Project:Frogmonster's Bluegear Laptop Mod - What is that noise?

First off... This site has some of the sickest modders out there. Awsome!
This is my first computer mod. I've done Xbox's, Cellphones, and alot of cool car audio installs.
I'm modding a Bluegear BG-V301. http://www.bluegear.com/products
I got this laptop dead and had to mod it already just to get it to work. The voltage regulator and the battery charging circuit were both fried. These are built into the motherboard. I had to loose the battery and ad a 12V relay and a momentary push button. When I want to power it up, I have to hold down the button making the laptop think it's running off battery power. Just before the bios kicks in I let go of the button and the laptop switches to plugged in power. That’s all and now I have a working laptop. Since there’s no battery pack I have lots of room for stuff in there. A free laptop NEEDS to be modded.
I always go by "Frogmonster" on the net. So i wanted a back lit plexiglass image of something that looks like a frogmonster in the lid of the laptop. It also needs a back lit keyboard and LED's in the usb ports. I have a small lcd screen out of a cheep PS2 controler sitting around. I'll try to toss that in there somewhere. Enough chat... Lets chop!

Hers the laptop in all it's stock glory.


The pic i want on the lid.


Time to take it apart.




Time to gut it!





Here's there keyboard and pad live. This is about the only place i'd have the depth to add another LCD screen. So...




Heres the LCD i'm installing. Isn't it cute?



Here i'm trying it out. I does look better in person. Be great for winamp visuals .

 

Heres some more pics of the project.
First off, I'm cheep. I got some old plexiglass off a display when i worked at Futureshop. Good enough. I'm too cheep to pay for cusom vinyl decals so i went down to my local Princess Auto and got some cheep decal material for $3. Then i ran it through a laser printer to get the image on it and cut it out with a knife. The masking tape is there to hold the little pieces together till i applied it.



Here it is on the plexi.


This is my etching (sandblasting) setup. High tech huh?


Thats as far as i got today. I thought i'd try out the EL wire i'm gona try to use to light up the plexi. Heres a pic of a test piece.

Not too bad. Since i don't have a battery pack, I got room for the relativly "Huge" inverter.

Thats about it for pics for about 4 days. i'll post more when i can.

 

Very-nice Frog..
Laptop mods are far&few in between..
Best O-luck.. Looking good...........
I have a Toshiba Tecra............perhaps I should.........
NO, I have enough on my plate @ this point in-time..
ROCK-ON FROG......!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Comments? Advice?
I'm thinking of doing the whole harddrive window trick but cause it's a laptop...
-It would be really small to work with
-It would have to be the bottom of the harddrive. Not the lid.
-I don't have another herddrive if i screw this one up.
*Update*=I just looked. It would be under the keyboard. No go on this one. Oh well.

I also have to think about where i'm going to get the 12V for the screen and EL wire and EL tape(for the backlighting of the keyboard) and any LED's i might throw in. Hmmm. I wonder if i could fit in a cold cathode tube in there some where.
I was going to mod the power comverter. I presently puts out 20V at about 3.5 amps. The laptop draws just about all of this. I'm sure i could put a 12v 3 amp power supply in the same case and run a different kind of power plug. One that could supply the 20V to run the laptop itself, and 12V for all the mods. If theres no voltage difference between the grounds, i could use a 3 pin. Hmmmm...
Any ideas?

And other than using the PCMCIA slot and a card, is there a way of getting wireless into this thing? I cant find anything for it on the net.

 

Nice mod cant wait to see the finial thing.
BTW i have a colection of early pentium tosh satalites.

 

Cool. How early? I got my wife a 1800 Satalite. Its a 800mhz with 128 ram. Needs more ram. I've had it stripped too. Lots of room for mods.

She'd kill me!

 

90-120 mhz+32mb ram

 

Wow... What can you do with laptops like those? Pretty old.

 

Starting them up must be about their limit I shouldn't wonder

 

Mod them?

 

Just think, They used to be state of the art..........

 

O.K. So i just finnished fileing and sanding and polishing the edge of the plexi to allow as much light in. I'm gona leave the stupid decal on as long as possible so i dont scratch it.

Here its held up to the light.
Note-Pic is missing cause supload.com sucks. I'll repost when i get home.

Too tired to mod. I'm off to bed...

 

Project:Frogmonster's Bluegear Laptop Mod - I Screwed up. Argh.

I cracked the back lid of my laptop while trying to cut it for the plexiglass.
The only place to get replacement parts for a bluegear laptop is from the manufacturer. I dont even want to know what it would cost. The only solution i can think of is to put some sourt of panel over the whole thing.

And i burnt out the transformer for the el wire.

I shouldn't have even touched anything tonight.

 

if the crack isn't too big you should try to glue it und pherhaps bondo it uopp and spraypaint it.

 

Digital photo frames?(via linux)

 

O.K. Things are better. I needed something to cover up most of the back of the lid to cover up my screw up. I finaly decided to go with mirrored plexiglass. I cut it to the same shape as the lid and bevled the sides to match. For the pic i wanted, I did another decal and sandblasted it. I think it looks pretty cool cause it looks like a mirror but light (green el wire) shows through where its been sandblaster. Then i glued it to the lid with silicone. I've also ran another el wire around the inside of the laptop to iluminate the usb ports/card reader/dvd drive....
I'll post the pics tonight.

 

Princes Auto 4 life

 

Funny thing is the last time i was at Princess Auto, I was returning my el light cause i was a dumb ass and blew it up. I seen a guy loading All of the 12 volt decorative lighting kits into a shopping cart. All the neon, L.E.D., cold cathods, and el light kits. He cleared the shelves. I recognised him as an employee there and asked if it was all going on clearence. He said no, he's buying all of it for himself at staff prices for doing case mods. He took everything but the green el wire and some shity black lights. Must be nice. The guy was pretty cool about everything and let me have one last pick through the stuff. I told him to post up here any mods he's doing. All that should last him quite a while.

 

O.K. Some updates. Heres some pics of the mirrored plexi for the lid.
First, the clear piece that i'm not going to use. Turned out O.K.


This is the new panel that i am going to use.




It looks pretty sweet when it's back lit.

I have the screen electronics, EL wire, and it's transformers "stuffed" in.


Another problem. When i apply power to the EL lights, Thay make a really loud squeeling sound. Check out this video clip and tell me if you have any ideas on how i could get rid of this... but keep the light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDlRD4bD_HM
Please post any answers you might have. Thanx

 

The high pitch noice of step-up transformers is a common problem - CRT monitors and TVs can sometimes have this problem too.

The manufactures of the transformers try to circumvent the problem by dipping the finished transformer in lacker/epoxy, to build up a tough coat everywhere in the system, so the high vibrations will die/be absorbed into the material.

I once did an el-wire in a wireless keyboard, and had the same high pitch noise problem.
As I did not have any lacker/epoxy handy, I soaked the whole thing in hotglue. It took care of some of the problem, but hotgule is not as sturdy/solid as lacker/epoxy and thus only cut down the problem a bit.

Hope this gives you some info to work with.

Great to see a laptop mod for a change