The hard drive cover appears to have two metal strips with screw holes and if so, then that is how a drive is attached, Dell have used that design on several laptops.
Old Dells never die they just sometimes need a few cheap parts. I have an XPS L521X still going which is around the same age as this I think with the 3rd gen i7, still has the best 1080P display I've ever seen. Replaced the keyboard and it made it feel like a new machine again :) The USB ports in this era all seemed to break in the same way, the centre plastic breaks in them. They're not so difficult to replace if you can solder since that's a USB 2.0 port on the side, not many pins. The 3.0 ones are a little more tricky.
The hard drive cover appears to have two metal strips with screw holes and if so, then that is how a drive is attached, Dell have used that design on several laptops.
Old Dells never die they just sometimes need a few cheap parts.
I have an XPS L521X still going which is around the same age as this I think with the 3rd gen i7, still has the best 1080P display I've ever seen. Replaced the keyboard and it made it feel like a new machine again :)
The USB ports in this era all seemed to break in the same way, the centre plastic breaks in them. They're not so difficult to replace if you can solder since that's a USB 2.0 port on the side, not many pins. The 3.0 ones are a little more tricky.
Is this the channel mental outlaw mentioned about in the libre podcast?