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Computer Hardware That Can Pull Double-Duty?
MicklePickle asks: "It's been raining very heavily here in Sydney Oz, and as usual when we, (the SysAdmins), come in to work we take off our very wet shoes and socks and place them on one of the two hefty UPSs to dry out. They dry out very quickly on the hot fan. We even have a couple of 'toast racks', (a metal frame for housing an HP web console), to lay the shoes and socks out on. Does anyone else make use of computer hardware in a manner for which it was not intended?"
I actually found it quite amusing. Unfortunately, none of my equipment can be used in that way.
TechQuarium is a great site for Mac Aquariums and so on.
I doubt Alan Turing had pr0n in mind :-)
Worst. Implementation. Ever.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
The one I used as a seat, anyway.
Pretty bad ergonomics for the price, but it atleast had castors.
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.-John von Neumann
I'm sure that when all our bosses bought us these computers, they weren't intending for us to post comments to Slashdot all day long, but that is exactly what a lot of us are using them for.
300w ATX is all the computer needs... But I needed 400 for my cigarette lighter mod.
Then again, do any of us use computers for what their original purpose was? I do not think Alan Turing had surfing for pr0n in mind when he thought of logic gates.
And buying Alpha EV67's just to bust seti work units is pretty weird. 3.5 years worth of seti work has been done by EV67s, and they were all done by the same person over the last 2.5 years, so someone bought 2 EV67s @ $22,000 a piece minimum primarily to crunch Seti. Could it have been Compaq themselves? Perhaps - But I expect they could hardly afford it.
Are computers for games? Sure. Games are an 8 billion dollar a year industry. They drive users to seek greater performance machines. Moores law would probably have failed years ago if all we ever needed was a good office suite.
Do I use my 12 by p166 cluster to heat my house? yes. Is there any other reason to have 12 p166s? I never run it in the summer so the primary reason to run it must be for heat. If I was actually using it for production, I would certainly have faster/more machines.
Do I leave the machine in my room while I'm sleeping? No, but I like the white noise it's fans generate to keep me from waking up for every bump in the night.
Do I really need a PC based PBX? no, but it is nice to have a convoluted voicemail script that includes "If you are a telemarketer or if you are placing an unsolicited telephone call, you MUST press 4"
Has anyone else taken apart an old ps2 mouse and hung a piece of paper from one of the rollers to create a clap on monitor (the slightest breeze or moderately loud sound turns my monitor on... I use a usb mouse for actual work).
Can you all reboot your stupid dsl router through power over Ethernet/DC relay?
Anyone else buy 100' of that thick orange cable at home depot with the 2 fibers, 4 CAT5e and a Cable TV coax then use the fiber with a cheap roto rooter sewer pipe inspection camera to spy on other rooms?...
OK, I'm a little weird... but at least I have dead man switched degaussing rings under all my boxes so when the black helicopters come for me, all the incriminating evidence will be erased.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Dirk
I have a Mac SE holding open my office door at work.
At the cafeteria they sell chelsea buns and give you free butter, but the butter comes in little tubs and its rock hard. I sit the tub on the back of my monitor for ten minutes and it's nice and soft.
I also have a friend who reckons the back of a monitor is great for drying weed.
I had a 40Mb hard disk that I ran with it's lid off for about 3 days before it crashed beyond use...
Then that became my door stop - just jam it in the hinge end of the door... ahh student days ;)
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
I didn't have enough money for a good computer table. But having enough "spare" machines I stacked them on their sides, leveled them out with a phone book and put an old door on top. Now my cluster is also my desk. If I could just move my legs with out causing the the power to go out in the neighborhood.
-- Tim
TKrabec Pahh
A.K.A. CD-ROM drive. Yet another innovative use of technology by clueless users.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
Before buying my house, I lived in several small apartments. I (and when I would have them) and my roommates usually left the computers on 24/7. This also included usage of several large monitors (21") SO - as long as the windows were kept closed and the drafts from opening and closing outside doors were kept to a minimum - we could heat the room w/ no need for another heat source. It worked rather well and kept expenses down during the cold massachusetts months.
It is just the opposite in a server room though - you end up paying more for venting and air conditioning in order to keep things cool.
works great
also as an excuse to stay home :
"the server's gone down at work and I'm on call"
I also use a few mylar splitters and run a 12v lights from the PSU!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I had a friend who used to threaten to use his overclocked CPU without the fan to boil his coffee in the morning.
I had another friend who bought a VAX at one of the MIT Flea Markets and used it as a coffee table.
I had a third friend what used to drop monitors from a second story window and record the sound of impact and use it in techno songs. When the monitor hits the ground it makes this funky metallic implosion sound.
Back when I was in college, our computer science lab had these DEC monitors that used to get super hot--hot enough to lightly toast Pop Tarts from the vending machine down the hall.
I'm sure there are other instances--but can't think of them off the top of my head. Most of these (except the monitor dropping one) involve the immense heat generated by some hardware and the rest involve the shape of the hardware. I'd be interested to see any alternate uses that don't involve heat/shape.
We had an old Mac running a clock program (full screen) as our wall clock.
