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What to do with an old MacBookPro ?

Hey there, 

 

i have already posted this on instructables.com, but i thought it would also be noteworthy to share with you. Because i always loved the Apple design and in particular their logo, i always thought of an way to express this. After i bought a new Laptop at the end of 2013, i had a spare laptop. I used the old 2009 MacBookPro as an hub for some of my bitcoinminers, until it completely broke down last year. So the time had come to build an awesome MacBook-Backpanel-Lamp. (and its RGB) 

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After you gathered all the parts (well just the broken laptop and some tools and RGB LEDs) you can start removing unnecessary parts from the laptop back. If your laptop back is dirty as mine you can clean it with a little bit of acetone, so that it looks nice. Some of the unnecessary parts could be: sponge, some plastic parts, screws, and a lot more.

So if everything unnecessary is removed, you can also clean the inside of the laptop back with acetone, incase there is any thing left. If there is a stamp with the date on it when the laptop back was assembled you can exchange the date with the date when you have built the lamp, to remember when you have built it. FTWIQKVION4J9RQ.MEDIUM.jpg.21f1eeecb2f7a02810c3413b371a645e.jpg

When every thing is cleaned you can draw guiding lines where you put the spacer blocks . Also mark the place where you have to place the power supply and the receiver for the remote control. Unfortunately, in my case i had to place the receiver visible on the upper left corner, because the signal was to weak. And do not forget to think about where you want to put the LED stripes, so that you have enough space to glue in the stripes. 

 

First you have to cut the spacer blocks. In my case, i had to cut six of them: four 10cm long ones and two other ones, for those the size doesn't matter because there only for hanging the lamp to the wall. When you have cut all the pieces you can, if you want, paint them white. 

 

Now while the paint is drying we move over to the electronics. First you glue in the power supply and decide where the LED strip will start, look at one of the pictures to know how i did it. Than you can also glue in the receiver for the remote control, but first test the signal strength of you remote so that you can decide where you have to stick the receiver. When thats done you can cut the LED stripes to length, measure out, that the strip goes all around the laptop case as shown in the picture. In my case i had to cut: two 3 section strips, two 2 section strips and five one section strips (four of these are for the apple logo).

 

Then you can dry fit them, if the fit nicely and cover the area you want to fill with light, you can solder them together. If there is a silicone protection layer over the contact points remove it and than solder the contact points together. Always make sure you solder the correct pins together or that the solder joints do not touch each other. You can alway test the connections by plugging in the power and turning the LED stripes on. When you have soldered the contact points together make sure that no wire is sticking up, to make sure that doesn't happen glue everything in place. You can also isolate the contact points with hot glue. The more glue the better!

Now we can move back to the spacers and glue them on. That done you can start soldering the remaining strips together and then glue them on to the spacer blocks as shown in a picture. Please note that you must leave a little bit of space for the cable management. One TIP: First make sure the last four strips work before sticking them on. 

Now the electrics are done.

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Remember the two spacer blocks ? Hope so, because now you have to add to them frame holders and glue the blocks on the same level on the laptop back as shown in the picture. Now you can hang it on the wall where ever you want it to hang.

The last thing you want to do is, to glue some light defusing material over the logo, because it simply looks better than a normal plexi glas logo. 

In addition to that you can add some light reflecting material, like a CD or aluminium foil over the spacer blocks, so that the LEDs in that compartment only light up the logo. 

I hope you had fun building it and that it looks as cool as mine or maybe even better.

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thats a nice project!

Elemental 

Spoiler

Intel i5 6500 @3.8ghz - 8GB HyperX - 600w Apex PSU - GTX 1060 G1 GIGABYTE 6GB - s340 Black - 240gb Toshiba Q300 - Cooler master TX3i - MSI z170-A PRO.

Old Build (sold for 290€)

Spoiler

Intel i3 540 @ 3.9ghz (On stock cooler, Hits 80c max) - 8gb ram - 500w power supply - P7H55-M LE  120gb SSD - Talius Drakko case

Project Frug 50$ Water loop

 

Laptops

Spoiler

13" Macbook Air - Alienware m14x r2 -  2009 15" Macbook Pro (I was give all of these and would never buy them myself)

 

 

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31 minutes ago, OtisCorporation said:

-Snip-

That's the only thing mac's can do well... Nice job!

I NEEDED WINDOWS 10 64-BIT SO BADLYxD



 

The awesome build

Ram: DDR400 2.5 GB   GPU: It's big, that's all I know   Case: A red box   Motherboard: My mother hates me   HDD: I don't have one, I threw it against the wall and it broke, so it is a softdrive   CPU: Intel Pentium 3, Quake get's rekt   OS: Microshaft Winblows XP

 

Here comes a beast of a laptop, the TravelMate 5742, it's so bad (get the reference )

Ram : 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM  (1066Mhz)     CPU :  Intel Core i5 480M / 2.66 GHz (It turbo's up to 2.93 GHz)     GPU :  Intel HD Graphics     HDD : 500GB (5400 rpm) OS : Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit (Build 1607)

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