Modified a laptop to hold my Nexus 5.

[RainMotorsports]

I bought a new laptop that was already ridiculous and then did something ridiculous to it. Its a Bay Trail Quad Core Celeron which while weak does play Portal. More importantly it was $230 bucks and gets 4 to 6 hours of battery life. But it has no optical drive and the space is there.

So what do I do install one and find a faceplate for this chassis. How about get an OBHD caddy and stick a hard drive in there instead. Even better lets cut up the caddy and put a phone in there instead.

Pic:

While I haven't braved say adapting the sata power to a USB dock yet. I did this for a real reason. I tether on the go with this laptop, thats the entire reason I bought it since my old gaming laptop is still more powerful. I can leave my phone in my pocket but if I walk too far it might disconnect. Normally I leave the phone in my bag to prevent this but Id like to solve both while moving around alot.

So I had 2 options. I could cut the blank that came with the laptop. One divider out of either side of the middle is just the right size for the phone. But finding a spare blank for warranty purposes would be difficult. It just so happens the phone is the same width as a 2.5" hard drive and they make such adapters for laptops.

Pics:


I need to put a screen protector on the phone to really protect it but I am use paper to cover the metal above the bay (meant as a heat sink to the drive). Next step is to smooth this out and cut down a face plate to cover up the excess left and right of the hole.

But a couple pics related to this items normal use:

 

[Rob Williams]

Psst, those thumbnails don't click through to the larger version!

It just so happens the phone is the same width as a 2.5" hard drive and they make such adapters for laptops.

That is priceless, haha. You're fortunate enough to own one that's not too thick (I think I'd have to force this Moto G + Otterbox).

How reliable has the tethering been so far, with the phone shoved into the underbelly?

Excellent idea man, and a fantastic use for what would otherwise be a useless space.

 

[RainMotorsports]

I haven't tested it in the field but getting the same speeds on LTE as always. I did a test here at the house got 18/18 but my download regularly varies between 40 to 15 Mbps. When I am at work I can walk in the walk in freezer and while I lose LTE I still have a great HSPA signal so I think at work Ill probably be fine

 

[RainMotorsports]

Psst, those thumbnails don't click through to the larger version!

PSST I forgot your website does that to thumbnails linked to a url!

No seriously your site turns all images into click to open in new tabs. There is no url on the main image for example but you can click on it and it opens in a new tab.

The URL for the thumbnails is 100% correct, check the hover over and the post text its - http://s1104.photobucket.com/user/R...ll Phone Holder/DSC_2325_zps5898c54b.jpg.html

However when you click on it, it opens the image in a new tab rather than actually following the URL. The image is - http://i1104.photobucket.com/albums...Cell Phone Holder/th_DSC_2323_zpsd7a4c67b.jpg

The difference in the URL is /albums/ versus /user/ and the .html at the end. Clearly you have a plugin thats adding onclick="window.open(this.src)" to each image unless its a template edit which i doubt. Basically the open in new tab javascript is hijacking the link url on the image. You likely added it to allow viewing the fullsize images from articles while scaling them down to fit the article. I used to have a work around for this but i forgot what it was.

 

[Rob Williams]

You're right, it was a plugin causing it. This plugin was used to resize images that are larger than the allowed width, so as to not break the forum template. Now, with that issue fixed, the images click correct, but those that are resized can't be.

Edit: Oh, and shared on Facebook, et al.

 

[RainMotorsports]

Well for resizing images without the plugin is simple CSS. You'd need to figure out a selector for all images within the div that contains the post. I'm on my phone so I can't get the div class and the rest is off my head so take it as an example only.

The selector would be something like .divclassname IMG {} and inside of it you would do a max-width and then probably set height to auto so that the resize keeps aspect ratio. Pretty common these days maybe not so much when VB 3.x was fresh but IE6 is dead now so no worries.

As far as writing your plugin to allow click to resize or click to open on non linked images without hijacking linked images is possible. But off the top of my head...

 

[Rob Williams]

I appreciate the help, but at this point I can't be bothered with fiddling with the forums too much. I'd almost like to move off of vBulletin at some point, because its current options don't interest me, and I think it'd just be better to go with an open-source solution, like phpBB (especially given how often the forums are used). This is something to sit on the back-burner for the time-being, though.

 

[Optix]

Cool idea. It makes me want to mod my laptop, but then I remember that the higher ups would probably shit themselves when I tear apart a company asset.

 

[Rob Williams]

Cool idea. It makes me want to mod my laptop, but then I remember that the higher ups would probably shit themselves when I tear apart a company asset.

Haha. Yes, I couldn't imagine that going down too well.