Comment on Old laptop with non-funtional display... What do I turn it into
ahmedezat_katteb@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
If you end up running it headless (game streaming host, Jellyfin/Immich worker, whatever), two small things save a lot of hassle:
- Get an HDMI dummy plug (a “display emulator”, a few euros). With no internal panel detected and nothing on HDMI, the GPU often has no proper display to render to, and Sunshine/Steam streaming in particular wants a “real” display to capture at the resolution you pick.
- Check the BIOS for a “power on after AC loss” / “auto power on” option. Plenty of laptops don’t have it, but if yours does, it comes back on its own after an outage like a proper server. Otherwise Wake-on-LAN from one of your mini PCs is the fallback.
And since storage is your bottleneck right now, open it up and see if there’s a second M.2 slot. Some of these chassis have one, and then it could hold some data while also taking the Immich/Paperless ML jobs on the 3050Ti.