Reutilizing old computers for modern use
I really like tinkering with older PC's, trying to make them work for modern usecases which is mostly using web browser.
Anyone else do this here? Or interested in it?
I have old 10" netbook from 2007 or so, it has 1gb RAM and Intel Atom 32bit that barely can handle things. However, I switched it's old SATA hard drive to an SSD, and it is a bit faster at booting now! I also ordered 2gb RAM stick, so maybe that will help it a bit too. It's also running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 32 bit, but i dont recommend this for linux newcomers since it's a bit different distro.
If you have an old laptop or PC lying around, try breathing life into it by installing a Linux distro like Debian 12. Change a spinning hard drive to an SSD. For even older retro hardware there are even SD card adapters and such, that can work in place of old hard drives.
My goal is to make this tiny netbook good for light web browsing and maybe even scripting on things and having a Matrix chat window open. It's perfect tablet size, but very underpowered, even during it's release, so it's a challenge. But that's what makes this kinda fun! Also it helps tone down e-waste if one can use an old device for modern things.
I love taking old unusable windows laptops adding an SSD and a fresh install of whatever Linux distro of the day.
It's a great way to revitalize old notebooks and give them a new lease at life.
Top tip: If the BIOS is unchangeable for some reason or another, you can use a VM on a desktop and a SATA HDD adapter to install an OS without a USB.
This might be particular to me, but old computers make for excellent hardware for homemade arcade cabinets, or even to just play arcade games like Stap Mania on your TV.
Step Mania is a free, open source version of DDR. It runs on pretty much anything. You can get a dance pad for $20, and then you have a real fun time and give new life to your hardware.
I'm into this.
I've repurposed/refurbished systems to work as garage systems or what have you, but I'm thinking of jumping into a deeper integration.
My kid's laptop is due for replacement, and I have this idea... The outlet for the microwave is in a great spot, like room for the body of the laptop to sit on a shelf next to the vent for the stove. If I could detach the screen, extend the lead for the screen connection, and flush mount that to the cabinet door? That would be a super-useful way to access recipes, or have something going while cooking. And I just realized, I bet I could add a touchscreen.
I will have to find some tutorials, because I don't know if there's a juice concern extending the lead for the screen, and a touchscreen would surely need more voltage... but yeah! This kind of thing is right up my alley.
The biggest issue you might have is finding a way to extend the display connection, especially if you want to integrate a touchscreen. I'd suggest you forego the internal display connections as LVDS/eDP cables for OEM-produced laptops are usually designed to spec, and I imagine that not only would you have a difficult time finding a way to extend them, it would be nearly impossible to extend touch capability without designing an elaborate custom signal amplification interconnect board.
There is probably a better way to work it that would use off-the-shelf parts, though. It would depend on which I/O ports the laptop has, and would likely require some relatively inexpensive additional hardware.
What's the model of laptop you're working with?
I should probably mention that I'm an OEM warranty technician and have extensive experience as a components testing specialist. I don't have a ton of experience with modifications of this sort, but I can probably give advice.
Diy perks on uTube has done this a few times and gives to a of info on it. https://youtu.be/CfirQC99xPc and one with copper parts that came out beautifully https://youtu.be/DrqdHVeBkp4
I feel that adding touchscreen would be a costly and challenging piece.
That said a magic mirror mounted in the kitchen would be pretty handy!
It's an ASUS Zenbook, 2020 I think? And yeah I know enough to be trouble, so the power/signal issue was my first real "uh oh" moment. Avoiding the kb/m living combo living in a drawer would be cool though. A wireless KB with a trackpad may work as well.
I need to google external, HDMI touchscreen monitors. That would make this a reality That's also spending money instead of a full repurpose, but still. Interesting enough to explore.
Looks like that model has at least Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports, so you might be able to work out a reasonably priced touch panel making use of those. Could be even easier if it's the model with Thunderbolt 4 ports. Those are the ports that most docks use for display+input.
The wireless keyboard/track pad is a good choice if you just want to do a straight conversion. You can grab HDMI driver boards for pretty cheap, which would make a non-touch conversion pretty easy.
Adding touch is doable with off-the-shelf components as well, but like you said, that would require more outlay, and configuring it might be a chore.
It does have have the C, which is amazing! I Think I'm going to deep dive on this... Thank you for your time and advice, if I go forward I will 100% ping you. I also have this crazy idea to make a modular PSU, but that's for another time.
The 13.3" Zenbook came in two flavors: one had Thunderbolt 3 USB-C, which may not work for your purposes. The more expensive one has Thunderbolt 4. That's not to say that Thunderbolt 3 won't work, just that I'm not certain if the 3 had the same display capability.
