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."

Comments

Hmmm

[xneubien]

What about the good ol' Celeron Paperweight?

Re:Hmmm

[KhanAFur]

CPU and RAM keychains are always classic. :-)

Re:Hmmm

[danamania]

I once read of someone using a 68040 on their keychain. It sounded like a good idea until the drilling came, and it took more than one rather tough jeweller's drill bit to make the hole in the corner.

It turns out that those older chips (and some new ones I think) are made from an aluminum oxide (al2o3) ceramic. That's the second hardest substance, just after diamond. I'm guessing the only reason it didn't go through more drill bits is that it's not a single crystal of the stuff (if it were you'd have sapphire or ruby CPUs :).

Re:Hmmm

[immel]

I once used the lens of an old CD-ROM drive as a keychain. I used the holes where the slide goes through to slide in the chain.

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:Hmmm

[bobhagopian]

As a matter of public safety, TAKE ALL PINS OFF THE PROCESSOR. I'm speaking from experience. Though they're not strong enough to really draw blood, you can definitely feel 478 points of discomfort.

Re:Hmmm

[owlstead]

I got a Pentium II from Intel for my keychain. It was put in metal, with a hars like substance, so you could actually see the design of the CPU (the caches are, for instance, quite easy to identify).

It might be difficult to get that same effect with an old CPU though, since that would mean that you can open the box and get to the actual CPU, without damaging it too much. I could get it right with calculator IC's though, so maybe it is possible.

With the new CPU's from Intel, ther ere no pins to remove at least.

Re:Hmmm

[DJCF]

Oh they are. They deffinately are. I sat on one and have the scars to prove it. Ouch, ouch, ouch. (It was a 486, for the record.)

Re:Hmmm

[garignak]

I used to have a 80386 and a 80286 on mine about ten years ago. I drilled the 286 with a regular high speed steel bit. I didn't drill the 386, I just used a bit of hobby grade CA (super glue) glue to hold a bit of insulated copper wire to it.

I also had a "bug" that someone (I think my brother) bought for me. It was made from an IC. It had two eyes and two "antennae."

Re:Hmmm

[sjs132]

From about 1995 - 2000 my keychain consisted of an 8mb sim (dual sided) from our old ibm RT 1200.... It was cool because the actual memory chips were on both sides of the pcb for the sim... over the course of that 5 years all but 3 of the ram modules popped off.

I actually still have a pile of them stashed away somehere... I had even bought the key ring things from the craft store and thought of making them and selling them at lan parties and such... Eventually I realized they didn't look as cool as I once thought they did... (Old Age?) bleh...

Re:Hmmm

[JasontheMason]

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 did something like that, but for a zipper pull on my winter coat - got tired of fumbling for the little string with my heavy gloves on. I cut out the chip from a dead NIC (hacksaws work great on circuit boards) soldered a piece of straigtened out paper clip (a big one) in under the legs on one side, looped it through the zipper, and then soldered the other side in. Kind of a pain, but it hasn't come out yet, and I've been yanking on it a couple years at least.

On a similar note, I also make keychain tags out of ciruit boards from dead hard drives and stuff. I pick a chip, usually, cut around it leaving enough space to drill a hole in one corner, and hang it from my keyring with a 2-2.5" piece of pull-chain. Whatever you call it. The stuff one sees on lamps with a pull switch. Looks like small metal beads.

Re:Hmmm

[discogravy]

I use old intell PII's as goatee combs -- just long enough to get it neat looking and not really useful for anything else.

Re:Hmmm

[Battle_Ratt]

Yes, and putting them in the hallway at night is a great way to see who is raiding the fridge.

Re:Hmmm

[Captain Tripps]

I use old intell PII's as goatee combs
I read that as "goatse combs", and immediately regretted it.

Re:Hmmm

[Rei]

Larger boards look really nice on the wall.

