Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?

Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by MrGilbert on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @04:02AM (#22167679)

I bought a x230 last year as my non-gaming computer, and I really like it. I bought it for 117€, it was pretty beaten up. The display is the cheap TN panel, has a light spot in the center, and the keyboard doesn't match my locale. However, it has the top-level i5. (i5-3380M, I think). I also bought a docking station at a bargain.

This year, I bought a new IPS display, a matching keyboard and a new screen bezel for it. I'll hopefully be able to use it for some more years - I really love the form factor.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by rezgi on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @04:28AM (#22167795)

Enterprise ThinkPads are amazing machines. They're very sturdy (although the X230 notoriously has a weak screw holder in the top left (or is it right?) corner that will almost always break and make that corner of the case a bit wobbly. Annoying but not critical. And the i7 top of the range version that comes with the 180GB Intel SSD... Well, the SSD is bad and can be thrown out. It has a bug in its firmware that was never fixed by Intel and never acknowledged by Lenovo so no recall, and no fix. Just throw it away and replace with a 256-512 GB SSD.

And the parts are cheap and plentiful. Get the docking station if you can, I paid 30$ for two a few years ago (top of the range dock, the one with all the connectors and 2x video out)

Also, the IPS upgrade is well worth it.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by cookiengineer on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @04:04PM (#22174009)

Using a t440p base as my laptop, best laptop for the buck. bought it as a 4300m model with a dual core. now it has an IPS display, better coreboot+bios update, 32gb ram, i7-4712, 2x 512gb ssds plus a 4tb hdd. all together cost me less than 600eur. hackintosh compatible if necessary, though it's running Arch these days.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by shrikant on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @09:38AM (#22169717)

While I agree with this, I have an Intel graphics version of the T430 (running Ubuntu) and it doesn't seem to play nice with two external monitors, even with the "fully loaded" docking station :(

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by bblough on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @03:37PM (#22185524)

I had external display issues as well, with a T440 and an UltraDock under Debian. It was mostly flickering and blinking of the outputs, but occasionally a display wouldn't come out of powersave mode.

You may have already found and tried these possible fixes, but just in case you haven't-

1) There's a firmware update for the docks that is supposed to resolve a number of display issues.

2) It appears that similar issues can be caused by having a defective or incorrectly-sized dock power supply. So replacing the power supply with a known-good and/or bigger power supply might help.

Though, in my case, neither of the above helped. It turns out I had a bad HDMI/VGA adapter. Since eliminating that, I've had zero display issues. But I'm guessing that probably doesn't apply to you, since my configuration is a little unconventional.

Anyway, I hope you find something that fixes it for you.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by opless on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @07:24AM (#22168695)

IPS upgrade?

Tell me more!

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by severine on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @08:06AM (#22168957)

https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=126294

https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2019/02/thinkpad-t430s-ips-scree...

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by opless on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @10:16AM (#22170104)

Thanks! Though they seem to be x430s rather than the X230s :/

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by mindslight on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @11:00AM (#22170534)

Some of the x230 configurations shipped with IPS screens, so you can just obtain one of those (or a compatible replacement) and swap it in. The resolution is still 1366x768. Beware of sellers falsely claiming "IPS".

Alternatively, you can do a bit of soldering/modding and put in an aftermarket 1920x1080 panel. https://nitrocaster.me/store/x220-x230-fhd-mod-kit.html

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by opless on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @02:15PM (#22173021)

Oh. My.

This!!!

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by keldaris on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @08:24AM (#22169087)

I use a couple of X220s as my work laptops, as I find the keyboard far superior to the X230 and all later models (it's the last classic ThinkPad keyboard prior to the chiclet designs). The hardware is still mostly sufficient for my needs (just don't run Electron apps...) and the case and the keyboard are much better than anything I could buy new these days. Apart from the displays, it feels like laptops have mostly regressed over the last decade and continue to do so at an alarming pace (just compare the T490 series to the T480, for instance).

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by wpietri on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @05:06PM (#22174624)

Hah! I am writing this from an X220 for exactly the same reason. I bought a Thinkpad 25 when those came out, just so I could get the keyboard, but I agree with you: they're just not made as well as the older Thinkpads, which are tanks.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by 2fast4you on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @04:27AM (#22167790)

My 2012 MacBook Pro is in great condition and probably would’ve stayed that way for awhile, but sluggishness was just becoming too common. Especially when I’m off mains, running an IDE, a browser, and occasionally compiling

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by cutety on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @06:22AM (#22168355)

I’m still runnin a 2012 (non retina) without any issues, and I plan on keeping it until it literally won’t boot. What’s funny is I was initially annoyed as I got it a few weeks before they announced they were releasing the first Retina display models (discontinuing the non retinas), however getting the last non-retina generation was a blessing because that’s was that was when they also began making upgrading MacBooks nearly impossible (non upgradable ram/and I believe some weird half SSD/half disc drive that didn’t come in >512GB or something like that). So getting the last (upgradable) MacBook Pro was the better deal because two or so years ago I upgraded the RAM to 32GB and because it was also the last MacBook to have a CD drive (that I never used) I was able to rip it out, put a $5 hardrive bracket in it’s place and threw the original (I think) 750GB or whatever HDD where the CD drive used to go, and popped in a nice 1TB SSD into the main disc drive, and nowadays it’s almost always plugged into a monitor so I wouldn’t really even be using the retina anyway.

