Here’s how I brought this broken classic into the 21st century, into a modern powerhouse while keeping its vintage charm as much as possible. Obviously some concessions had to be made in order cram a full ITX build into the old body. This retrofit involved stripping the old internals and inserting a AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and mini ITX motherboard paired with an AMD RX580 GPU. Now you are probably wonder why these specs. Well I was upgrading, so I had these parts and decided to give them a new home. The best part of this build is its upgradability now that it complies with the mini ITX standard. Sometimes a laptop just isn't a great solution and this where the luggable really shines. The contrast knob now controls the internal speaker that are mounted behind the LCD panel. I wanted a system that was basically a SteamDeck but not a SteamDeck, can run latest modern Linux and play games. Also faithfully recreate the look of the original plasma display.
Details
- Machine had a dead Plasma display
- Installed a Mini ITX bracket for the motherboard
- Installed a vertical PCI-E bracket for the GPU
- Screen shell was modified to hold a larger display.
Screen is tricky because as you can see I actually widened the original display cavity, I would suggest either doing that or finding a screen that fits, as for the screen I used a x220 thinkpad display if I recall correctly, although I am sure you can probably find something better.
Screen is tricky because as you can see I actually widened the original display cavity, I would suggest either doing that or finding a screen that fits, as for the screen I used a x220 thinkpad display if I recall correctly, although I am sure you can probably find something better.