If you're running Windows on the thing, look in Device Manager for details on the TB version. There may also be a symbol screen-printed next to the port as well that might tell you what it can do.
That sounds really fun, please share your results here if you get it done! :D
Recently I bought a refurbished Mac Mini M2 because my mid-2010 iMac is losing software support. The highest version of Mac OS it runs is High Serra, which is unsupported by Apple as of November 2020. (So, that’s 10 years. I can’t complain too much.) Other Mac software has been dropping support for this OS in new versions, and now Chrome has stopped supporting High Sierra, which means I can’t run the latest version of Chrome on it.
But it has a nifty feature called “target display mode” that lets you turn it into a monitor for another computer, so I’m still using it that way, with the help of a USB-C adapter cable for the video and a USB-3 switch to attach the keyboard and mouse to either computer.
This works fine, but the next step will be to install Linux on the old computer. Can you do that and still make target display mode work? Looks like someone figured out how to do it.
Couldn't you just install Linux and put it in kiosk mode? I'm not familiar with target display mode but if you install Kubuntu or Xubuntu on it you'll be alright.
I’m not sure what you mean by kiosk mode, but I do like the idea of having a full Linux box to play with and not just a monitor. Though it is a pretty good monitor. Not up to modern standards, though, (not a Retina display) so I’ll probably give it away eventually, and then having it automatically boot up into being just a monitor would be good.
Kiosk mode is meant to be used for a sole purpose (https://www.instructables.com/Setting-Up-Ubuntu-as-a-Kiosk-Web-Appliance/) but I had a 2012 Mac Desktop I got from work and it couldn't run anything. Threw on Xubuntu and it was all good!
I have inherited an old Ipad from my kids. I believe it's one of the first iterations but almost nothing on the Apple store can be used because of how old it is.
Do you have any suggestions on how I can find a use for this? Currently I use it with a book to make working on the laptop (really playing games) more ergonomic for my wrist. Thanks.
If I remember, as far as apple goes, you’re pretty SoL, unless you’re willing to take the time to jailbreak an older model. With it being an older iPad, it shouldn’t be too hard to find the stuff that you need.
It won’t make it great, but it can be somewhat usable.
Yeah I kinda figured. Apple tends to be ruthless like that. Appreciate your reply
I jailbroke one and that allowed me to install older versions of apps so that they could work. But it was not stable enough for anything useful. Planned obsolescence is such a shame, a huge amount of eWaste for a nice screen that could be useful
I use mine as a digital photo frame! All it needs to do is turn on and hold photos.
You may be out of luck with apple stuff, they tend to make things hard to use and generate e-waste this way a lot more than many other companies.
But like said in other comment, look for any jailbreaking guides for the device. I have old Ipod Touch I jailbroke back in the day, it wasn't a complicated process in the end.
Edit: To add, i think you could also see if you can use it for some weather apps, news etc and have it on a table for checking those quickly.
That's a good thought. I'll look into that. Thanks!
Did you have to disassemble the laptop to insert the ram stick (sorry, i am quite a novice at hardware)
For HDD to SSD swap, yes, I had to take it apart but it was pretty easy. Luckily HP still had service manuals for this laptop in their site. Basically unscrew some screws under the battery slot, lift keyboard and switch the HDD to SSD.
For RAM, there is a tiny separate slot that you can just open without disassembling the laptop in the bottom. I think many modern laptops do this for RAM, since it's often the part people want to switch themselves later.
Many older laptops have specific slots you can unscrew to access specific components like RAM, HDD, and sometimes the Wi-Fi card.
More recent laptops do not have these so you need to unscrew the entire back of the laptop to access those components.
Recently a few weeks ago revitalized my 2011 MacBook Pro with pop_OS. It was elementaryOS at first, but I was already using pop on my gaming laptop in dual boot mode, so I wanted to keep it consistent. The MacBook has the same battery from 2011. It’s a miracle it’s only at ~70% of its life cycle. It actually lasts for about two hours with that atrocious battery life! I’m going to get a replacement battery my next paycheck and revitalize it some more. I love the aluminum unibody and the touchpad and screen are immaculate. Heavy as all hell, but I like it. 😁
There have been times where I’ve jolted up in the middle of the night with a wild hair to flash a usb drive with some random Linux distro & dig out an old laptop to install it on.
Haha I feel you.
Recently I picked up an old Toshiba laptop at a thrift store which unbeknownst to me when I bought it, had a BIOS password from a school district that used to own it. Now I tried everything you could possibly think, CMOS removal and replacement, Toshiba HWSetup and SVPWUtility, cmospwd (an DOS app that tried to decrypt the password stored in memory, didn't work). I even tried the Toshiba Companion Diskette, a floppy disk that came packaged with Toshiba systems in the 80s. That was a bit of a long shot, so I was unsurprised when it failed.
