[Black Hawk]

I'm curious if anyone has ever tried this, or taken apart a laptop. I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to build one from scratch, and I'm curious if anyone's interested in finding out a way to do it. I have three laptops at home, two 5 years old, the other 4. I took a look at them without taking them apart, and I'm going to take two guesses as to how it would be possible:

AT Mobo, but that doesn't explain how to get a vid card in. (The Dell has one in it).
ATX mobo, but it would have a hump in the back, and it would have to have vid card built in. (I think an Nforce would do nicely here)

I want to know if anyone else wants to help, or has ideas. I'll take apart our lapops as soon as my parents let me, and I'll let you know what's inside. I think this would be a great thing to do, especially if we could get it to overclock. Thanks for your help.

[trey_w]

Good luck. In my hardware class, were building a laptop, but AMD gave us all the parts, all we are doing is seeing how we can improve things on it.

mostly thermal issus

[Jeff Bolton]

it isn't possible to build on at home. the motherboard has everything integrated into it, and those aren't available for purchase. it'd be cool, and i can see it in the future, but not now.

jeff

[cyber mouse45]

If you take apart your laptop, be sure to take some pics. I'd like to see what's inside one.

[Black Hawk]

Out of curiousity, do you think that AMD will give me the parts? I'd be happy to test anything they want for them, I'm really curious about them. Also, technically, an Nforce mobo would work, the laptop wouldn't be slim, but I think it would work. The only think that I'm worried about is if a notebook CPU to work on it. If it didn't, battery life would be really poor, due to the high voltage. Anyhow, if anybody has any ideas, I'd be glad to hear them. Oh yeah, tell me what your class is like, too.

[explorer]

It is doubtful that amd would give you parts for an experiment, However, if you could find a micro atx nforce motherboard, and build your own case you could have an ultra portable desktop. I do not see how you would be able to connect the laptop tft to a homebuilt laptop.

[iggybaseball]

they have an eden board that was on the front page that was smaller than any laptop mobo. it came with a built in cpu/vid/sound. i dont think theyve released it yet though.

[hoytron]

You couldn't use even micro ATX boards, with all of that integrated stuff, as they use too much power. Almost everything in a laptop is proprietary. The only standard parts are the hard drives and memory, in some cases. Many times not. This is why its so easy to build desktop PC's, as nearly everthing follows some industry standard. The only exceptions are systems like those that Compaq build, and that's why they're a bitch to upgrade.

I doubt that you will ever be able to build your own laptop. It would take a lot of effort on the parts of a lot of component companies. In order for it to be worthwhile for the consumer, you would have to be able to pick and choose which parts to put in the laptop, and companies would have to manufacture these laptop standard parts.

[Niloc]

I wish it was easy to build a lop top. I want one really bad just dont have the money

[Ridenow]

I repair laptops. I work for a company affilated with Dell, so I "get" to take appart a Latitude almost every other day.

They are not AT or ATX, every one is different. Every company has its own standards. Even models from the same company are different

I have looked into building a "laptop", but it would be more of an ultraportable desktop. I have figured out almost everything but the battery. I don't know an effective way around that. It would have a 1U tall PSU, slimline CD, laptop HD with an IDE adapter, risers for the cards and an LCD monitor. All could be packaged in a home made case about 2 inches thick.

[RoadWarrior]

There are some laptop barebones systems around, I think ECS makes them, anyway, they are just a motherboard, LCD, graphics and keyboard, you put in your own CPU, HDD, CD and whatever. They're not all that cheap though, around $700 I think that might have been Can$ though.

You can build a fairly small "luggable" I would think with an all in one ATX board, standard LCD monitor etc, but that's going to be hundreds of bucks worth.

For using salvaged LCDs from older laptops there are some graphics cards available, however, I think they are in ISA only version often with very tame chipsets, and cost $100, so that's not really cheap either.

There are some Pentium MMX laptops around that may possibly take a K6-2+ or 3+ with some modification, so if you get a low spec one of those, you could gee it up to decent specs if you're lucky.

Otherwise, if a luggable is acceptable, there are old suitcase luggables around that take standard AT sized boards. There are two types, the ones with a small 6inch CRT monitor in the toip of the case, Like the IBM portable PC, and the ones with a plasma screen on the side. There are AT format PIII and Duron boards around, that you could get into these no problem, you might find one you can get an ATX board in with some modding. For the display, well monochrome plasma is the best you might hope for as standard. With the CRT based ones, you could squeeze in a small used color TV and use a TV out on the graphics card to drive it, or you could try getting hold of one of those tiny POS VGAs.

I have a project a bit like that myself on ice. I have an IBM Portable PC, with the mono CGA screen in that takes a composite input, I am planning to install a pentium board in it with a VGA>TV convertor driving the composite input of the mono monitor. I thought it would make a nice portable MP3/modfile etc jukebox. I am going to try to do it without modding the case too much because those IBM Portable PCs are going up in value, so I want to preserve the case somewhat and keep the original parts I take out in a safe place. I might even give it enough horsepower so that it will play Mpeg Video CDs, and allow an extra video output to a regular TV.

