the laptop's dead, now what can I do with it?

[bookstorebabe]

Yep. The motherboard died. It was cheaper to replace it. It was an older one, and I bought another from the friend who sells reconditioned laptops.
Anyway! What do I do with it now? I've never taken a computer apart before. I know I should save the hard drive, and I don't even know what one looks like. I'm sure all the innards and circuit board can be made into nifty things. But how do I go about dismantling it in the first place? And, what to do with the case and screen once it's been looted for the inner bits? Thanks!

[Antidigger]

Ok, start dismantling by taking out the battery if you can. After that wield that screwdriver and undo anything you can see. Try pulling at anything with lots of little pins (not too hard) and in fact pull at anything you think might be worth it.

Hubby gives a word of warning (learned the hard way) do not apply heat to anything cylindrical (i.e. capacitors) they have a tendency to blow up! Eek.

But if you want the chips out and they don't come with gentle pulling you could try a hot air gun.

If all else fails lever it out with a screwdriver and brute force.

There will probably be some pretty layers in an LCD screen: I've used phone screen bits as backgrounds for greetings cards. The plastic screen case may make a cool shadow box. 

[bookstorebabe]

Thank you, Antidigger and husband!

[Blacksmith]

Also, a belt sander is good for flattening the solder pins on the circuit board, also the board has more than two layers in some cases.
Now, a further word of caution, there are some other heavy/toxic metals in computers, be very careful about the components there.

[CindyKayS]

I saw a cool idea on a recycling board for using a laptop with the innards removed to make a play computer for a child.  Glue a small chalkboard where the screen was.  If you remove the part where the keys are, then you could make a fabric liner with pockets for chalk, colored pencils & paper, etc.  If you are using the chalkboard idea though, stay away from crayons - they can ruin a chalkboard.

[darkrose20]

I'm kind of surprised that I didn't see this mentioned. You can use the keys to make nifty jewlery or magnets or napkin rings or whatnot. You can get inspiration for this over on Etsy.  I've seen quite a bit of good things with keyboard keys over there.

[PeachieClean]

Dear lord, I hope you didn't pry it apart...  If you google the type of laptop it is you can find instructions to take it apart.  All you need to take a laptop apart is a butter knife and a philips screw driver. 

This is a hard drive: http://images.mylot.com/userImages/images/postphotos/2410787.jpg

Even with a screwed motherboard, you can usually get the screen to light up if you attach 'em.  They make neat lamps, if you are good with electrical stuff.  Even if you're not, just try hooking the screen up with a power cord.  You may also need a ram chip.  Mount it all in a shadow box and you'll have an interesting soft-light lamp.  Or you can try to break your screen a little and it'll look cool too.  I have one screen with a plasma leak, it's awesome.

If the screen is good, you might be able to hook it up and have a second screen for a computer.

If you completely gut the laptop you could turn it into a portable crafting space.  Foamboard covered in cloth with elastic loops where the screen was to hold tools.  Supplies and small projects where the keyboard and mouse were.

Hope this helps ^^

[bookstorebabe]

thanks, Peachie!