The ultimate sleeper?

[Debeant]

So, I'm wondering if anyone's ever decided to try and cram modern guts into a truly old-school laptop (think mid-90s grey bricks) as a portable gaming sleeper?

I know I don't have the technical know how, but I'm sure someone out there has the money and proper insanity to do so.

[Bananasplit_00]

Never seen it done, I have a couple of those around but I wouldn't want to rip the gutts out of them to do this. You would have to replace the screen which would look wierd and there is a lot less space than you think inside them

[Debeant]

Modern screens tend to be thinner and wider, and I'm sure that with some finagling, you could put the battery in the top half of the clamshell given that about 1/3 of it won't be needed for the screen anymore. As far as space goes, I'm sure there's a lot more space in a classic laptop than in a modern one. A lot of those laptops were more than an inch thick, and modern laptops are considered thick these days if they are more than what, 1/3 of an inch thick? I'm not saying it would be easy, but... well, it'd be possible. Just something I was thinking about when I saw the "gaming on an old laptop" video being advertised.

[Bananasplit_00]

3 minutes ago, Debeant said:

Modern screens tend to be thinner and wider, and I'm sure that with some finagling, you could put the battery in the top half of the clamshell given that about 1/3 of it won't be needed for the screen anymore. As far as space goes, I'm sure there's a lot more space in a classic laptop than in a modern one. A lot of those laptops were more than an inch thick, and modern laptops are considered thick these days if they are more than what, 1/3 of an inch thick? I'm not saying it would be easy, but... well, it'd be possible. Just something I was thinking about when I saw the "gaming on an old laptop" video being advertised.

Please use quotes for replies if you want anyone to notice them. 

 

Anyway, the problem is that all these laptops are built around a 4:3 aspect screen, you won't get a board from an especially large newer laptop in there, the top shell won't hold a battery and if you are cutting up the screen for battery space then it's not much of a sleeper anymore. The top clamshells are pretty thin too, not modern laptop thin but they look much thicker than they are. 

[Debeant]

5 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

Please use quotes for replies if you want anyone to notice them. 

 

Anyway, the problem is that all these laptops are built around a 4:3 aspect screen, you won't get a board from an especially large newer laptop in there, the top shell won't hold a battery and if you are cutting up the screen for battery space then it's not much of a sleeper anymore. The top clamshells are pretty thin too, not modern laptop thin but they look much thicker than they are. 

A modern LCD panel is thin--absurdly thin to be frank. And an LCD panel with a 16:9 ratio is not going to take up the same space as a panel of the same width with a 4:3 ratio, freeing up a lot of space that could be blocked off with metal or a 3-D printed piece that could conceal a battery. Nobody's saying you'd have to have a super-powerful laptop to make this a sleeper, either. Something capable of running Windows 10 would be more than enough for a laptop like this to be a sleeper--nobody would even expect that. That aside, there is a frightening amount of space on the inside of one of those old laptops, especially like one that was in the video--it had the power supply internally, after all. I know the issue isn't overall space, but the dimensions not allowing the board to be placed. However, there are other options--Zotac has a number of options for fairly powerful high-efficiency PCs, and then there is the Intel NUC which uses a laptop processor paired with vega on-board. The mainboard from that would likely fit comfortably in the particular laptop I'm looking at in the aforementioned video.

I'm well aware of the problems with doing the project. I was just asking if there was anyone who'd actually tried doing what I'm talking about; and if they had, I wanted to see pictures because I think that kind of stuff is awesome. Finally, don't assume I don't understand old technology--my first computer was a Toshiba 8086 IBM clone. I've been messing around with this stuff since 1995. I just never really messed around with the portable side of the technology.