My old work had a laptop with a smashed screen operating as the fax relay.

You could plug a monitor into it and use it as an actual machine since it's probably faster than my P43Ghz/1GB RAM desktop.

When you say busted do mean cracked?

if not and it boots but just no video to the LCD, it's likely an easy repair of either the LCD backlight (not hard to replace at all) or the inverter died. It would not cost much to buy both parts. I would hook it up to an external monitor if you have one. If you get video you know the video card is good. I would then hunt up a supplier for your systems backlight (CCFL) and order TWO (in case you break one installing it...) they should be pretty inexpensive. And also find a new inverter board for that LCD on that laptop.

And heck make it a media server or something. I use an old PIII Dell Inspiron 5000 as a media server on my home network. It chokes on a some video's now and then but still works for the most part. I gave up cable/satellite about 5 years ago now and just watch everything online. I just send the video to the TV. It's not HD or anything of course but it works for me.

And I stream audio to my stereo too...works well.

Park it next to a good stereo and stream your CD collection, located on some desktop over your network to it.

Use it as a compute server for SETI@Home or folding@home.

Park it above a ceiling tile, plug in a web cam and use it for home security, using your network to copy off site. One guy got a conviction by showing video of the thief stealing the computer!

Fax server / answering machine.

Heck, use it for transcoding video.