I spent an entire weekend, day and night, just hammering away at it trying to find what would work. Nothing did of course, I had to connect the SSD I intended to put in it to my desktop with an adapter + VM to install Linux Mint.
It was extremely gratifying to finally install an OS on it, I had come to despise it over the time I spent trying to crack it. Seeing that Linux Mint logo on startup made me feel like I had cracked Fort Knox.
then i immediately lost interest and put it away after setting up mint, lol.
I.. I am currently doing that now.
It's almost midnight too.
I have a 2015 MacBook Pro that I’d love to breathe new life into. I’m not super savvy so installing new parts is kind of out of the question. I have big meaty claws like Mr. Krabs.
Basically all of my self-hosting is on recycled computers. I'm about of an electronics hoarder and try to re-use whatever I can. My current collection includes:
Great point! My energy bills definitely aren't cheap, and my usage of this hardware has been on my mind to cut my energy consumption.
I have plans to upgrade and consolidate the hardware and use pi's (or as you mentioned, a similar alternative) sometime in the near future, both to reduce costs but also to try and reduce my carbon footprint.
Very true, for any production use I wouldn't use my netboook either. But I do this for the fun and learning anyway :)
Eh, even the old AMD Bulldozer system I'm running uses maybe 10 more W at idle than a newer Intel workstation. Mostly idle disk storage, I'll handily admit Bulldozer does not scale well with high CPU workloads. Whilst not ideal, its hardly a dealbreaker. Older than that though and the lack of multiple cores really hurts modern workloads.
Laptops tend to age better, as they've always been designed to be lower power. I have an old 2014 era Toughbook that uses 35W kn average.
Whilst they can't compare to a SBC for ultralow power, if I need anything that requires CPU power like a game server they're definitely still a solid bank-for-your buck, especially if you're upcycling.
Intel Atom, especially if it's early single-core one, wouldn't probably be ale to surf web these days. It is really slow.
On theoher hand it can probaly run FullHD video (H264 and others), it can work as Matrix client and you can use it as a media player, docs writer, linux terminal (to connect to your server/PCs).
I have similar netbook but I don't use it anymore. Atom is really too underpowered. If it was dual-core Celeron, it would be so much better.
I like bringing old stuff back to life. Managed to make a PC for daughter. Started with Athlon 5050e which I dumped for Phenom II X4, got 8GB RAM for it, threw SSD there and got GTX 960 for around 70€. Decent gaming rig! What was themain cost in all this? White spray can paint :-D I wanted the boring Cooler Master Elite 340 case be matte white with glossy black accent. It kinda went well for first time spraying. No, actually new fans were the most expensive - I bough 5 Noctuas in there. I know I will be able to use them 10 years from now, good investment.
I'm curious to know the thoughts of this thread on what, if anything, an Intel Atom is good for in 2023? Retro games? File server? Being melted into slag?
I have an old Acer Veriton N282G and no idea what it could possible be good for....it's an ultra-compact desktop with a dual-core 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 processor, 2GB of RAM (I think, and that's the max?), and Nvidia Ion graphics.
I would love to put it to use for something...
Some very old games may run. I used my netbook as portable DOS gaming platform at university, and also for taking some notes.
I do this too, total hoarder in that respect. It doesn’t help when you’re the de facto tech guy for your friends and family. They’ll often give me things they no longer use if I fix a broken screen or get their pc running better again or something.
I’ve always enjoyed taking things apart. I’ve been tinkering recently trying to make a nice laptop of out broken and spare parts that I can take to cafes and learn programming there. I can’t remember the specs but it’s at least ten years old, but was top of the line back in the day so not completely unusable for my use case. Like you said in your post OP, new SSD and doubling the ram and it’s easily capable for running a web browser.
I played around with a few different distros, but settled on archcraft because I love the way it looks and I’m too lazy to really set up arch and maintain it when it breaks. It’s not doing a lot bar running a terminal, IDE and browser so spending hours setting it up and tinkering wasn’t something I could be bothered with. I can still learn the arch framework with it too and eventually might end up running that on my main pc, when I inevitably break something there.
I still remember 20+ years ago in highschool making a CTX from 1996 run with 16MB of ram (correct), a 2 GB Bigfoot HDD, an AMD MT processor, and Matrox video card run Unreal Tournament GOTY Edition. I put Mandrake with Xfce on it and wrote a shell script to clog one of the two threads. It ran better than on Windows 95, that's for sure!
I love everything about this.
I have an old 2013 13" Retina MacBook Pro that I've got running Ventura (thanks to OCLP). I use it as a Plex server/NAS/Time Machine with a couple external HDDs.