I was recently given an old laptop that had been retired by my company. Despite no longer being needed for work, it still had quite capable hardware, so I decided to repurpose it as a compact, general-purpose home server rather than let it go unused.

Because the server will remain plugged in, I removed the battery to reduce unnecessary heat and avoid leaving an ageing battery permanently charging. I also removed the display, which improved airflow, made the machine easier to fit into tight spaces, and left the power button accessible without needing to open and close a lid. I saved the screen so it can be reused in a future project.

The most delicate part of the conversion was preserving Wi-Fi connectivity. The laptop’s antenna was mounted inside the display bezel, so removing the screen also meant carefully extracting the antenna and remounting it onto the laptop body. This allowed me to keep the built-in wireless hardware while still reducing the machine to a much smaller headless form.

The timelapse shows the refurbishment process and the laptop booting into Batocera, a retro game emulation operating system that I initially installed on the machine. I have since removed Batocera and configured the laptop to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows, giving me flexibility for future projects that may depend on either operating system.

The finished machine now sits neatly in my television stand, ready for new workloads. I am particularly interested in seeing how well its relatively capable hardware can run local LLMs, but for now I am glad to have turned a retired laptop into a useful and adaptable home server.