If you haven't finished this project yet, or for anybody else, I'll post an idea, and the story behind it. (Wall of text-galore, sorry in advance).

I have an old laptop that I barely can use. The charging-socket is ruined more or less, the screen is broken and drops in and out (and gives me some nice glitch-esque moments), and I can't really use it for anything. I have a newer laptop for a reason :P

The other day now, I decided to hook it up and save everything worth saving, the only thing that's stopped me from throwing it out for the last year or so. After that, I figured I would later on take out the chips and use them for some sort of decoration, either paint on them or put them together with some plants, etc. That whole jazz.
But, what to do with the casing?

Why, a MIDI-controller, of course!
An old, ruined laptop hooked up to another laptop, would seem rather cool live, wouldn't it? I guess many people would at first think I'm just using two laptops, but people who don't know/care about controllers wouldn't probably be any more or less impressed anyway :P

I decided to do a quick Google-search, and the first result was this thread. Though I don't use these forums too often, I could only say; DJTT forums, how I love thee!

Before that though, and this is what could be relevant to others here, I unplugged my trusty Novation Launchpad (I'm a Live-user mind you, I don't know how fond Traktor-, Serato-, etc-users are of the Launchpad) and made som measurments. It fits almost perfectly, apart from leaving a large, free space on one side (wide laptop).

In short, and the important part of this post:
So my plan is quite easy; I'll order another Launchpad (they're cheap, and the more the merrier), remove the guts of the laptop, place the Launchpad inside, and either turn the laptop-screen into a secondary monitor (could be great for viewing effects), or just put pretty pictures on it.

Still not sure what I'll do about the free space though. Either another, really small controller, or nothing. I was thinking about building a controller for it (so I could use the rest of the space optimally), but my programming-skills aren't much to brag about, nor is my interest in it unfortunately, and I'm just looking for another cheap, fun thing to do.

I'll post an update or something if I end up turning this into more than just big talk.