Here’s the thing, I come across a lot of old laptops with broken screens on my scavenging journey, replacing the screen is most of the time not worth it as it would cost the price of a second hand same model laptop so one of my favorite performance with those is to turn them into home lab server / media center.
In fact, a laptop motherboard is a fully functional computer, if no component is broken there it’s technically able to boot and install anything.
they can be used inside the original casing, but that’s ugly so I took the path of ripping the motherboard off the case, all of it is to identify the pins connected to the power button.
I always loved transparent cases where you can see the electronics behind, so I ordered couple plexiglas sheets taking the motherboard measures
Printer some spacers for the motherboard and the plexi cover, then it’s time to design a front and back panel for the ports and the charger jack, was lucky on this one as all the ports were on the same side
heating the printer up and assembly time
I’ve been looking around for the best home media server solution, and after testing some of them, I came up with my favorite one, OpenMediaVault, let’s boot it up