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I recently had the good fortune to find most of a pi-top that was being given away at the Cambridge Computer Museum. What you see in this picture is the entirety of what I picked up. (I previously bought a Pi 3B+ and two 0Ws, and intend to use the 3B+).

I think I’m only missing the power supply, and possibly a battery (details on the possibly of a battery seem ambiguous at first glance, but there is something on that circuit board that looks like a battery should be connected to it). Three related questions:

  • What power supply do I need?
  • Is it possible to connect an internal battery and if so, how?
  • Is there anything else I need that I’m unaware of?

A salvaged pi-top missing various components

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Even without a battery, you should be able to power the pi-top, from the DC jack on the left of the image, with an 18V DC power supply.

The circuit board you have there is a pi-top Hub mk1. It is intended to be powered by an ~18V battery connected on the protruding lower left and found under the keyboard. There is a header on the bottom side, to the right, where you could also power the device.

The pinout diagram attached shows that the header underneath takes 12-18V in pin1(lower right) and GND on pin5 (lower third-right). https://static.pi-top.com/documents/pi-topHUB_Pinout.png https://static.pi-top.com/documents/pi-topHUB_Pinout.png

There is additional information on this board here: https://github.com/pi-top/pi-topHUB-v1

Other than that, can't see that anything is missing other than the pi. There is an instruction manual with parts and construction information here: https://static.pi-top.com/documents/pi-top/Original_pi-top_Instruction_Manual.pdf

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  • The power supply I ordered has arrived, and as I was setting it up, I realised I have one outstanding question: which polarity should I use? Inside +18 V or outside +18 V? I can't seem to find that information in those links, nor can I read the circuit board to find the answer, but I'm sure this information must exist somewhere.
    – BenRW
    Apr 14, 2019 at 20:16

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