MacBook1137 Posted August 9, 2009 Share Posted August 9, 2009 Hey guys! I got an Averatec 3120v hanging around and collecting dust. I want to get some ideas for craptop mods because I really want to turn it into something. If I do something with this laptop, then I'm gonna have to take it out of its case most likely because the heatsink in it sucks and it gets wicked hot. The heat melted the text off of most of it (not the keys). Thanks guys and i hope you have some ideas! Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FireTime Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 e-book reader! Thats what I did with my old Toshiba Tecra 8000. Remove all of the unnecessary components (spekeres, keyboard, 56k modem, and what not) Slim down the case, and fold over the screen. Rotate the screen output (some cards can do this natively, otherwise get a trial of Pivot Pro) Tadaa, a cheep as free e-book reader! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr0p Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 e-book reader! Thats what I did with my old Toshiba Tecra 8000. Remove all of the unnecessary components (spekeres, keyboard, 56k modem, and what not) Slim down the case, and fold over the screen. Rotate the screen output (some cards can do this matevly, otherwise get a trial of Pivot Pro) Tadaa, a cheep as free e-book reader! Just curious, what input did you add to replace the keyboard? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacBook1137 Posted August 10, 2009 Author Share Posted August 10, 2009 e-book reader! Thats what I did with my old Toshiba Tecra 8000. Remove all of the unnecessary components (spekeres, keyboard, 56k modem, and what not) Slim down the case, and fold over the screen. Rotate the screen output (some cards can do this matevly, otherwise get a trial of Pivot Pro) Tadaa, a cheep as free e-book reader! Sweet. That's a good idea. What OS or application do you have on it to view ebooks and where d u get your ebooks from? Thanks guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FireTime Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 I use an on screen keyboard and I hacked apart a micro trackball mouse (similar to this one but smaller) and attached it to the upper right corner of the device. I then use x-mouse to remap windows mouse button 4 to F11 (full screen). I used Windows 2000 for two resons, 1. Since my laptop is so old and not very popular it had limited driver support. 2. The Video card is a NeoMagic and again has limited (crappy) Linux drivers so I couldn't rotate the screen. (From what I read only ATI and nVidia can do this natively) I use Foxit reader to view the PDf's because it uses much less processing power when compared to adobe reader. I'll upload a pic of the thing when I find my camera. For books I used Text-Book torrents, but many of you know how that turned out. Just recently there are a few new trackers on the up and up. Another option is to scan your own books. For the the poor student on a budget all you need is a cheap tri-pod, A digital camera, and a large piece of glass (Picture frame) compress the book beneath the glass and take a photo of each pair of pages. The higher the megapixel the better. Also Good lighting will make all the difference. What I'm now working on is building a professional scanner that is designed around the ATIZ Book Drive Pro. All that I'm waiting on now is purchasing 2 Digital cameras that have manual focus. (If anyone has any recommendations that would be sweet) Manual focus is much better for scanning text because the camera can take pictures much faster and auto focus can have a hard time scanning pages with little (quantity, not size) text. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacBook1137 Posted August 10, 2009 Author Share Posted August 10, 2009 I use an on screen keyboard and I hacked apart a micro trackball mouse (similar to this one but smaller) and attached it to the upper right corner of the device. I then use x-mouse to remap windows mouse button 4 to F11 (full screen). I used Windows 2000 for two resons, 1. Since my laptop is so old and not very popular it had limited driver support. 2. The Video card is a NeoMagic and again has limited (crappy) Linux drivers so I couldn't rotate the screen. (From what I read only ATI and nVidia can do this natively) I use Foxit reader to view the PDf's because it uses much less processing power when compared to adobe reader. I'll upload a pic of the thing when I find my camera. For books I used Text-Book torrents, but many of you know how that turned out. Just recently there are a few new trackers on the up and up. Another option is to scan your own books. For the the poor student on a budget all you need is a cheap tri-pod, A digital camera, and a large piece of glass (Picture frame) compress the book beneath the glass and take a photo of each pair of pages. The higher the megapixel the better. Also Good lighting will make all the difference. What I'm now working on is building a professional scanner that is designed around the ATIZ Book Drive Pro. All that I'm waiting on now is purchasing 2 Digital cameras that have manual focus. (If anyone has any recommendations that would be sweet) Manual focus is much better for scanning text because the camera can take pictures much faster and auto focus can have a hard time scanning pages with little (quantity, not size) text. That's awesome and it sounds like a very good idea. Thank you very much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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