No, I'm serious! Put some up on your wall of the room where you have your computer at 45 degree angles in a loose arrangement. It looks surprisingly nice - almost like modern art. :)

Re:Hmmm

[identity0]

The symbol of technological progress and man's yearning for faster framerates, being used to comb some hacker's goatee...

Somewhere, Alan Moore is crying.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a broken C=64 and an Atari 2600 off ebay for $10, and turned it into a Beowulf Cluster of Cray Supercomputers. Right now it's rendering a 16384 x 12288 GIF of Natalie Portman and a donkey using a copy of Povray I made out of an old broken CP/M disk and a copy of QBASIC. I'll tell you when it's finished.

Re:Hmmm

[jadenyk]

I actually worked at a company that did this for art on their walls, but they framed them in nice black boxes with glass fronts that were hand made by the owner of the company. Funny thing was, he wasn't into computers at all, nor was he all that into art. He thought it was a cheap way to make the place look "new age" and get rid of old hardware at the same time.

They do look really nice. Especially if you get the older server boards that are extraordinarily large. Piece of advice: clean them up first. Dust boards don't look as nice hung on the wall. Also, for ATA cards or what-not, leave the ribbon cables attached, just arrange them nicely. That looks really cool.

Why is there a purple octopus on your couch?

[Dachannien]

Because purple octopi like to watch TV too.

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

[zod1025]

9 out of 10 English teachers agree that the English language is full of stupid hacks.

It would be one thing to make fun of somebody for screwing up a plural if English had an easy and intuitive system for pluralization. But it doesn't. Thus, you have anal hotshots who pride themselves on memorizing trivial and non-sensical pluralizations, and then you have everyone else who doesn't give a shit, and uses plural forms that make sense.

Not that the octopus example helps me... octopus / octopuses. But now consider:
Mouse / Mice? House / Houses?!? Hice!
Foot / feet? Tooth / Teeth? Boot / boots?!? beet!

Ridiculous. Any plural that isn't the singular form with -s or -es on the end is non-intuitive crap and should be stricken.

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

[lawpoop]

In Latin you would say 'octopedae' -- 'pus,'foot' and 'pedae', 'feet'.

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

[Feyr]

try french, and quit bitching about english. enlish is actually pretty damn easy :)

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:Why is there a purple octopus on your couch?

[Colonel Cholling]

Any plural that isn't the singular form with -s or -es on the end is non-intuitive crap and should be stricken.

Er, should be "striked."

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

[illuminatedwax]

Actually English seems to have inherited all of the problems of French in ADDITION to its own. Kind of like how Windows has all the same problems as UNIX PLUS some of its own.

--Stephen

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

[Secret Agent X23]

The plural is actually octupuses, and not in fact octopi, which is a often made mistake... ask any English teacher...

My approach to this type of thing is simply to avoid it: "An octopus with several of his friends..."

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

[tenco]

Try french? You should ask Mark Twain about german!

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

[dwillden]

Actually English is the most difficult major language for a non-native to learn on the planet. There are a couple obscure languages that you basically have to learn it as a kid, but of the major languages English is the most difficult.

The militaries Language school, the Defense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) in Monterey CA uses a five level rating system for languages based on difficulty for a non native to learn. Spanish, French and the other latin based languages are category one. German, it's derivitives, and most of your nordic languages are cat two as well as several other smaller languages, Russian, and all the slavic cyrillic based languages are cat three as well as Korean and Japanese. Arabic, Persian Farsee, Pashtu(Afghanistan), and Chinese are the cat four languages. The school has tried to get whoever makes the decision, to upgrade chinese (both major dialects) to cat five, but laast I heard English is still the only cat five language.

The reason the school wants the upgrade is that it would allow a longer training period. Cat four courses are 1 1/2 years long, a cat five rating would give them a full two years.

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

[4ntifa]

Bah, French... Try Finnish.

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

[Dabido]

Not that the octopus example helps me... octopus / octopuses. But now consider: Mouse / Mice? House / Houses?!? Hice! Foot / feet? Tooth / Teeth? Boot / boots?!? beet!

English is made from several different langauges. The plurals come from the languages we stole the word from. Considering their are CELTIC, GERMANIC, FRENCH, LATIN, GREEK and numerous other languges chucked into creating English, it is no wonder that our gramma is screwed. After all ... Run and Ran come from the Germanic .. the middle letter changes acording to the tense (I run -present tense. I ran - past tense). But other things use the 'ed' suffix to show past tense. So if we follow your rule about chucking things which don't follow the normal rule, will we be sanging ranned in the future? I ranned away!

As for the Octopuses and Octopii thing, as I recall, the English teachers used to correct people who used Octopuses. So becareful what you correct, unless you accidentaly sit on some cactuses and cactii while shearing some sheeps and sheep.

Next time you have a beef [old French for Cow], don't have a cow [Ancient CEltic from the word Coe ... for cow].

Ciao

:-)

Nani-mo hoshii mono-ga nai

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

[jedrek]

Actually English is the most difficult major language for a non-native to learn on the planet.

Utter and total crap. English is a very easy english to learn, because your english doesn't need to be perfect for you to be considered proficient. For normal, day-to-day communication you need something like 1000 words. One thousand words, and you can get by in any place in America.

On the other hand, take Polish. In English you conjugate verbs, in Polish you conjugate verbs, nouns, adjectives, proper nouns, etc. You need to have a much larger vocabulary - adjectives aren't as descriptive (eg. blue is niebieski, light blue is blekit, dark blue is granat). You have similar spelling problems as with English, words written in different ways are pronounced exactly the same. Hell, you even have a often used construction, in which the pronoun is implied, based on the conjugation of the verbs or pronouns.

After living in the states for 2-3 years most of my Polish friends spoke passable English, but I know Americans who have lived in Poland for 6+ years and barely speak the native tounge.

"...ask /. readers the first of these questions"

[mrchaotica]

And yet half of the answers will be to the second!

P2 heatsink

[niktesla]

I've got an old pentium 2 or so that I use to hold papers and notes on my desk. Then there's always the fun RAM keychains and motherboard clipboards I've seen around.

Your can make speakers...

[Anonymous Coward]

out of old HDDs http://afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspeakers/hdspeaker s.htm

My cousin

[Egekrusher2K]

My cousin has made many, many things. She has turned old hard drives into clocks, PCB from old AT motherboards into a giant table, and AT motherboards (this time with all of the components left ON the board) into clocks as well. She has made various other things that I can't think of at the moment.

Her website, including links to some kickass PC mods that she had done, can be found here.

Re:My cousin

[Suidae]

I turned an old harddrive into a binary clock.

I just stripped out all the parts, built the circuit on perf board, milled some holes into the back of bottom of the case behind the platter and mounted blue LEDs in the holes. I drilled holes in the platter (very carefully so I could keep the very flat mirror surface that makes the platters look so neat in the first place) and mounted some little plastic rods with frosted ends in the holes to diffuse the light from the leds.

In an improvement over the Think Geek clock, I have the LEDs set up to fade on and off over a quarter second, instead of the abrupt blink on and off in the TG clocks.

The bottom register is seconds, right is minutes, and top is hours. Its easier to read than the TG clocks, but doesn't generate the cool patterns.

I cut down one of those clear CD blanks that you find on top of a spindal of CDR's so that it fit neatly over the electronics, then frosted it with some sandpaper so it has a nice diagonal grain. This fits over electronics so they are less obvious, but can still be seen if you care to look.

Heres a picture of the clock. The lighting isn't great, so its hard to see how clearly the bits of each register light up. The frosted end of each rod lights up brightly, while the sides are water-clear, so it ends up looking like a bright blue disk 'floating' above the mirrored surface. Really looks pretty good.

Here is a photo of the clock

Re:My cousin

[Suidae]

Thanks. Yup, its really mine. :)

Here are some more supplies for clocks, and the back of this one (forgive the libral use of hot glue, its just a prototype :)).

I thought about selling the design, but the idea is really almost trivial, the software design (done in AVRGCC, maybe 200 LOC at most) took an evening and only that long because I'm pretty clueless when it comes to C coding. I kept K&R's _The C Programming Language_ handy and spent quite a bit of time screwing up the switch statement.

The hardware was time consuming because I was using perfboard and wiring up all those damned headers. I won't make that mistake again. Next time I'll just have the PCB made professionally and save myself hours of frustration soldering hookup wire.

You are right though, it would be nice to be able to refrence it in a resume. Perhaps I'll reduce it to a single board design (one PCB behind the platter with SMT LEDs) and have a few boards made. Would be fun anyway.

Re:My cousin

[adrn01]

Old 5.25 inch floppy drives are worth taking apart for the cool looking drive motor windings. Basically, a radial arangement of coils,
\|/
-0-
/|\
above which the spinning hub is mounted. It looks a lot like a WWI era radial engine. The hub has a toroidal magnet mounted to the edge -- not very strong, but enough to hold a few papers to a fridge. The same drives -- possibly 3.5 in drives as well, have head positioning stepper motors with a fairly strong magnet shaped like two stacked gears. ( --||-- ) Just perfect for holding dentist picks, jeweler screwdrivers, and jeweler files. Hard drives have small radial coils glued to the frame underneath the disk hub. Removed, they would make cool ( although a bit heavy ) earrings. The hubs have corresponding toroidal magnets, also good for fridges if the bottom of the hub ends flush with the magnets. A robot using hard drive head positioning arms for legs would be cool.

Re:My cousin

[jpmkm]

Who the fuck just puts food on a table and eats off it? Have you not heard of plates?

Re:My cousin

[Suidae]

Ok, here is the whole thing, code, schematic, a couple of the images I just posted, and a short write-up about the project.

Please feel free to bash my ugly code, I was working strictly for functionality without the slightest regard to design. I wouldn't know good C code if it came up and introduced itself anyway, so if you are inclined, feel free to enlighten me as to my mistakes.

I'm using the AT90S2313. Its my favorite AVR right now because its small, but has a reasonable amount of IO and a built in UART.

Re:My cousin

[jpmkm]

So then you eat with your hands, fingers, arms, and elbows? Ever heard of a fork?

What I do with old computer parts

[Anonymous Coward]

I make computers out of them.

Hamster Cage

[obfuscated]

Computer cases with clear sides make great hamster cages! Just make sure to file down the really sharp stuff. Add some tubes from case to case and papow! You've got your first Hamster-powered cluster.

Re:Hamster Cage

[chota]

Also, for added effect, be sure to name your hamster "Beowulf."

The chicks dig it.

Re:Hamster Cage

[Dogtanian]

Computer cases with clear sides make great hamster cages [...] You've got your first Hamster-powered cluster.

I heard that they use a Beowulf cluster of those to run the Hampster-dance website.

Re:Hamster Cage

[Tandoori Haggis]

Its only a matter of time before someone tries to overclock the hamsters...

Jewelry

[turtledawn]

a classic use for old computer bits is making them into jewelry- things like capacitor earrings, pendants made out of those little copper-wrapped magnets, pins made from colorful heat sinks and interestingly-patterned chips.

They make good refirgerator magnets, as well. And if you're patient, you can make your own motherboard clipboard.

Tried but true

[thejoelpatrol]

There's always the classic-Mac aquarium. See some at The Apple Collection

Mac fish tank

[PCM2]

The original, classic broken computer mod is probably still the best place to keep your purple octopus. Various references are available.

Re:Mac fish tank

[mikael]

The original, classic broken computer mod is probably still the best place to keep your purple octopus.

Unfortunately not. As the octopus is a very intelligent and curious creature, when placed in a small confined space, it will always try to find a way out. If placed in a fish tank, it will try and find a way out. It will climb over the edges of an open tank. Even when there is a lid on the fish tank, it will attempt to squeeze through the gaps of the lid. Failing that it will try and prise the lid open by attaching its arm suckers to the lid and walls, then contracting its muscles. And if that doesn't work, it will attempt to prise open the walls of the fish tank.
Even a a 1lb octopus can lift a 40lb aquarium lid.
As an example of the flexibility of an octopus, Discovery Channel Canada have a cool video of an octopus squeezing into a beer bottle.

RAM Buddies...

[chrispyman]

I distinctly remember seeing someone selling "RAM Buddies" at a local art fair around here awhile ago. They basically took that really old ram chips (the one that used rectangular sockets), bent the pins outward, and stuck eyes on the front and a tail in the back so they kinda resembled little caterpillars.

My favorite use for old hardware...

[john_smith_45678]

is the one they put the printer to in Office Space.

PC Load Letter?

Re:My favorite use for old hardware...

[SCSI-Wan]

PC Load Letter?

What f**k does that mean?

Re:My favorite use for old hardware...

[UserGoogol]

After painstakingly removing the words "what the fuck does that mean" and "office space" from my Google search, I found good explanation

It (more or less) means the printer thinks you don't have the right kind of paper.

Re:My favorite use for old hardware...

[Sonic McTails]

PC Load Letter: Primary Castette Load Letter Sized Paper .... What, I actually read printer manuals (the HP LaserJet 4 has that same message)

Re:My favorite use for old hardware...

[Seekerofknowledge]

Paper Carriage (paper tray) Load Letter (-size paper)

It wants Letter-size paper but maybe it's out or is loaded with legal size, etc.

IF you want some entertainment

[LeahofRivendell]

I suggest finding a microwave you don't particularly value and put your motherboard in it. If that doesn't entertain you enough, a light bulb can have an entertaining reaction.

Fridge Magnets

[RobYoung]

I'd imagine it would be difficult to write anything with only one of each letter.

Re:Fridge Magnets

[xs650]

You could start with "uncopyrightable" but that wouldn't leave many useful letters for additional words.

Maybe you could write something in Welsh with DFJKQSWXYZ. Actually, that looks like the name of a town I drove through in Wales.

MC HyperSPARC

[tokki]

A friend of mine a while ago would make neck chains out of old HyperSPARC and SuperSPARC processor modules, ala Flavah Flav from Public Enemy.

Re:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn

[ssbljk]

yeah, HDDs are the most useful eq.
they can be used as ashtray, weapon... and working one can be used to store some data on it too.

The ladies have some ideas..

[fadeaway]

The answer is three weeks.

Three weeks until your girlfriend gets sick of asking you to clean up the overflowing pile of old and unused components that's steadily taking over the office. Three weeks until you come home and find your monitor decorated, in a most Martha Stewart-like fashion, with superglued sticks of RAM and old CPU's.

Message recieved.. loud and clear. Over and out.

486DX Back Scratcher!

[Xocet_00]

Back when I worked in the computer room at K-W Surplus (please excuse the horrid website, it isn't mine) we took this box of old 486DX chips and glued them onto the ends of these long thin plastic pencils. They made excellent back scratchers. We sold them for $0.99CA I think.

Re:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn

[daemon_underscore]

I stuck them to either side of the flap of skin between my nostrils. Going to the doctor to get neodynium magnets removed from your sinuses isn't fun.

Use everything!

[Neo's Nemesis]

I use my ex-speaker magnets for finding lost metal items.

My ex-cabinet houses 3 birds.

I use my earlier corrupted HD for slicing soft items after making some big changes in its circuitry.

I have mounted my CDROM's tray on wall, cut out a piece of plastic artistically and now it holds abt 10 pens, a cup of water, and upto 5 CDs, all separately in diff slots.

