Hello this is my first post here and my first real case mod.

Alright so here is my situation: I have a Compaq NC8000 . It's an excelent laptop that I've had for a few years and has never let me down. The only problems I've ever really had with it are that it isn't slim enough for me (~1 3/4 inches) and now i've dropped it too many times etc and parts of the plastic case are cracked. So I've decided that if it's at all possible (and I know it is) and not too insanely costly, I would like to replace the casing and move parts around inside/buy new parts and see if I can get it any slimmer.

I'm wondering how reasonable it is to get raw plastics and put them together for this or, perhaps another material, I'm not really sure any suggestions you have that aren't "won't work" will be much appreciated.

Have you ever think about metal casting?

I would be interested in hearing how you propose for me to make a reasonably light metal case.

It takes a lot of skills and knowledge to make the light metal casting.

But I'm not sure if your laptop will be insulated against the metal.

I'm sure someone who has more experience on the metal will respond to this.

Hey, why don't you do your favor, let's wait for a about week or two to get some attention from PC Apex.

Welcome to PCA.

Quote: Originally Posted by thac0nfus3done I would like to replace the casing and move parts around inside/buy new parts and see if I can get it any slimmer.

Don't know much about plastics myself, but having worked on the insides of lappys I can make this suggestion:

Open the maintenance manual. If you don't have one, you can download it here. it's about 8MB.

Read the manual carefully, and then open your lappy.

Based on how the parts are assembled, you will have ribbon cable that connects different parts to each other and the mobo. Those cables will be an excellent guide to how much room you have to work with when moving parts around. It will be limited.

I've never looked into it, but there may be a source for purchasing longer, replacement ribbon cable. Real pain to replace, however.

Just a few thoughts. As with any modding project, plan it out first, then do it. Even more so with laptops: they have very tiny screws and that ribbon cable is unforgiving if you make a mistake.

Good luck!

-godling

Ya, sounds good godling. Right now I'm thinking about using solid colored acrylics for the casing. Seeing as how easy they are to work with after having done some research. Beyond this I was wondering if anyone had any idea of how easy it would be to use a different laptop battery inside my casing. Do you think that as long as the battery is outputting the same volts I could use it? I'm looking for a thin battery with at least 4400 Ampere Hours although depending on how thin I can go I would take as low as 2200 ampere hours. My current battery is about 1 inch thick and I'm wondering if there would be one thinner with the same voltage rating of 14.4.

Quote: Originally Posted by thac0nfus3done Beyond this I was wondering if anyone had any idea of how easy it would be to use a different laptop battery inside my casing. Do you think that as long as the battery is outputting the same volts I could use it?

Me and Electricity have never been good friends. But I've been able to run laptops on AC power supplies that were not exact matches for the unit -- generally underpowered supplies. There is some tolerance. But try to match both the amps and the volts as closely as possible. And there's never any guarantee that it will work, or worse, that it won't just burn out your system. That would suxors bigtime.

-godling

Ya I wouldn't do this if it were my only computer or something. I'm doing this as an experiment, and hopefully I'll end up in the back of maximum PC :-P.

Quote: Originally Posted by COMMODORE64 Hey, why don't you do your favor, let's wait for a about week or two to get some attention from PC Apex. Welcome to PCA.

Yeah, I'm kind of surprised T2 hasn't stopped by with the official welcome yet ...

Alright, I've got an update for you all.

I opened up the laptop and took it completely apart. I took several high resolution pictures of the motherboard, battery, and othe various parts. These pictures will be online soon, and following that I will begin work on rendering all these parts in Gmax. After that I'll start making some designs for the new laptop casing.

PS. I put the laptop back together and it still works so seems like we are good to go.

Omg!

Let See It Let See It!