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Ahsan Nabi Dar
Ahsan Nabi Dar

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Upcycle your old laptop don’t throw it away

Original post https://darnahsan.medium.com/upcycle-your-old-laptop-dont-throw-it-away-b8300b6ff29 Published August 13th, 2020

So i bought hp dm3000-ea beats edition in 2012-2013 my 2nd laptop ( 1st one was gifted to me by my dad on graduating) this was probably the most expensive thing back then out of my pocket ever
تب احساس ہوا عیاشیاں تو باپ کے پیسے سے ہوتی ہے اپنے سے تو صرف ضرورتیں ہی پوری ہوتی ہیں
So been using it till last year, after over 6 years of use it finally "died" on me. Before this in 6 years its RAM had degraded over time and had upgraded it from 3GB to 16GB which had degraded again and were up for replacement. Also the HDD had crashed 4 years ago and replaced it from 256GB to 1TB. So it was maxed out over time but then came its time the WiFi started failing and then the fan gave in and it "died" إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعونَ . As دنیا گول ہے then I bought the most expensive thing of my life hp Spectre x360.
کیونکہ لندن تو کیا میری تو سنگاپور میں بھی پراپرٹی نہیں یہی اوقات ہے ٹیکس پیئر کی۔
Being Pakistani a natural master in hoarding it has been kept well given its own space to honour its services over the years. New laptops don’t come with CD-ROMs now and having a portable storage is a must for we live in a digital age and being a software developer a single screen isn’t enough at times to work. As I was contemplating buying all of these I recalled having my prize buy lying around, my first thought was I can take the HDD out and make an external HDD of it (had done that with the old HDD already). Then I searched to see if I could get a case for CD-ROM and walla there it was and boom an external CD-ROM could also be made. Now for the last item a secondary screen for which I Google-d and there were a ton of articles and videos over how an old laptop LCD could be converted to an external display all l needed was a LCD controller board for my model and a 12V/3A power adapter, so ripped the old gun apart and searched for the LCD controller board on Ali Express. It being an old model still managed to find a couple of suppliers for it. Ordered all the items that cost me for an external HDD case (10 SGD) external CD-ROM case (9 SGD) LCD Controller board (27 SGD) power adapter ( 6 SGD) a total of 52 SGD. Had I bought all these Items it would have cost me somewhere between 300-500 SGD. If you have read it this far I hope it helps you in recycling your old electronics or upgrading your laptop to extend its life. Don’t waste money think before you throw away your old gadgets. Be #Pakistani 😉

Top comments (3)

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hassan_k_a profile image
.

this advice came in time. I am looking to buy a new laptop as my old laptop is 8 years old.

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ryan_ai profile image
Ryan M

how did you know the external case work be compatible with your CD drive?

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darnahsan profile image
Ahsan Nabi Dar • Edited

I had checked the DVD drive for its interface and ordered the one matching it. Luckily it didn't have any proprietary connections but rather standard ones.