Trying to bring an age old Inspiron 1520 to life.

Hi all,

A newbie to the forum, so please bear with me. I have an Inspiron 1520 (i know its not even close to the best of the lines in Dell). Its a non-webcam version, which was bought in 2007. Been using it eversince. About a year ago, one of the kids tried to use brute force to close the lid of my laptop and the hinge cover broker and it got stuck. Had to do a bit of DIY and removed the right hinge which was stuck.One of the speakers died out, cpu fan not rotating and the dvd rw wont write dvds Now am browsing online options to see if i can breathe a fresh life into this laptop. I need help with a few questions before i start running around shopping the odd bits and pieces

1) Can a webcam module be added to this non-webcam version? ( tried googling it but only found the one on 1525)

2) Best place to get these replacement parts like front bezel, rear cover, webcam module & cable(if compatible), speaker unit, cpu fan & dvd drive.

3) If someone has done this extreme makeover yet? if so plz give us some screenshots and instruction.

I might not a newbie of ripping things apart, but i am horrendous at putting them back together

Really appreciate any and all the help

Cheers!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hi, welcome to the forum!

I have an 1520 collecting dust, it could be parted out. It is 2007 version with T7100 and 1440x900 screen, brand new hinges and cooling assembly (were changed by Dell in warranty), and working dvd-rw drive. The GPU, a GF8600M GT of this unit is however toast.

If you want I can sell you the whole unit for parting out. PM me if you are interested.

 

To be honest.........That's an old and fairly cheap laptop to begin with, it's likely going to be FAR more cost efficient to just purchase a new machine. There should be some deals coming up on black Friday, i would bet on seeing some i5 & A8 laptops hovering around $300 that would run circles around your current machine.

(FYI, the older a machine gets the more expensive cosmetic parts often become)

**EDIT: Maybe you lucked out with the poster above me, but definitely give some thought to this

 

Thanks for the quick reply lot.

Razor2 will pm you.

Vahlen : I totally agree with the fact about parts being expensive for out of production lines. But i have a thing for this laptop and don't wanna see it go and get rusted Even if i get a new machine which i would be in the near future, i still wanna keep this notebook running as a spare machine. Cant wait for the black Friday , but the only problem is with shipping the stuff to India. It almost costs the earth to get them from US to here and other taxes on top of that. Phewwwwww
I checked with parts people and found all the parts necessary for 100 dollars and the shipping added to that rounded to 170 dollars. Jeezzz shipping hurts.

 

ebay is a good source for mechanical and cosmetic bits. Also PC parts people ( Dell Laptop Parts | Dell Parts | Dell Laptop Repair | Dell Repair) in Austin will probably have what you want. I agree with other posters about the economics of doing this, but that's your call. From your description of the problems, it sounds like the forced closure did a fair amount of damage that might mean the motherboard is also toast.

Regarding the webcam, the easiest way is to replace the whole LCD housing for one that includes the webcam and just swap the LCD from on to the other. The housing you currently have will most likely have a flex for the webcam module, but the front bezel will be different. Also look of out CCFL vs. LED backlight LCD housings, they are normally different.

Finally be aware that these machines are all on borrowed time due to the NVIDIA graphics problems. Yours will fail, probably about a week after you get it all going again (murphy at work).

Or buy a whole machine to part out for what you need:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Inspir...28497725?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item3ccc78aa3d

- Tim

 

Cheers Tim,

NVIDIA graphics aint gonna be a problem coz my machine is on intel graphics (strange somehow).

I dont understand the ccfl vs led .. .will have to do a bit of research on it ..

sorry for the late reply. Razor2 not getting an option to PM you. Please PM me.

Cheers