Disassembly

The original plan was to just remove the screen and extend the cable from the LCD to the main board keeping the bulk of the laptop intact. Scratch that idea there was no way of lengthening the thin foil cable running to the screen onto plan B.

Can i just say pulling this Laptop out of its case was fun...NOT!... there was a million screws, hidden screws, clips you name it, i feel for the poor Dell techs who used to work on these things! Lucky for me i didn't have to put it back together again

Now with everything apart with just the mainboard and the screen connected it was time to test if it still worked and yep it still boots up.

I was hoping to make the frame as thin as possible but no matter how i moved things about the best layout was one on top of the other.

Now i could have made the frame myself, but i thought i would stick my head into a little picture framers just down the rd, support the local community and all that.

What an ordeal that turned out to be! After explaining for 30 mins what i was after (nothing but a normal picture frame) and drawing a picture giving all the measurements etc i was still not hopeful that she understood.

I was also surprised that it would take at least a week to make! It wasn't like the customers were queuing up behind me?!?! Anyway i was to exhausted to go else where just in case i needed to explain all over again

1 week later no phone call, 2 weeks later no phone, approaching week 3 i rang to find out what was going on. i was informed that it was nearly ready and that i could come in that afternoon. That afternoon i went in and guess what? Yep! It was wrong! The frame was made to fit the screen exactly no 2 inch dark blue border border like i had asked for. I politely informed her i would be in for the final time at 10am the following morning to pick up the frame i had ordered 3 weeks prior.

First off was to mount the screen, the cut out was reasonably close as i gave the picture framer the plastic screen surround bezel to use as a template. I drew a few evenly spaced guidelines on the rear to assist in lining up the screen. Once in place i tacked it there with hot melt in all 4 corners just in case it needed to be moved.

I wasn't exactly certain how i would attach everything i came prepared with hot melt and double sided tape, in the end only hot melt was used as double sided tape added additional unwanted thickness. When i was happy with the alignment of the screen i used copious amounts of the stuff everywhere, i used about 5 large sticks of hot melt in all, it looks messy but it will fall off if you don't go to town with the glue.

Placing the mainboard on top i also just tacked this in place with a few dollops of hot melt until the screen alignment was confirmed.

I chose not to add anything but the minimum, no cd, battery floppy drive etc wanting to keep the overall weight down you will be surprised how heavy it is once completed. I did add a PCMCIA network card to it as all my photos are on another PC, the original plan was to use wireless, but it really did give the wireless network a hammering dragging each 3mb photo and displaying every 6 seconds

Being an old PC the heat created by the CPU isn't really an issue, the cooling fan stuck out to far mounted vertically, so i mounted it on an angle then filled the gaps with cardboard and you guessed it more hot melt. The fan only comes on when required and have only heard it come on once so far.

With everything in place i powered it on to check that it still worked and the screen was aligned correctly in the frame. What i did notice was when i lay it flat on its back that the screen turned off, after much head scratching i realised why.... The switch to hibernate/suspend when the lid is normally closed was being depressed. I cut the plastic part that stuck out of the switch off with a pair of scissors so it was flush with the switch.

I de-soldered the power switch and added a wire to it and then hot melted it the bottom of the frame, easier than trying to reach behind and turn it on or off.

For operating system i am running a base install of Windows 2000 as it has a smaller foot print than XP. i am using gPhotoShow as the picture viewing software as its free, can be used as a screen saver or by adding it to the start-up routine. I did have some additional software that used power management to turn the picture frame on and off at certain times of day, but i have since lost this and cant find it again The only additional software i have installed is Ultra VNC as the DFP doesn't have a keyboard or mouse attached it enables me to remote control the DFP from another PC.

The finished product i reckon is pretty cool and to be honest doesn't take very long, i chose a wall to hang it that has a hall cupboard behind making it easy to drop the power and network cables through.

I must admit that it is a little distracting .... you find that as you are wandering past you stop to look what pictures next and find yourself standing in front of it for more than a few minutes.

Total cost was $70 for the frame and a few sticks of hot melt and all up with messing about it took me about a day, if i was to do it again i reckon i could have it done from start to finish in about 2-3 hours.

The DFP randomly displays approx 13,000 photos with 1 photo every 6 seconds so it takes approx 21 hours to completely cycle all my pictures

When i initially placed the LCD screen in the frame and turned it on i found that the screen display was actually offset and i ended up with a 2mm black strip down the left hand side, so i needed to remove it and shunt it over slightly. Unfortunately i hadn't just tacked it in place like i now recommend so it took 30 mins to remove the hot melt to move the screen.

When i initially measured the depth of the frame when i ordered it i had 5mm of clearance behind, for what ever reason when i picked it up and started assembling i found that the frame was 5mm to small. This didn't turn out to be an issue it sits 5mm off the wall but looks fine.

After assembling and started testing the DFP it froze, power cycled it and heard the awful sound of the hard disks heads going "ka-chunk, ka-chunk" and "No operating System found" being displayed on the screen.

The Drive had chosen then to give up the ghost after 6 years! The main difficulty was of course it was now if the frame i had no floppy drive or CD in it. A rumage through my junk box found an old 6GB drive which i copied the Windows 2000 install files to before placing it back in the DFP for a reinstall.

I initially cover the back of the LCD screen with clear contact (the stuff you cover school books with) the thinking at the time was just in case i short circuited the main board accidentally on the back of the screen.

What happened though was the main board glued onto the contact just pulled the contact off the back of the screen due to its weight.

I was worried that the heat from the hot melt might damage the LCD screen when gluing the mainboard onto it, so initially i was sparing with the hot melt, 30 mins later the mainboard fell off. So the next time i went to town with the hot melt!