I recently picked up a Motorola LapDock from eBay. It was originally used as a keyboard, trackpad, and screen in a laptop format for the Atrix smartphone, but with some converter cables, you can plug into any machine with HDMI and USB and use it exactly as you describe. It's finicky, but works well enough to be useful. Total cost for the LapDock and cables was under $100.

Totally. A portable KVM/crash cart could be useful.

take a look at NexDock - laptop form factor, without the innards. just a keyboard, trackpad, screen, and battery waiting to connect to a phone, server rack, pi, or what have you.

That's pretty cool. I wonder how hard it would be to add USB-C docking capability to an old server in my homelab. Seems like a graphics card with Virtual Link USB-C [0] would be ideal, but maybe overkill. There are some other options [1] but it's not clear to me how much graphic horsepower you need. Definitely a VGA-only motherboard is not gonna cut it...

[0] https://uploadvr.com/every-virtuallink-gpu/

[1] https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/20/add-usb-c-with-...

I second this, have one of the Touch models - the build quality is great. Yes it works with my Samsung on which I have Ubuntu via VNC running on the phone. But also and more useful for me is it has HDMI in and USB out for keyboard and mouse, works perfectly for when you need a kvm setup. did I say the build quality is great?...

Only downside is the piece of junk trackpad that registers registering itself as a mouse and not a trackpad...resulting in no palm-rejection and crappy gesture functionality.

$270 is a lot for an empty laptop.

Seems like the Pinebook guys could make a decent competitor.

You can order a USB HDMI capture dongle for around USD 10 on AliExpress, e.g., from AIXXCO. It's not perfect but it should suffice to setup or debug a headless system. TinyPilot uses such a dongle for server KVM purposes.

So much this. I want a display, a VGA in, a keyboard and something that is capable of running a terminal and a switch for VGA in and the built-in Raspberry/Odroid/whatever. I would pay anything up to $500-600.

Found nothing so far.

Edit: forgot RJ45.

I mean this thing has plenty of room in the case and should be compatible with TinyPilot: https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot/

It's not a turn-key solution, but it's not that far off.

Yeah RJ45 is a HUGE miss on modern laptops. Nothing like a fast stable wired connection.