PROJECT LOG Audio Box Mod -> DV4 laptop to audio/video streaming

Hello ladies and germs... my first post here.

I have an older laptop that I bought in dubai on deployment (navy), and it worked great for a long time, but now it just over heats to the point its unusable. I fresh installed new hard drive, cleaned the fans, modded the case for better airflow, new thermal paste, nothing helped (just a poorly designed case is what Im assuming)...

So, in the months its been setting and collecting dust, I pulled it out, and it shockingly works great, just still has the heating problem.

My solution ->

- Gut the entire thing
- install into an aquarium for oil cooling
- use it as a standalone audio box to house all my music and videos and connect it both to the standard monitor and have HDMI out to TV for streaming audio and video to the tv and sound system
- Will be doing a simple design based on wireless solutions (minus hdmi of course)

Basically giving this laptop a purpose other than a glorious paper weight.

I will be updating this as I go along with pictures, and Im 10000% welcome to ideas and criticisms.

The donor body


pulling apart




Oh yeah... HP, you may want to figure out better materials than "scotch tape" hahaha... (yeah yeah, I know tape is used by a lot of companies for a lot things)





Oh well, disassembly complete, reinstalled the important bits, not much to look at eh?



And USB drives work properly, per keyboard test



Tomorrow, I will do the physical construction.

I decided to go in a different direction...

Decided to house it in a custom case, with room for extra goodies

Plans now->

- install switch for fans on or off, with quick disconnects for easy swaps if I need

- mount wii on top of motherboard

- figure a way to install monitor

- custom paint the box

As is, it has tons of cooling with the 2 fans and the onboard fan, its idling at 26c which is ideal for this. Since it wont be doing anything more strenious than surfing the internet, im confident in its cooling ability.


Anyway, less chat. Missed some pics, sorry. I drilled out the top and back to house the fans.



then I epoxied some blocks to house the mother board, and installed that. Cut slots for wires, to keep it modular, I decided not to restrict it to just hdmi, etc.

epoxying the power input to the box


everything installed



Gotta hack the wii still, but for a teaser for me




and everything closed up, looks clean to me




IF I can figure out how to pin this monitor to a separate hub, this will happen too!

interesting...

gettin close...