We had removed (and subsequently lost) the keyboard and mouse, and it ran quite happily doing nothing else for about 6 month when it mysteriously crashed. Without the keyboard there wasn`t much we could do about it.
CJC
Can't forget these:
http://home.planet.nl/~mourits/koelkast/
The Silicon Graphics Refrigerator Project
(or: How To Turn a $175.000 High-End SGI Challenge DM Server into a Fridge)
And thats never a good thing.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
SGI Indigo Esspresso
VAXbar
SGI Challege Fridge
I don't like my bagels toasted. But set em on the back of a monitor for 10 minutes and they get nice n warm. =)
"Server - Australian for sock dryer"
I'm sorry, I had to.
my sig is so witty and fun - it tickles almost everyone who reads it.
I mean, when I think 'double duty', I think of it doing two things at once. And well, in the case of a computer, it's heavy, it generates heat, and it may be strong enough to prop something up.
So in that case, I'd have to say that I've used a Wang before to keep pizza warm in the machine room (it was just the right size on top for a large pizza, and conveniently table height).
I've seen towers used as stools, older generation systems (Honeywell, Wang, etc), used as tables, but in those cases, they're normally not still running, or they're running next to nothing, so they might as well not be doing their primary job.
Then we get to what I think of as 'recycling' more than 'double duty', which normally involves keeping the system from being able to do its primary function because it's doing something else. Fishtanks, tables, shelves (IBM 7171 terminal server; Wang) and beer fridges all seem to be fairly common.
(Please note -- there's more than one set of pictures, and they're still a year old...the house may be messy, but it's no where near where it used to be, now that my brother took most of his stuff to college, and isn't using my place for storage. I don't have any recent pictures, so the Honeywell's not there yet, and the reel-to-reel tape drive's buried in crap in the pictures I have)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
My laptop PS is nice and warm and will warm my feet when it's cold in the house. Plug in and enjoy!
My cat just loves it when I keep my laptop connected to the grid (and closed) so that she can sleep on it...seems to be perfectly warm.
When the battery is loaded, she just invades
the briefcase if it is not perfectly closed !
Hair haven't provoked any malfunction yet
(there was a story recently about how much
abuse a laptop could stand, don't know if cat hair
were mentioned).
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Hrm, well, I do seem to recall reading on Usenet more than once that the SGI Origin 2000 double stacks had a little space between the two nodes and that said space got pretty toasty when the cabinet was closed... Of course, this wouldn't be the first time that SGI hardware was abused in some form or fashion...
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I used to work at a company that made extensive use of ye olde RS/6000 boxes (AIX! Yay! Not). Now these things were pretty big (in recent terms) and allowed for almost infinite expansion in terms of storage. IBM, being a helpful lot, made sure that they came with all the fans you needed, for full expansion, pre-installed.
So each Friday we bought some six-packs of beer and put it in the (empty) drive bays. Came out wonderfully chilled at the end of the workday.
No refrigerator modding required.
My spoon is too big.
I'd love to use computing power to heat my home, like run a rack of servers offering webservices and charge just enough to cover hardware and connection charges, then my profit would be free heat.
I have no idea how much computing power it would take to heat a 2100 squarefoot home though.
any idea how many BTU's (heat energy is put out by an average processor?
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
I run Linux on my PC instead of Windows !!!
I've hauled my Compaq Armada V300 (Happily running Linux) around in my backbach for 5 months, works fine, but the LCD has some scratches from the trackpad from not having padding in the middle.
I've found that, miracle of miracles, the retractable coffee-cup holder can read CD's. I'm amazed at this innovative use of computer hardware.
...I've found that the cupholder that came with my PC did a good job of playing CDs too. Brilliant!
I've found my computer monitor great for drying a wet bike helmet, or even "pre-heating" it for cold early morning commutes. There's nothing like putting on a slightly toasty helmet and then heading out when it's still dark. I've also used my monitor to dry out gloves, but there you have to be careful that they're not too wet and don't block too many of the vents of the monitor!
Other people I know have used their monitors for drying fruit (for ornamental purposes). It's amazing how different an orange will look after sitting on top of a monitor for several months!
It's only software!
I actually use a pair of old rackmount eight inch disk drives instead of sandbags to give my rear wheel drive car traction in the winter. That is how you upgrade a 1983 RX-7.
Back when Cryix had 6x86 200 Mhz ceramic type processors. I had a random thought of mounting it to the top of the cover (underside). So I would have a spot to keep my coffie warm. Extending the socket would have been a minor problem tho.
...we take off our very wet shoes and socks and place them on one of the two hefty UPSs to dry out.
"Excuse Calendar" *flip-flip*: Ah, yes. The UPSes seem to have suffered from electro-chemical ionisation of a dihydrogen-monoxide current pulse across the positive-negative poles. Please hold this cable in your teeth, so we can test humistatic differential levels between black and red.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
"Cigarette" lighter, indeed. Does this machine run Smokedot? hehehe
The Linux Gazette has a monthly part about The Foolish Things We Do With Our Computers. Recently they've been getting far less mail to this area.