Repurposing old laptop - Couple of Questions

So my old XPS 15 was rendered unusable due to a lightly damaged display and a severely damaged chassis due to which I could not move the laptop from its position.

Now that I have purchased a new laptop for my serious work, I am thinking of turning the old one into a home office workstation.

1) The laptop has an HDMI output port. Can I discard the laptop's original display entirely and connect an HDMI monitor as the primary monitor? I mean to say that the display will be physically removed and there will be no cable connected to the motherboard for it.

2) There are only 2 USB ports on the laptop. If I use a USB splitter, can I plug in at least 2 devices (mouse & keyboard) and leave another 2 for pen drives etc? Will there be any problems? Should I get a powered USB splitter or a non-powered one will do? Will a keyboard thus connected be recognized by the BIOS before OS is booted?

3) IMPORTANT ONE: Since the chassis is broken, I am planning to hide the laptop behind/under the desk so as to not make it an eyesore. The main problem with this is, how do I turn on the laptop when the power button is on it? Is there a way I can configure it to boot as soon as power is turned on? (I'll be removing the battery)

4) Since the WLAN antenna is wired into the display casing and since I will be removing that, how else can I use the Wi-Fi without having to leave the antenna dangling?

Thanks for any help.
Here is a pic of my project.. LOL.

 

1) Most laptops won't boot without a display connected. People who have tried to do external-only laptop configurations ("headless") have found out that their laptops usually won't boot.

2) Yes. USB splitters / hubs work just fine. Powered or non-powered should both be fine, as long as you're just doing mouse and keyboard. You really only need powered when you're dealing with high power-draw devices (like USB speakers, charging smartphone, etc).

3) BIOS options. Look for Power Management options, like "Wake on AC" if it's available in your BIOS. If it is, then it should do the trick.

4) You'll need to either leave the antenna danging, tape it to something (like the side of a wall), or just get an external USB WiFi adapter.

 

Thanks for your reply.

#1... What a bummer. Isn't there some way to use the HDMI port as primary?

#3.. There's no such option in my BIOS.

 

@Mr.Claw I suggest selling your laptop by parts and getting a mini-pc (RPi,Odroid) or NUC istead. It is power-efficient, cost-efficient, takes very little space and will save you a lot of trouble.

 

Highly recommend Starlight5's post - especially getting a NUC (i5 or higher need only apply...).

Most trouble free and reliable/dependable systems I've ever used. And with a power efficiency that is to be envied too.

 

I would put together a list of the parts that need replacing and see how much that will cost. Most parts can be had for pretty cheap nowadays on e-bay. The XPS 15 is a nice laptop and you might be better off just fixing what needs to be fixed. If you're not willing to do that, you may be better off selling it for parts. I wouldn't try using it the way it is.

That's what I would do anyway

 

You can set the internal display to disabled and forget about it. Remeber to ignore lid closing signal in the power profile settings as well.

It's easy to physically wire a switch to the power button and put it on top of your table.

 

Can you configure wake over lan (assuming you can hook it up with Ethernet rather than wifi)?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Won't matter. Even if you could do Wake-on-LAN, the laptop probably wouldn't make it past POST without a display attached.

 

You're absolutely right.
7 beeps on POST if I disconnect the display cable, and no apparent way past that even with the HDMI monitor connected.

I need a solution for this.
I was hoping to sell the display unit and get some cash since it's not going to be used on this laptop at all. Any ideas?

 

The chassis is so broken that the screen is separate from the rest of the body, which is why I can't use it.

 

Edit: Never mind, I just read your previous posts.

Plug in a VGA or HDMI display. You should be able to get some output to an external display. This is exactly how I'm using my HP ProBook 6475b laptop motherboard PC. It is literally a bare laptop motherboard, with the necessary parts needed to function and connected to an external display via DisplayPort-to-HDMI. Most motherboards I've used have some sort of autosense or autodetect so that it will pickup a display and will output to the one available even if the internal LVDS or eDP display is not connected. I am able to see the BIOS UEFI and the operating system without issue.

I would recommend Windows 7, or 10 or even a Linux distribution to repurpose this old PC of yours.

Sent from my XT1049 using Tapatalk

 

It doesn't work with my HDMI monitor plugged in if the primary display isn't connected.
I can't find any setting in the BIOS either.

 

Yeah sorry I just saw that after I made my post. This is the first time I've seen this but I guess maybe that's just because its an older Dell PC.

Anyways, does the PC have a VGA port? Can you at least connect the internal display and go in the BIOS to see what options are available there?

Sent from my XT1049 using Tapatalk

 

No worries about that mate. I have it connected this way right now:


But as soon as I disconnect the display, even with the HDMI connected it won't boot up.

 

If you're going to keep the lcd cable, then simply fool the bios into thinking an lcd is present. Use something like this $1 eeprom (+adapter), which saves the trouble of soldering. Hook it up to the correct wires/pins and you're good:



Well ... almost.

Easy caveat first; you do want to verify those pins first (#1, #4, #6 and #7 in the example), so find the spec. sheet of your current panel. Hardest part; that eeprom needs an edid written to it, so either a (cheap) programmer/arduino, if you happen to have one, or hot-swap with the current, working panel and write edid with the hdmi still hooked up as duplicate screen.

Tricky thing is find out which address your edid is on. After all, it's a blank eeprom, hence all '00'; dry-run with the current panel first. That way you have an exact copy of the edid to put on the eeprom as well.

Also, like Mr.Koala mentioned, it's easy to use long wire for the 'On' button. Remove power board from base, clip and splice in long wire between its cable and place it somewhere convenient. Of course, you really only need two wires and the switch itself, so might desolder or even cut it loose from the pcb. That way it minimises the size of the thing to the minimum. Though, if going that far, you might also solder two wires to the two pins on the power button's motherboard connector and place a switch in-between, that way you can sell the power button board and its cable:

 

Thanks a lot for this. It's a bit too advanced for me, but I have a good mind to attempt it and maybe learn something in the process.