A Laptop to Mod

There are a number of obstacles to overcome to mod a laptop into a reader. The first, of course, is to posses or obtain a laptop that you're willing to sacrifice to the project and recycle if it doesn't work out. Given a choice, there are a couple things worth considering...

While an older laptop has a more bulky display, that display can provide room to enclose a connector or hardwiring to a cable and to accommodate mounting of controls. You can probably forgo controls if you're fortunate enough to be modding a laptop with a touchscreen, but you may still need to contrive how to enclose the cable connection wiring.

If your laptop-of-choice still has a good battery, the mod will reduce the laptop's portability still provided by the battery, so it might be worth reconsidering your choice. If, on the other hand, you're battery won't hold a charge, that's just fine for a stationary reader. The ideal would a laptop with a near-death battery that still holds a few minutes of charge, which provides a built in battery backup to enable normal shutdown in the event of a power failure.

Once you've settled on a laptop and if you happen to be experienced in laptop disassembly and reassembly, you can be the intrepid adventurer and go forth without a map. Otherwise, it'd probably be best to track down the laptop's service manual. If the service manual can't be found, try to find one for something similar. That'll at least provide some ideas about how things to be put together.

In my case, I used an old HP Pavilion N3330. Like most aged laptops, it's kind of bulky and it's battery was completely dead. Initially, I couldn't find the laptop's service manual, but the HP Pavilion N3330 turned out to be essentially the same as the HP OmniBook XE2. I was able to find a copy of the OmniBook's manual and went on from there.