My aunt's got an old slightly broken laptop. She's got a new one. No one has any need for this old one anymore. It has no selling value. Etc etc etc.

I know I can put an SSD in it and run it on Linux to make it run smoothly as a laptop for emails and word processing etc, but I already have a crap old laptop for exactly that.

What sort of fun things can you do with an old laptop? I'm talking like, using it as a whole new device. Maybe using it as a 'TV Box' of sorts - getting some radio apps, and hacked streaming apps... Or loading up a bunch of PS2 games on it... or having it as the jankiest personal assistant, with timers, and calendars, and all that.

You know what I mean.

I love pointless gadgetry.

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 days ago

    it would be cool to have a dedicated emulator maybe, like to build a cool little cabinet with a monitor and it just plays SNES, Sega, or whatever level of arcade it can handle.

    I've also always been absolutely enchanted by those like flatscreen-behind-a-mirror setups that people put in the wall so it's like a mirror with a little HUD in the corner with weather, time date, etc info.

    I would love to have a big dedicated display that only ever showed some national weather service radar feed that was pegged to my lat-lon and only zoomed in/out within some specified range and looped the last hour with timestamps.