MXM: Powerful, Misused, Hackable

Today, we’ll look into yet another standard in the embedded space: MXM. It stands for “Mobile PCI Express Module”, and is basically intended as a GPU interface for laptops with PC…

Pinkpad, A DIY Laptop You Must Print In Pink

Looking to build a laptop all on your own? Check out the Pinkpad, a DIY laptop project that as if appeared out of nowhere, gives you a based on an off-the-shelf Dell motherboard. This build project…

Using A Framework Mainboard For A Custom Gaming Handheld

Building your own handheld gaming console has been a popular project for many years, but recently it has become significantly easier to get a lot of power into a small package. Like many others, [T…

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Turned USB Device Through Relentless Digging

In what’s perhaps one of the most impressive laptop reverse engineering posts in recent memory, [Andrey Konovalov] brings us an incredibly detailed story of how he’s discovered and succ…

Deep Dive Into A Prison Laptop

The phenomenon of prison electronics is by now relatively well-documented, with striking transparent radios, televisions, and kin easy to recognize. Yet what about prison laptops? As it turns out, …

Revive A Sony Vaio P-Series With KiCad’s Background Bitmaps

You might remember that KiCad 7 came out this February, with a multitude of wonderful features. One of them was particularly exciting to see, and the KiCad newsletter even had an animated GIF to pr…

Beating Apple’s Secret Lid Angle Sensor Calibration With Custom Tool

Among the changes made by Apple to its laptops over the years, the transition from a Hall sensor-based sleep sensor to an angle sensor that determines when the lid is closed is a decidedly unpopula…

Reverse Engineering A Classic ThinkPad Battery

The ThinkPad 701 is an iconic laptop series from the mid-90s and is still highly sought after today because of its famous butterfly keybaord. The laptop itself is tiny even by the standards of the …

The ThinkPad You All Wish You Had, With A Brain That’s Not Ancient

An IBM (or, later, Lenovo) ThinkPad is a popular choice in our community. They’re prized for their rugged design, longevity, and good software support. Over the many years that the line has b…

E-Bike Battery Tapped For Off-Grid Laptop Power

If you’ve travelling via bike, you’ll know there’s a certain advantage to packing light. But what if you need to take your beefy desktop-replacement laptop with you on one of thes…

A Miniature MNT For Every Pocket

Last time Hackaday went hands on with a product from German company MNT, it was the Reform laptop; a full size computer with a full feature set and fully open source design. Now they’re back with t…

New Expansion Module Brings Standard Slots To Ancient Laptop

Upgrading and repairing vintage laptops is often a challenge — even if their basic hardware is compatible with ordinary PCs, they often use nonstandard components and connectors due to space …

Laptop Motherboard? Let’s Boot And Tinker

Last time, I’ve shared my experience on why you might want to consider a laptop motherboard for a project of yours, and noted some things you might want to keep in mind if buying one for a pr…

Defender Arcade Rebuilt To Settle A Childhood Memory

[Jason Winfield] had a nemesis: the Defender arcade machine. Having put quite a number of coins into one during his childhood, he’s since found himself as a seasoned maker, and decided to hol…

Laptop Motherboard? No, X86 Single-Board Computer!

Sometimes a Raspberry Pi will not cut it – especially nowadays, when the prices are high and the in-stock amounts are low. But if you look in your closet, you might find a decently-specced la…

Hack Lets Intel MacBook Run Without A Battery

A long time ago, a laptop was a basic thing, and you could pretty much run one just by hooking up a power supply to the battery contacts. A modern MacBook is altogether fussier. However, when [Chri…

Building An All-in-One Desktop Out Of Framework Parts

The Framework laptop prides itself on having reusable parts, and hackers all around routinely challenge the claims by building projects reusing them. Yet again, [whatthefilament] puts the Framework…

M.2 For Hackers – Cards

Last time, I’ve explained everything you could want to know if you wanted to put an M.2 socket onto your board. Today, let’s build M.2 cards! There’s a myriad of M.2 sockets out t…

M.2 For Hackers – Connectors

In the first M.2 article, I’ve described real-world types and usecases of M.2 devices, so that you don’t get confused when dealing with various cards and ports available out there. I&#8…

Future Brings CPU Modules, And The Future Is Now

Modularity is a fun topic for us. There’s something satisfying about seeing a complex system split into parts and these parts made replaceable. We often want some parts of our devices swapped…