Recycling Parts From Dead Motherboards

An anonymous reader writes "I had this dead motherboard on my hands and I wanted to see what would happen if I cut out the clock generator and used it stand-alone. So I removed the Winbond chip from the motherboard (I cut out the section of PCB with a hacksaw), powered it up and it was still working. Add a display, a microcontroller and two switches, and I got a cheap frequency generator. Here's my progress so far. Be kind to my Web skills, I'm really just a hardware monkey. It's not completed yet, but I just wanted to get the idea out there."

Comments

Old Dreamcast (slight OT)

[Renraku]

I had this Dreamcast that stopped working a long time ago. Part of me wanted to salvage, and part of me wanted to punish. This was after weeks of frustration trying to repair it myself. So I went to a friend's house, plugged it in, and popped a music CD into it. Rather than salvaging parts, I tortured it. I shorted out parts and capacitors directly to sensitive chips. I randomly ripped board components out. All the time it kept playing that CD until the motor itself burnt out from 120vAC directly to its windings. My point is, maybe its funner to destroy than it is to try to remove everything with such caution. Or maybe I'm just a sick and twisted man that enjoyed preforming fatal brain surgery upon a faulty Dreamcast