Anyway, there's quite a few things you can do to get a small portable luggable system, building a fully fledged notebook sized laptop is however rather difficult.

regards,

Road Warrior

[RoadWarrior]

Oh for the battery I guess one could get a UPS and replace it's standard cells with lower volume higher capacity NiMh cells, and build that into the box. You'd end up with soething about briefcase sized rather than notebook though.

[eab]

If you can find out how let me know. I would like to have a good laptop but can't afford one.

Does any one know where you can get right angle adapters for a pci card and a agp card?

[hateshino]

hey, thats awesome, but what about the cooling and the screen? do you think its possible to "alter" an LCD and pop it on there?

[Ridenow]

Originally posted by eab
If you can find out how let me know. I would like to have a good laptop but can't afford one.

Does any one know where you can get right angle adapters for a pci card and a agp card?

Yup, I do. http://www.servercase.com/ImageFiles/Rackacc.html
I seem to have lost the link for the AGP one, hopefully I kept it on my home computer. The AGP one is harder to find and is more expensive. Try looking for "AGP riser"

Edit: found it- http://www.rackmountpro.com/productpage.cfm?prodid=813

A LCD monitor with a VGA connector would be easy to use. To take a screen from a laptop and adapt it is very difficult.

[iggybaseball]

for a pwer supply im just takin an old emachine ps an rippin off the housing. u should see how small it is

[Gnufsh]

A barebones laptop would be intersting. Does anyone have a link?

[RnPgrosz]

Originally posted by RoadWarrior
There are some laptop barebones systems around, I think ECS makes them, anyway, they are just a motherboard, LCD, graphics and keyboard, you put in your own CPU, HDD, CD and whatever. They're not all that cheap though, around $700 I think that might have been Can$ though.

You can build a fairly small "luggable" I would think with an all in one ATX board, standard LCD monitor etc, but that's going to be hundreds of bucks worth.

For using salvaged LCDs from older laptops there are some graphics cards available, however, I think they are in ISA only version often with very tame chipsets, and cost $100, so that's not really cheap either.

There are some Pentium MMX laptops around that may possibly take a K6-2+ or 3+ with some modification, so if you get a low spec one of those, you could gee it up to decent specs if you're lucky.

Otherwise, if a luggable is acceptable, there are old suitcase luggables around that take standard AT sized boards. There are two types, the ones with a small 6inch CRT monitor in the toip of the case, Like the IBM portable PC, and the ones with a plasma screen on the side. There are AT format PIII and Duron boards around, that you could get into these no problem, you might find one you can get an ATX board in with some modding. For the display, well monochrome plasma is the best you might hope for as standard. With the CRT based ones, you could squeeze in a small used color TV and use a TV out on the graphics card to drive it, or you could try getting hold of one of those tiny POS VGAs.

I have a project a bit like that myself on ice. I have an IBM Portable PC, with the mono CGA screen in that takes a composite input, I am planning to install a pentium board in it with a VGA>TV convertor driving the composite input of the mono monitor. I thought it would make a nice portable MP3/modfile etc jukebox. I am going to try to do it without modding the case too much because those IBM Portable PCs are going up in value, so I want to preserve the case somewhat and keep the original parts I take out in a safe place. I might even give it enough horsepower so that it will play Mpeg Video CDs, and allow an extra video output to a regular TV.

Anyway, there's quite a few things you can do to get a small portable luggable system, building a fully fledged notebook sized laptop is however rather difficult.

regards,

Road Warrior

Road Warrior do you have any idea where those barebones ecs laptops can be found? I would be interested in something like that.

[RoadWarrior]

Like a lot of ECS stuff I think they're also going under Amptron and PC Chips names.

I've completely lost the store where I first saw them, which made it completely clear that they were very basic systems that you could add to, and that they took standard CPUs, but here is the P4 one, you could order it at that 849 price, but it wouldn't do much....
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/newtech/nba928pen4no.html
This store puts all the bits in for you, as most will with this model,

Here is the P3 model but they are selling ipre-equipped with a Via C3 and 10Gb hdd..
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/newtech/ameura9notne.html

If I remember the place that sells them completely bare, I'll post it. Maybe looking in pricewatch for the very cheapest new P4 notebooks will turn them up.

Road Warrior

[RnPgrosz]

Originally posted by RoadWarrior
Like a lot of ECS stuff I think they're also going under Amptron and PC Chips names.

I've completely lost the store where I first saw them, which made it completely clear that they were very basic systems that you could add to, and that they took standard CPUs, but here is the P4 one, you could order it at that 849 price, but it wouldn't do much....
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/newtech/nba928pen4no.html
This store puts all the bits in for you, as most will with this model,

Here is the P3 model but they are selling ipre-equipped with a Via C3 and 10Gb hdd..
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/newtech/ameura9notne.html

If I remember the place that sells them completely bare, I'll post it. Maybe looking in pricewatch for the very cheapest new P4 notebooks will turn them up.

Road Warrior

Yeah, please post those links if you find them. About the links above those are barebones systems and you basicall add the rest of the stuff?