A while ago a came across an old Compaq LTE 286 laptop. When they were first released around 1989, these PCs were somewhat groundbreaking because they were the first to be compact enough to resemble the “notebook” form factor that we take for granted today. Unfortunately this particular unit was pretty much beyond repair, and my attempts to restore it to a functional state were fruitless.

However, I realized that I could do the next best thing: remove the guts of the laptop and replace it with a Raspberry Pi! Who needs a “modern” Raspberry Pi-powered computer, when we can put one in a 30-year-old case? That’s right, if we look inside, that’s no ordinary Compaq LTE:

Let’s walk through all the components we see in the above image:

1. The original display of the Compaq LTE was 9 inches in size diagonally, and had an unusual aspect ratio of 2:1. The closest modern replacement I could find is a 9-inch TFT display, ordered from AliExpress for $30, which has an aspect ratio of 16:9. This means I had to cut away some of the plastic to accommodate the extra vertical real estate of the new screen, but I don’t think this impacts the aesthetic too much.
2. My main goal