The PicturePC
April 4, 2010
So a few days ago I was rummaging through the basement when I saw this old laptop sitting there. When I saw it, I immediately knew I wanted to mod it. Mod it into what, you ask? Well, into a picture frame PC of course! Now I know what you’re thinking, but no it will not just serve as a digital picture frame. I plan on having it display different “panes” if you will. For example, one pane will be my social networking feeds, another will display what I am currently playing on my MacBook Pro in iTunes, and a third will show a todo list and calendar. All of the software will be run from Puppy Linux. It’s a lightweight Linux distro, and probably the only thing that will run on this machine.
Initially I wanted to do a whole build log showing each step, but I had trouble committing once I got really into the project. Below you can view the disassembly of the laptop in a time-lapse video and a gallery of the finished product. Once I have all of the software running I will post a video of how the whole thing works, but don’t expect anything for another week or two.
Specs:
- 1.6GHz Pentium 4 CPU
- A measly 256MB of RAM
- 3 1/2 floppy drive
- Floppy to boot off USB
- 4GB flash drive with Puppy Linux installed
- WiFi Mini-PCI card stolen from a Hawking Technologies router
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I cut the frame, but I didn’t make it. My dad had some extra frame laying around, so we made some use out of it. It had to be specially cut so that the weirdly-sized LCD display could fit in it.
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Sweet mod making and old piece of tech useful again! Did you make the frame yourself too?