You can certainly get adapters to put laptop drives in desktops, but I'm not sure about the other way. Search ebay for: '2.5" usb' How new is the laptop??? Check to see if the BIOS supports booting from USB drives and if it does then get a 3.5" drive external USB drive cage cost around 10 GBP. Or just a big USB flash drive. Search ebay for: '3.5" usb' It should also have a monitor port on the back so simply use an external old 15" with can be got quite cheap these days. This is exactly what I have in my garage, an old laptop with no screen, a 15" monitor on a swing arm, a 1Gb hard disk to boot from and then a wireless PCMCIA network card to store all the data (inc MP3 etc) on the disk in my server upstairs. Now I can take serial data from my little PIC project in my car and even program updates... Good luck Kev/. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roberts II, Charles K." To: Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 9:38 PM Subject: [EE:] Uses for a broken laptop Charles K Roberts II ORNL-SNS Project 701 Scarboro Road Oak Ridge, TN 37830 865 576 5036 Hello all I recently purchased an old P3 Sony Viao at auction. It was working but the screen was broken on it and due to its age the company that owned it sold it. They also removed the hard drive. Is there any way I could use a 3.5 in HD in it and use it as a desktop or maybe as an in car PC? And if I did it in car what would be a good source for a screen? -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu