Making Stuff Out Of Broken Computer Equipment?

Class Act Dynamo writes "Recently, my keyboard stopped working, so I bought a new one (nice cordless number, really excellent). I was about to throw the old keyboard out when I thought it would be interesting to take all the keys out of it and turn them into refrigerator magnets in order to have a simple 'megnetic poetry' type of thing going. As the fumes from the industrial strength glue went to my head during this project, I began to wonder what other types of craft-type projects people had undertaken with their unusable old perpherals and such. Then I began to wonder why there was a purple octopus on my couch. I decided to ask slashdot readers the first of these questions."

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Mame Control Panel

[wackysootroom]

You can wire up a joystick and a few buttons to be used to interface an old keyboard into a MAME Machine's arcade control panel.

Re:Hmmm

[Raptor CK]

The trick is to get the chip with the socket.

You unseat the chip, weave a bent paperclip around the pins, and reseat the chip. providing a loop for a key ring without excessive damage or hassle.

I had a 486 keychain thanks to this method for quite some time. It works even better if you're willing to epoxy the whole thing together, but that's not as much fun for some reason.

Re:Why is there a purple octopus on your couch?

[Colonel Cholling]

Steven Pinker argues for "octopuses": "The -us in octopus is not a Latin noun ending that switches to -i in the plural, but the Greek pous (foot). The etymologically defensible octopodes is not an improvement." (Steven Pinker, Words And Rules: The Ingredients of Language, 55.)

Re:Hard drive magnets a sore subject. Literally...

[MichaelCox_au]

The real danger with strong neodymium magnets is that they are both brittle and extremely magnetic--as a result if you accidently let two of them stick together, they can sometimes attract with such force that they shatter and send thousands of poisonous shards out at high speed. Hence the reason why you should always wear hand and eye protection when handling them. You should also avoid handling them if their protective coatings are broken as the rare-earth metals are extremely toxic and easily absorbed via mucus membranes.