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View Full Version : Mini-Mame, or "What Old Dells and Compaqs are good for."



Luke122
07-25-2006, 04:39 PM
Anyone who's ever owned a Compaq Presario laptop will tell you the hinge tends to get a little bit stiff if left in one position for too long. When I got mine back after several months of loaning it to family and friends, I was unaware that it hadnt been used for quite some time, and had been sitting in it's case.

Imagine my suprise when I released the screen latch and pulled it open, and had both hinges shear right off. The LCD was unharmed, and the cables connecting it all survived, but the case itself was finished. :mad:

SO.. I started looking for a use for it.

First thing I considered was a cigar humidor, except that the mobo is almost 12" long.. which meant a $150+ humidor. Too much for me thanks.. I'm cheap.

Next was the breadbox! $8 at a local thrift shop got me a lovely "Made in Taiwan" wooden breadbox. Measurements were taken, and she'll fit! Length was acceptable, too bad the width was miscalculated. The board fits.. as long as you dont want to connect any cables to the mainboard. :P

So now I'm getting a little antsy. I spent all day yesterday trying to get PXE working with booting an image from a network server, and ended up abandoning the project.. so much for a diskless workstation.

Almost at the end of my patience, I've decided now to cut a window in the side of an old Dell case, mount the LCD, mount the mobo behind that, and add some speakers, get a couple of Xbox controllers (yeah, I've already modded them for PC usage), load up some emulators, and have an all in one box that I can take with me when I travel to play games on.

The Dell case is a a mini tower, and while the width is a bit much, the height is just about right for the lcd, speakers below it, and a few other as yet undetermined components.

The (unwilling) donor laptop "was" a Compaq Presario 710CA, which is a Duron 1.2ghz, 256mb Ram (384mb Max.), a 20gb HDD, an 8x DVD drive, and an S3 Twister video chipset. *shudder* Not exactly a powerhouse machine :P , but more than plenty to run an SNES emulator, Gensis Emulator, NES Emulator, and a Mame Emulator, as well as provide basic surfing, dvd playback, and MP3 duties.

The laptop itself is completely disassembled, and laid out across my desk in pieces. It is completely functional at this point, and the only real challeng I forsee (aside from the cutting), will be moving the USB ports and relocating the power button. (oh joy.)

SO.. I've just begun stripping the Dell case down to the bare essentials, and I'm using some templates to determine positioning of all components that will be installed within.

The cutting of the side panel is something that I am not looking forward to, as I'm a little unsure of my abilities in that area, but I'll be sure to "measure twice, cut once" or something like that.

As far as external graphics go, I was thinking about doing some high gloss black finish, and making everything nice and smooth, but now I'm thinking about some wild game graphics on it.. old school stuff like Street Fighter, Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc. Maybe I'll use a backlit applique with some sort of game graphic like on the top of arcade machines... hmm..

Pictures will follow later, but I'll be sure to post some up before I actually start cutting this badboy up.

Luke122
07-25-2006, 04:46 PM
I should also add that the TFT I'm using is a 14.1". :)

simon275
07-26-2006, 07:00 AM
You could jsut use USB extender cables which are really cheap to extend your usb plugs instead of rewirng the. And wire the ends of the cables into plugs sockets or whatever for USB.

The power button will take a bit more work but you should just need to extend the wiring a bit and use a monetary switch to turn it on and off. Easy 10 minutes work.

The hard part will be mounting it all in the case. The screen with the mobo right behind it or close by. You will probably need someougt of bracket or something to hold it all inplace. Are you just going to cut a hole in the case an mount it in? Or are you gonna bondo around the edges and make it flush with the case?

Luke122
07-26-2006, 10:42 AM
I'll be cutting a hole in the side of the case, and mounting the tft behind it, and THEN using bondo around it to smooth it out. :)

I've decided to mount the speakers above the tft with the backlit sign behind that. Pics will be online later today when I get a chance. :)