sho.gun

After having wanted to do something like this for a long time, I finally spent some of my sunday working on my frame. The innards were taken from a pentium 133 mhz dell latitude LM. The screen is 12" and it's running win2k. I didn't want to bother with linux because i'm too lazy

So far this is what I have:





I got stuck using ethernet because for the life of me I couldn't get the system to recognize any of my pcmcia wifi cards (I've tried 2, cardbus and a 16 bit one). Tomorrow will be the finishing touches, somehow I still have to figure out a way to make the motherboard stay still and I also have to cut a hole on the back cover to let some air out.

I noticed that you can see the lcd backlight on the left and bottom edge of the screen, I'm probably going to cover that up with electrical tape or something.

Cheesypuff

holy crapolies...thats friggin awesome!!!

so you're saying it's just a modded lappy?

how did you get pictures on there? just using pc anyware to control the laptop?

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billxp

Thats a great idea. Now I want to do it. I have a old laptop laying around doing nothing and that looks like a great project.

Please post anything that might be helpful in doing this.

bachviet

I saw this one of the computer tech magazine. That looks very good.

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Maarchk

So you are too lazy cause you dont put linux on it? Its pretty impressive how unlazy you are to do this project. It looks nice. Did you do this by guessing how to do it or did you work off a web site or tv instructions?

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sho.gun

Yup, it's not even modded actually. I just took the laptop apart and rearranged the innards to that it'll fit nicely in the frame. Since it doesn't have a keyboard or touchpad, it's running a vnc server and I can control it using my other computers.


I suppose I can do a small write up of what I learned, but it's actually not that complicated. The hardest part is probably taking the laptop apart screw by screw, which gets kinda tricky. I'll be sure to write something to help people along though.


Thanks, it's not done yet though


Well one of the main problems with this laptop is that it would not boot off of the cd rom drive. The win2k I've previously installed on it runs pretty good so I decided to just use windows. Plus having to hunt down the XFree86 configs is going to be a pain if I were to install linux. The plan was actually to use a wireless pcmcia card that would grab all the pictures from my server, but the laptop would not recognize the wifi cards for some reason. So i'm now using a xircom 10/100 56k modem + ethernet card. Perhaps one day I'll find a card that works and I can just swap it out.

I went to a couple of sites that had something like this, you don't end up getting much out of them because each laptop is assembled differently.

sho.gun

So I think i'm about done. All I have left to do is to somehow make an easel to prop it up on the table thing I have. This thing is actually pretty big, in fact I'm having a hard time placing it somewhere in my room where it looks good. I'll figure something out.

Video of it in action: http://www.lemonizer.com/temp/frame.wmv

PICS:


That's the motherboard I'm holding. It's pretty small and there is a big piece of metal that screws on to this to act as a heatsink for the cpu.


Here's the back of the LCD screen. Right above it you can see the power inverter. Initially I placed the inverter on the back of the screen but it produced wavy distortions due to the magnetic field from the coil. I tried shielding it with a sheet of metal but it was still noticable, although not as bad. Anyway, it's best to keep these things off of the screen.


Behold my awesome $0.44 Target matting job. I wish I had an xacto knife handy as it would've made the cutting job a lot easier. Also seen in the above picture is the lcd inverter I was talking about.


I taped up the edges of the LCD screen so that the backlight won't bleed out. It makes it look neater too.


The frame backing all cut up to accomodate the extra crap hanging out the back. I used a dremel to cut it, which I first thought would be a nightmare but it turned out to be pretty easy.


yay!


The digiframe in all its glory




The back of the frame. I cut out a small section for an lcd screen showing the status of the computer. There is also a small hole for the power button. You can't see it but this baby has some speakers for the ambience mp3's =)



On the top right corner is a small power led that blinks and makes the thing look far more technologically advanced than it really is.

revil

If I may be so bold. you're welcome

redcolours

the laptop didnt have any USB ports?
you can use a small 802.11b USB wireless adapter if it did.

i dunno if the wireless-G ones need USB2.0, but if they just need a regular USB port, it would be cool for streaming movie clips also without stutter instead of just pics.

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Mr Reorg

Definitely not lazy to take on the task. Very nice, indeed!

revil

thank you for showing me your ass...

chadlnc

With a 133MHZ processor I'm guessing it was too old to have USB.

sho.gun

Nope, unfortunately it didn't have any USB ports. I guess that'd be one of the things you should look for if you want to make something similar. That way you can buy a cheap 6-in-1 memory card reader, stick it in the frame, and have it also go through pictures straight from your cards.

GilbertsGrape

does it have a pcmcia slot for a wireles card you could use that

ski

^^

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