Ideas for how to repurpose a half broken laptop

Submitted ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Presi300@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

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

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appel@whiskers.bim.boats ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Why remove the battery when it is a perfectly working built in UPS?
  
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  - huginn@feddit.it ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Because over time the battery degrades, swells, and becomes a fire risk.
    
    Keeping it only 80% charged can help mitigate it but not fully.
    
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  - possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - appel@whiskers.bim.boats ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve run laptops before without batteries a few times and never had issues, is there a reason for the slowdown?
    
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- possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Make sure you have a cooling solution…
  
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  - appel@whiskers.bim.boats ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    you can keep the fan and heatsink on the board
    
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deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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actionjbone@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Retroarch box for your TV?

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- h3ndrik@feddit.de ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah, that’s another thing I was gonna ask about… How does one properly dispose of a battery?
  
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  - possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Find a recycling center
    
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Meron35@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

youtu.be/uOigVjqW7hc

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- Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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
  
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solidgrue@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Services: DNS (Pi-Hole for example), DHCP, or NTP, off the top of my head.

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- Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Already got all of that from a VM off my homelab
  
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  - AtariDump@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - hrmtc@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Install Proxmox on it and it could be a second node for anything that you want.
    
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  - SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Web server for a Smart Mirror?
    
    magicmirror.builders
    
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Atemu@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Do you have a media center and/or server already? It’s a bit overkill for the former but it could work well as the latter with its dedicated GPU that your NAS might not have.

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- Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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~~
  
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vetehinen@lethallava.land ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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
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- KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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zaphod@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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 of another computer or you don’t), then holding onto it is just hoarding.

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- Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I mean, ultimately, if I can’t find anything else to do with it, I might do that.
  
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DoctorButts@kbin.melroy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Looks like you have a brand new dedicated porn viewing machine

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- Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Nah, that’s what my phone is for :)
  
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interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Email server and password vault This is something that should be a physical object in your own home. And it should be only that (ok, maybe include a notes and calendar app but keep it simple, stupid)

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Teon@kbin.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Sell or donate for parts. If you don’t have a use for it, someone likely does and it’s better than landfill.

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retrieval4558@mander.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Landless2029@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Camera?
  
  Like a Webcam camera? What’s the use case? Can you map the pins to a SPC like a raspi or ardrino?
  
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  - retrieval4558@mander.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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