anyone buy a laptop chassis and get it working?

[Dat]

Check out this auction here.

I've been looking for a pet project and this looks like it would be fun to "customize" some parts of a used laptop. maybe I can even OC! hehehe.

anyhoo - i'm a bit wary i dont end up with a piece of junk - so has anyone bought one of these babies and got it working?

 

[LordSandMan]

From what I could tell it's a 500Mhz system. I'm assuming the processor is included. Can you OC it? No, it's a Gateway MB with Gateway bios. You still need to purchase
CDrom drive - most likely proprietary $50-130
Floppy drive - most likely proprietary $50-120
KB - proprietary ussually over $100
HD - IBM NOTEBOOK HARD DRIVE 30GB $124 from newegg (doesn't really pay to spend any less on a notebook HD
HD Carrier not included
AC adapter - over $50
Memory -however much you want - over $50 for anything good
Battery Proprietary- $125-300

After you get done take a look at how much you would spend on this and on a new one or similarily configured used or refurb. I don't think you will save any money. If you want to do it for the fun of it go for it. It will be fun if you haven't worked on a laptop before (but are very confident in building desktops.

A few things to keep in mind. If you put it all together and it still doesn't work you will need additional parts for testing. Also be sure to see if you can get parts from gateway (or gateway parts from somewhere else) before you order it. You should also order a full set of screws for the laptop. Laptops are picky about screws. Desktops you don't necisarilly need all the screws in and it will work fine. Laptops are different. If you don't have all of the screws in it doesn't get grounded properly and they behave eradicaly. It's more difficult to track down intermitent problems in laptops.

Just my thoughts. If it was me, I would probably look elsewhere. Also you might be better off getting a complete laptop and completely disassemble and reassemble it before you take on a project like this. (I'm taking for granted that you haven't dealt much with laptops.

 

[Burnt]

I built a Solo 2550 from scratch (meaning chassis, lcd, keyboard, cpu, etc), it worked fine. Cracker627@aol on ebay has some good stuff. I bought my Solo 9300 from him for $300, it came with a celeron 450, 15" screen, keyboard, touchpad. I added the other parts (battery, dvd rom, secondary battery, hard drive, caddy, and ac adapter) for about $200.

 

[hans007]

that uses mmc-1 cpus . i have a couple of those in my forsale trade post. And hard drives. if you decide to go for it, buy my stuff.

 

[Dat]

ah thanks guys. good to know someone else got it working burnt.
it looks kinda fun - ah so tempting..
i figured i could save a few bux scrounging parts but it will probably cost me more.