop are also super-duper-glued into a bar that I can’t seem to get pried apart. I’ll probably need a Dremel to cut into that and get the speakers out. I’ll find some empty space in the frame to mount those with rubber cement. And, finally, when I reconstruct it, I’ll see if I can’t figure out why the thing won’t turn on with the wireless antennae hooked up. I’m wondering if it’s just having problems creating a closed loop.
I’ll make another post when I get the final product assembled.
Next up is my SketchUp Design
I have thought for many years about doing this on a laptop I have sitting at home doing nothing