Laptop busted

[AmishSamurai]

So my screen on my laptop went south (I have it connected to a monitor for use right now). I'm trying to dance through warranties right now, but if worst comes to worst I may have to get a new one. So that leaves what to do with the current one. Are there any guides out there for converting the guts of my laptop to the guts of a MAME cabinet?

[AppleQueso]

laptop screens are replaceable you know

[noiseredux]

similar question: I have a dead laptop with a really nice screen. Anyway I could turn that into a monitor?

[Breetai]

If your screen is broken (cracked), no warranty will probably help you. If it is pixels, they might depending on what your warranty covers.

Does your laptop have video out? If so, you should be able to hook it up to a monitor in addition to a USB mouse/keyboard. It would then be possible to make a MAME machine out of it, depending how how good it is.

It's often cheaper to buy a new laptop than to replace the screen, unless your laptop is really expensive.

[AmishSamurai]

If your screen is broken (cracked), no warranty will probably help you. If it is pixels, they might depending on what your warranty covers.

Does your laptop have video out? If so, you should be able to hook it up to a monitor in addition to a USB mouse/keyboard. It would then be possible to make a MAME machine out of it, depending how how good it is.

It's often cheaper to buy a new laptop than to replace the screen, unless your laptop is really expensive.

There's no crack- the screen lights up, but remains blank. Only place nearby that could replace it wanted $600 to do so- about as much as I paid for the computer. Hence why I'm repurposing it.

It has VGA-out and HDMI-out. It can also run pretty modern games with no slowdown, so I'm not worried about that.

[avrame]

Seems easy enough to repurpose it as a arcade machine assuming that all the external ports work.

Just treat it as a desktop and I think you'd be fine Check out Maximus Arcade, I recently started playing with that due to someones post a while back, and I purposed my wife's old clunker into a decent emulator station:

http://www.maximusarcade.com/

[CRTGAMER]

Are there any guides out there for converting the guts of my laptop to the guts of a MAME cabinet?

No reason to gut it. Just plug in the peripherals and the VGA monitor of your choice. To hookup a custom Arcade controller use either an iPac or wire up a gutted keyboard.

[lwcook]

similar question: I have a dead laptop with a really nice screen. Anyway I could turn that into a monitor?

Nope, as you would need a decoder for that particular screen. I just know I've looked into it before for the same reasons, and the answer is pretty much an all around "no."

[lwcook]

Are there any guides out there for converting the guts of my laptop to the guts of a MAME cabinet?

No reason to gut it. Just plug in the peripherals and the VGA monitor of your choice. To hookup a custom Arcade controller use either an iPac or wire up a gutted keyboard.

That, or laptops like that make excellent media servers. All you have to do is hook up a monitor so you can set a remote desktop service up. Then you can just have it on the network and access it remotely. Takes very little space and is good on power.

[Anapan]

You can usually get a broken-in-some-other-way laptop of the same model on ebay for next-to-nothing. Replacing the screen can get kinda difficult depending on how they decided to put the case together, but there are well-made easy to follow guides for most types of replacements.