Sadly though, I think I got the last generation of great MacBooks, and as much as I love it I fear for the day it finally dies, because I’m probably not getting another MacBook unless something changes, and there still isn’t a laptop out there that comes close to the good MacBooks (I know good one’s exist and I’ll manage, but they’re still not the same)

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by le-dvd on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @08:21AM (#22169065)

I'm exactly in the same boat as you, I love my 2012 non retina Macbook Pro. Upgraded the RAM a few years ago, changed the HDD for an SSD, and it still works fine. I didn't like the newer MBP keyboard or touchbar, maybe now they're getting better. But the price is what will push me away. I'll probably try to find a nice model on which I can make sure Linux run fine.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by 2fast4you on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @12:15PM (#22171426)

Hey mine was non retina too!

It really was a fantastic piece of hardware, and probably the only Mac I’ll ever live. The dual SSDs(I replaced the cd drive too) gave it a few more years for me.

I’m pretty happy with the replacement I got though. It’s and MSI gaming laptop, but without the “gamer” look. It’ll handle anything I throw at it, so now I can take VR in the go.

Still gonna miss that MacBook though

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by senderista on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @12:33PM (#22171652)

I snagged an official Apple refurb 2015 MBP (last decent keyboard) just a few months ago. They’re still out there.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by meristem on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @08:05PM (#22176084)

I am also holding on to mine, and it is my primary machine even though we have newer MacBooks in the house.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by fragmede on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @11:34AM (#22170947)

I've a 2012 MacBook Pro as well, and Chrome is unusably slow on it (OS X). Safari runs okay. Mine has 4 GiB of ram, and a spinning disk. The combination means it's hitting swap constantly, and hitting swap thrashes the disk on top of it. When I get the money to upgrade the ram to 16 GiB and upgrade to an SSD I'm hopeful it's be more usable, but for now it runs a terminal well enough.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by exadeci on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @06:12PM (#22187057)

I have a mid 2012, I upgraded the ram to 10GB 4 years ago and replaced both the hdd and the cd reader by 2 ssd.

This things flies for most tasks, I only see it slow down when I try compiling Android apps.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by padthai on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @05:12AM (#22167990)

My personal laptop has 4Gb of RAM and terrible CPU (HP Stream 14). I only need more when I run an IDE or HD video.

For lots of cases, 1Gb-2Gb of RAM and some computing power is more than enough.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by nonamenoslogan on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @05:16PM (#22174700)

I agree, my 2010 MacBook Air is still going strong despite having abjectly pathetic specs. It still holds a 3ish hour charge on the original cells too. I used it this summer as a camera capture device taking one image every 5 minutes of my garden and stitching the whole summer together in to a 3 minute video at the end. Only bits I used were some code to capture (automator), a 40' powered Belkin USB cable, a Logitech 720P Webcam, and some PVC electrical boxes and fittings to water-proof the whole thing.

On another note, my 2003ish iBook G4 is still in functional condition and it gets a good deal of use recently as a game-device playing SimTower. I prefer its keyboard over most others in my house (MacBook Air aside) and as such I tend to do most of my writing on it using Pages.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by lurker_primo on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @05:24AM (#22168048)

Yup.. My 2012 Macbook Pro is also fine, and is the more capable among my 2 personal laptops. I upgraded it with SSD, and 16 GB RAM, and installed Manjaro. The day to day usage (photo editing with Darktable/Rawtherapee, some light software development etc) is fine - no stuttering. The other one is a Vaio from 2008. I upgraded that one too with an SSD and 4 GB RAM. It is fine for Media consumption and office tasks - no slowdown at all.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by benoliver999 on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @10:47AM (#22170413)

My x200 finally died the other day. Hoping the new Thinkpad lasts as long as the old one did...

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by wink on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @10:05AM (#22170010)

2004 1.5GHz Centrino isn't exactly fun to use, but it's my OpenBSD playground. Need to update, but with 6.2 I could browse 1 concurrent website in a current browser.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by hanniabu on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @04:52AM (#22167898)

How can it function without a drive?

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by stedaniels on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @04:57AM (#22167921)

The terms you're looking for are Linux Live USB, or netboot. Both often make use of local RAM disks.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by RunningDroid on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @04:59AM (#22167934)

One way is to burn a CD/DVD live image that has your configs added and configure it to mount a mergefs(iirc) on top of the read-only /home so all writes go to /tmp/merge.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by hanniabu on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @06:21AM (#22168351)

But past that, I don't see how you can do anything since installing programs would require storage.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by WrtCdEvrydy on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @11:11AM (#22170679)

Most live linux has support for saving stuff to the flash drive. It runs slowly but works.

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Re:Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your ... by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @06:32AM (#22168402)

Just mount a drive over ssh?

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