Rebuilding old laptop

The recent "buy or build" thread got me wanting to upgrade my 2001 Dell Inspiron 8100. Most hadn't mentioned anything about rebuilding one, but I think this would be a good candidate, as it has a nice 15.1 inch screen and is a big laptop to boot with lots of room inside. I'll probably use it as a backup for the gf to use, but I'll have to mack it out b/c that's in my nature.

So I've been googling around a little for sites with components, anyone have suggestions? This will be a pretty fun project.

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dynamik

What components do you want to upgrade?

www.newegg.com is my usual source.

learningtofly22

Mobo/video card combo, ram, proc.... want to speed her up a little. I'm having trouble finding stuff that will fit, I'll take a look at newegg though.

dynamik

You're going to have a tough time with the motherboard and video components. The enclosure is most likely designed for that motherboard. RAM, CPU, and disks are the common upgrades.

tiersten

learningtofly22 wrote:

Mobo/video card combo, ram, proc.... want to speed her up a little. I'm having trouble finding stuff that will fit, I'll take a look at newegg though.

The motherboard is specific to that series of laptops and going to be next to impossible to upgrade. The video card is actually a card but again, specific to that range of laptops. It has to be supported by that laptop as well since the main BIOS contains the video card BIOS.

The CPU is a standard mobile version but finding it might be hard since they're very old now.

Ram is standard and so is the hard disk. You'll be able to upgrade those.

To be honest, its not worth upgrading the laptop.

learningtofly22

tiersten wrote:

learningtofly22 wrote:

Mobo/video card combo, ram, proc.... want to speed her up a little. I'm having trouble finding stuff that will fit, I'll take a look at newegg though.

The motherboard is specific to that series of laptops and going to be next to impossible to upgrade. The video card is actually a card but again, specific to that range of laptops. It has to be supported by that laptop as well since the main BIOS contains the video card BIOS.

The CPU is a standard mobile version but finding it might be hard since they're very old now.

Ram is standard and so is the hard disk. You'll be able to upgrade those.

To be honest, its not worth upgrading the laptop.

That's pretty much what i've been finding. Really a shame, as the chassis and screen are in great shape. Maybe I'll just make it into some sort of utility bot computer to handle some odd task around the house, like makeshift alarm system, blender driver, etc...... now we can have some fun w/ this thread.... suggestions? Keep the project under $500, maybe I'll create the best one and post progress/pics!

dynamik

Recipe machine for the kitchen

snadam

dynamik wrote:

Recipe machine for the kitchen

add "beer" in front of recipe, and you might have something there...

learningtofly22

snadam wrote:

dynamik wrote:

Recipe machine for the kitchen

add "beer" in front of recipe, and you might have something there...

Now we're talking! I've always wanted to start home-brewing, I wonder if I could set up a monitoring system for a homebrew operation (temperature, timing, etc).....

tiersten

If you can/want to make the parts yourself then I think the 8100 is old enough to still have a real parallel port. If so then you can buy or make relay boards quite cheaply that use the parallel port. If not, you can buy one of the various small microcontroller development kits for not very much and interface it via USB or RS232 serial.

Otherwise, you can buy USB based I/O boxes which will let you do everything you need including measuring temperature and turning heaters on/off.

Plug a USB webcam into it and you can have brewcam online