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Can I use raspberry to use the working parts of a broken laptop?

Former Member

I have an acer travel mate laptop. A broken one. VGA doesnt work, but it costs 149 euros to fix it. So, I was thinking that I could fix it with Raspberry and use the screen and the keyboard at least, right? I want to give it to my mum so that she could use skype and a browser (she doesnt need anything else at all).

 

But how do I start the process? Are there any special cables that can help me connect the raspberry unit to the laptop and from then on how can I make it take control of the keyboard and screen?

 

Cheers

Parents

  • Alas, the chances are slim that this is going to work.

     

    The screen is probably "LVDS". the 'pi does not have LVDS. :-( There are HDMI to LVDS boards available, but in general I'm not sure if you're going to find one of those boards with exactly the fitting flatcable connector. The screen also requires "exotic" voltages to power the backlight. You'll have to leave part of the laptop intact for that.


    The keyboard is usually connected to the laptop as an oldfashioned "PC" keyboard. Mine says:


       ... AT Translated keyboard ... i8042....

     

    in the logs. That means it gets raw keypresses from an intel 8042 embedded keyboardcontroller, or something that emulates this. On the raspberry pi, you're expected to use an USB keyboard. Again, conversion might be possible, but difficult in practice.

     

    And the harddrive: it probably uses SATA to connect to the laptop. The RPI doesn't have SATA. So again, you'll be buying conversion stuff.

     

    I'd say your options are:

    * RPI, buy screen, keyboard, mouse. Or, to save on buying the screen: connect the pi to the existing TV that has HDMI?

    * Get her a $100 tablet.

  • in reply to rew

    Hey Roger,

    Everything in the laptop is intact....the only thing is that I need to find a way to by pass the broken graphic card. I am relatively new to this...so, I am not sure how to do that.

    I thought it was easier to do: simply just connecting the the raspberry board to the laptop and running everything from there....making it use the laptop's keyboard and screen. But probably it is easier said than done. image

     

    The cheap laptop would be an option. I might consider that. The HDMI TV is not an option....she has an old TV. She is 62. image

  • in reply to Former Member

    Yeah. I asked my mother if her TV would have HDMI to allow us to connect our Raspberry pi when we visited.... Her answer: "What's HDMI? The TV is from '92". That predates HDMI by about a decade..... No it doesn't have HDMI. image

     

    Components for desktop PCs use "standard" interfaces and standard connectors. But there is some "duplication". For example, in the days of VGA screens, the computer would do an digital to analog conversion for the screen, and the flatscreen would then do an analog to digital conversion to get back to digital signals. In a laptop you'd cut out all the middle stuff and keep things digital.


    Although things remain digital in these days with HDMI, for transport on the cable-to-the-monitor, the signal is serialized on the HDMI cable, and then deserialized again in the monitor. Again the laptop cuts the middleman and skips the serialize/deserialize.

     

    This leaves  you with a "working parallel screen" from the laptop, and a "serialized display signal" on the 'pi.

Reply
  • in reply to Former Member

    Yeah. I asked my mother if her TV would have HDMI to allow us to connect our Raspberry pi when we visited.... Her answer: "What's HDMI? The TV is from '92". That predates HDMI by about a decade..... No it doesn't have HDMI. image

     

    Components for desktop PCs use "standard" interfaces and standard connectors. But there is some "duplication". For example, in the days of VGA screens, the computer would do an digital to analog conversion for the screen, and the flatscreen would then do an analog to digital conversion to get back to digital signals. In a laptop you'd cut out all the middle stuff and keep things digital.


    Although things remain digital in these days with HDMI, for transport on the cable-to-the-monitor, the signal is serialized on the HDMI cable, and then deserialized again in the monitor. Again the laptop cuts the middleman and skips the serialize/deserialize.

     

    This leaves  you with a "working parallel screen" from the laptop, and a "serialized display signal" on the 'pi.

Children
  • in reply to rew

    I guess I could just get a normal cable to connect the raspberry pi to the TV and a keyboard and mouse. Not a major investment. Plus a USB camera.

    Then the internet could be used via the ethernet cable...wondering if that would be enough for browsing and skype though.

  • in reply to Former Member

    If you get a "pi2" you have a "respectable" machine. If you don't go overboard with too many apps, then it suffices for basic browsing. If she has a WIFI router, you could for an additional $5 get a WIFI usb adapter, and use that to skip the ethernet cable.

     

    In my experience however, ethernet is more reliable than wifi. Consider the "support calls" if WIFI needs to be restarted somehow.