they said not to build your own...
May 15, 2006 4:17 PM Subscribe
[How] can I rebuild my laptop?
Last year, I built my own laptop with the uniwill 245ii chassis and other parts. The chassis+motherboard has many issues (falls apart, busted keyboard [my fault], dead USB slots and rubbery soles on the bottom, etc.) but the rest of the components are fine.
Are there any good laptop chassis+motherboards out there I can get, and then just swap in the laptop parts?
Would a better idea be to buy a cheap dell laptop and swap in parts? are laptop parts substitutable (standardized) in this way?
How about buying an old laptop off craigslist and substituting parts? I didn't find any pentium M chassis+motherboards only for sale.
Right now, the laptop is functional but is basically a server since the keyboard is broken, and fall apart when I pick it up.
Working components:
pentium m cpu
a/b/g wireless
hard drive
ram
cdrw/dvd-rom
Last year, I built my own laptop with the uniwill 245ii chassis and other parts. The chassis+motherboard has many issues (falls apart, busted keyboard [my fault], dead USB slots and rubbery soles on the bottom, etc.) but the rest of the components are fine.
Are there any good laptop chassis+motherboards out there I can get, and then just swap in the laptop parts?
Would a better idea be to buy a cheap dell laptop and swap in parts? are laptop parts substitutable (standardized) in this way?
How about buying an old laptop off craigslist and substituting parts? I didn't find any pentium M chassis+motherboards only for sale.
Right now, the laptop is functional but is basically a server since the keyboard is broken, and fall apart when I pick it up.
Working components:
pentium m cpu
a/b/g wireless
hard drive
ram
cdrw/dvd-rom
Although notebook HD's are standard, certain manufacturers will mount theirs in custom "sleds" or use proprietary adaptors. You can probably jimmy something in a fix, though. Ditto for the DVD drive. It's not a huge deal, but definitely something to be aware of.
That's the first time I've heard this. Once you remove all the sleds and whatnot the actual drives should be identical and ready to install in another sled. (although watch out for newer computers that use SATA for one or both).
posted by cillit bang at 6:58 PM on May 15, 2006
That's the first time I've heard this. Once you remove all the sleds and whatnot the actual drives should be identical and ready to install in another sled. (although watch out for newer computers that use SATA for one or both).
posted by cillit bang at 6:58 PM on May 15, 2006
Once you remove all the sleds and whatnot the actual drives should be identical and ready to install in another sled
Yeah, for sure, that's definitely right.
By proprietary adapter, I actually meant, "little plastic doodad that goes over regular IDE connector, which is sometimes hard to remove and install on a new drive", not "custom interface spec". Thus the jimmying. I just meant that bit as a heads up, really. Apologies, good sir, for any misunderstanding.
posted by Drunken_munky at 12:19 AM on May 16, 2006
Yeah, for sure, that's definitely right.
By proprietary adapter, I actually meant, "little plastic doodad that goes over regular IDE connector, which is sometimes hard to remove and install on a new drive", not "custom interface spec". Thus the jimmying. I just meant that bit as a heads up, really. Apologies, good sir, for any misunderstanding.
posted by Drunken_munky at 12:19 AM on May 16, 2006
Best answer: The antenna connector on any mini-pci wifi card is a standard connector, and the antenna's counterpart to this will be pretty much interchangeable with any other.
There is one gotcha, though, and that is that some wifi cards have two antenna connectors, with only one that works. I've worked on a couple of Orinocos like this.
But, you get the laptop humming, and zero signal on an AP that's 10 feet away, then you know to try changing the antenna cable to the other port on the card.
Oh, and this is rare.
I'm thirding this:
Once you remove all the sleds and whatnot the actual drives should be identical and ready to install in another sled
That's true, and except for the occasional BIOS incompatibility, it shouldn't be a problem.
Make sure you're moving the RAM to a like board. A DDR SODIMM will not work on an SDRAM board, nor will it work on a DDR2 board. So google the numbers on your RAM chips, find out what it is, and order accordingly.
Notebook hard drives of the 9-10mm variety are all pretty standard these days, and aside from a sled and/or a custom connector, it should work in any old laptop you choose.
Probably the issue with the suspected BIOS locking of the Dell is due to the Dell being older than the hardware you (the answerer, not the asker) were trying to add. You're correct that it's a BIOS compatibility problem, but you're incorrect that Dell would do this intentionally.
Dell is the very model of a just-in-time business, and part of that business strategy means buying parts from different manufacturers for the same model run if it saves money and gets the parts more quickly.
The same goes for Dell's RMA and Service Tech departments. They'd be shooting themselves in a very painful area to lock out standard notebook hardware.
As it is, Dell's only ODM parts are motherboards, power supplies and cases, so they depend on IBM for LCDs, Toshiba and Western Digital for hard drives, and on and on.
Oh, I guess I should say that I'm a Dell Certified Systems Expert.
Anyway it's late and I'm rambling. Good night!
posted by SlyBevel at 11:43 PM on May 16, 2006
There is one gotcha, though, and that is that some wifi cards have two antenna connectors, with only one that works. I've worked on a couple of Orinocos like this.
But, you get the laptop humming, and zero signal on an AP that's 10 feet away, then you know to try changing the antenna cable to the other port on the card.
Oh, and this is rare.
I'm thirding this:
Once you remove all the sleds and whatnot the actual drives should be identical and ready to install in another sled
That's true, and except for the occasional BIOS incompatibility, it shouldn't be a problem.
Make sure you're moving the RAM to a like board. A DDR SODIMM will not work on an SDRAM board, nor will it work on a DDR2 board. So google the numbers on your RAM chips, find out what it is, and order accordingly.
Notebook hard drives of the 9-10mm variety are all pretty standard these days, and aside from a sled and/or a custom connector, it should work in any old laptop you choose.
Probably the issue with the suspected BIOS locking of the Dell is due to the Dell being older than the hardware you (the answerer, not the asker) were trying to add. You're correct that it's a BIOS compatibility problem, but you're incorrect that Dell would do this intentionally.
Dell is the very model of a just-in-time business, and part of that business strategy means buying parts from different manufacturers for the same model run if it saves money and gets the parts more quickly.
The same goes for Dell's RMA and Service Tech departments. They'd be shooting themselves in a very painful area to lock out standard notebook hardware.
As it is, Dell's only ODM parts are motherboards, power supplies and cases, so they depend on IBM for LCDs, Toshiba and Western Digital for hard drives, and on and on.
Oh, I guess I should say that I'm a Dell Certified Systems Expert.
Anyway it's late and I'm rambling. Good night!
posted by SlyBevel at 11:43 PM on May 16, 2006
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I put together a system based on the Z9000 mobo/chassis (they don't make this one anymore, it's predecessor is called something like the Z9M1 SUPER AWESOME EDITION now) last summer that I'm really happy with. Whatever you do, though, be careful about buying a Dell. I suspect that they might lockout certain (non Dell) hardware via BIOS. You don't want to be stuck with a lemon.
Anyway, the CPU and RAM should fit fine, in any compliant laptop, but you might have trouble with the HD, wifi card and DVD rom drive. Although notebook HD's are standard, certain manufacturers will mount theirs in custom "sleds" or use proprietary adaptors. You can probably jimmy something in a fix, though. Ditto for the DVD drive. It's not a huge deal, but definitely something to be aware of.
As for the wifi card, that's a bit risky. Some manufacturers do it differently than others (with respect to antenna placement) so I don't know how well that will go. But if you get an OEM kit, another wifi card will probably be included, anyway (for this exact reason).
posted by Drunken_munky at 6:11 PM on May 15, 2006