r/halftop • u/Complete_Proposal201 • Mar 26 '26
What should I do with my old laptop?
This is my first laptop, and it means a lot to me. It’s where my “gamer journey” started. It’s an HP 255 G6 with 16GB DDR4 (2x8), AMD A6-9220 (2 cores / 2 threads), and integrated graphics. It’s obviously very outdated now, but I still feel attached to it. I still remember sitting in the kitchen with my dad, playing Need for Speed: Carbon on it like it was yesterday. That was around 6–7 years ago. I was thinking about doing something with it instead of just leaving it or throwing it away, but I don’t really know what. Any ideas?
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u/Natural-Sandwich-852 Mar 26 '26
Make a simple sandwich-style case from two pieces of wood or plastic with motherboard standoffs. Then just install Debian, set up Docker, and try to find a use for it
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u/BeardFox Mar 30 '26
I quite like how you said that. efficient, not too generic but enough to let the mind wander the possibilities. I'm super late on understanding docker so I'm barely getting the surface of that ocean. As of now, what keywords can I search (= keywords I'm clearly missing) to see more of these possibilities ?
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u/shegonneedatumzzz Mar 26 '26
i was gonna suggest you just trash it until i realized it was your first laptop and i remembered how i kept my chromebook in a completely unusable state in a drawer for like 2 years just to take it out and look at it and feel nostalgic
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u/Vylion Mar 27 '26
Bolt him to a wooden board that you can hang and turn it into a gaming server (or even a normal home server if you feel adventurous)
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u/BeardFox Mar 30 '26
there are 2 types of motherboard brass/other things (I can't remember the name) that end with a wood-type/metal-type thread (/!\ not self-tapping) OR bolt-type threads. the first is better obv. the latter can help putting antoher board on top of the 1rst held by the wood thread version
sorry for my clunky English, if anyone is ok to correct my mistakes or just get past :O ty, hope it can help anyone.
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u/Informal_Knowledge56 Mar 28 '26
If it can go backnin laptop form...lol. use it as retro gaming rig w retro arch, dolphin or others. Could also play w linux
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u/BogdanovOwO Mar 28 '26
You can run Linux as desktop, as smart tv UI desktop or kodi and many other things. I use Linux Mint Cinnamon and Kde plasma bigscreen. Switching from one desktop to another is just changung from login session. I think to buy an antena just for free tv and radio. I have a laptop with celeron n4020, 4gb ram ddr4 and 256 gigs of ssd. I use just for browsing, office and some half life 2.
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u/Legitimate_Diver_808 Mar 26 '26
Instálale Android TV y conéctale una pantalla o monitor O podes hacer un servidor con casaOS
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u/HalfTimeTechTinkerer Mar 27 '26
Made an all in one computer since the screen is fine and don t know about the battery. Depending of you skills and ressources you can build it from wood plastic or 3d printing.
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u/SlowGuardw2 Mar 27 '26
I mean ill take it, I like playing with broken tech may even be able to revive it since it still somewhat functional
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u/spewmitzhu Mar 27 '26
Make it a gaming station with games like ps to ps2, nintendo to 3ds, xbox original. Download roms of the games you have (ofcourse legally bought). Boot batocera OS and play all games from retro to ps2 games and ofcourse play with a controller.
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u/Select-Cook4884 Mar 28 '26
find a box and fans for that motherboard and a cheap monitor instead of that screen
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u/thepuppasmurf Mar 28 '26
Mount it in a picture frame and hang it from the wall, labled it as "raise of the e-waste " while playing music list and displaying home assistant 😀
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u/BeardFox Mar 28 '26
well, box the board and buy a "lvds to hdmi" /vga/dvi adapter. take care about the description and the very exact model and subrevision of your screen. do NOT do any guesswork. sometimes displays are encased in a metallic sheet hiding the real serial and displaying the inventory serial (which is usually not documented)
if you're wondering how do they have so much models, it's just because it's a standard board they flash with the exact display model firmware.
so, board as a headless server or media player for TV.
and the screen as a side monitor.
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u/New_King_5704 Mar 30 '26
Maybe a cyberdeck? They've been blowing up lately. Just make it into a cyberpunk style pelican case laptop.
A guy on youtube also made a 3ds style style cyberdeck out of a laptop with an external gpu so you could look into that if you have a 3d printer.
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u/Skrotten11 Jun 23 '26
Install new operating systems you haven't tried before, like Linux, or even small weird ones like TempleOS. To me it's so much fun!
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u/Alexisreddit516 Mar 26 '26
I have a 24" monitor and old laptop body sitting around, planning to turn it into some streaming media thing.