Stepper motors for CNC, UPS batteries for RC boat

[hajo]

First of; I make my living buying discarded computer stuff and reselling it. A lot of this stuff is broken and gets trashed. When I do have time I tend to strip the stepper motors out of disk drives and printers as well as the printer guides for CNC / robotics stuff. UPS batteries are an excellent power supply.
However mostly I use discarded equipment to put a working system together again which can be used for all kinds of things: If you are handy with linux you can make excellent routers; web servers, media servers, a TIVO, CNC control equipment out of the oldest stuff.

RAAANMAAA!

[numbski]

Curse those evil octopi!

I've been working

[Monkelectric]

On a project to turn some old scsi drives into a MIDI instrument, I *LOVE* the sounds really old scsi drives make (think 4GB micropolis drives). Plan to use it in a composition :)

Re:I've been working

[Monkelectric]

Nah, I'm trying to turn a PC+SCSI CARD+Two Micropolis drives into a MIDI instrument. Software on the PC (will eventually) read midi signals and convert them into head movements which will make the pretty noises :)

Re:Memory sticks

[Judg3]

haha! I did the exact same thing, though it wasn't a mac, it was an old 386. The ram was only 256kb in size! I remember we tried to install linux on it back in 99 or so, but even though it had a dozen or so sticks in it, it didn't meet the 3mb of ram minimum - so on the keychain it went!

B.E.A.M.

[Veridium]

http://www.nis.lanl.gov/projects/robot//

I've been working on a project for a few months now, utilizing parts from old drives. I'm time deficient of late, but I'm hoping when I finish a current work project, I'll have more time.
All you tinkerer nerds out there, if you haven't looked into BEAM robotics, look into it. You can utilize a good deal of junk electronics.

Purple Octopus...

[selderrr]

that, my dear friend, is what the sun-walkers out there call a woman

don't touch it, don't feed it, don't talk to it. If you stop washing yourself & brushing your teeth, it's supposed to go away by itself.

dunno if this matters, but you have all slahsdotters sympathy. We're standing right behind you like one geek. Let us know how it turns out.

Daft idea

[ledow]

I once had similar ideas for reusing the bits out of all the old PC's that collect around me (mostly P233's and desktop cases, for some reason, but I've got a PS/2 hiding somewhere).

Was going to use the old fans to make sure airflow went through my PC and even throughout the wooden cabinet that my PC is in so that it wouldn't get too hot.

Or:

Actually once crafted a primitive noise baffle for the exhaust fan from a PC by using an empty 5.25" casing and some defunct floppies arranged so that the air would zig-zag through the 5.25 case (off of a CDROM if I remember rightly, with the bits taken out).

Or:

The metal casing of an old PC is good for keeping all those ADSL routers, printer server boxes, ethernet hubs etc. that are on 24/7 but just get in the way when you're rereouting cables.

Bung them inside an old desktop case (even mount them in the drivebays or whatnot), run all the cables through the PCI backplates and power them off the inside of the power socket (even room for a power strip with a few "brick" power adaptors in there). If your stuff needs 12 or 5v, you could even run it direct off of the old PSU, I suppose.

That way, one box and plug powers all the silly peripherals but you haven't got millions of wires tangling and twenty brick adaptors stuck to the wall.

You can move the bits inside around so that you can see the LED status of things from the drive bays etc., can power from the power supply, can even re-use the PSU or case fans to make sure they have adequate cooling etc.

Or:

Some people try to hide their computers in their furniture (e.g. wooden cabinets/cupboards/desks), why not go the other way... convert the front of a desktop case to become a fold-open drawer or storage area. :-)

Or:

See how many LED's you can fit onto the outside of an old PC case so that you can have that authentic "Star Trek" feel. Bonus points for them actually working, extra for flashing effects etc.

Or:

Build a race track using old PCI cards as barriers, upside-down motherboards as the floor and the balls from mice as the "cars", like blow football, only more geeky.

Re-use electronic components!

[enosys]

If I have a useless board with at least some components that aren't surface mount I use a hot air paint stripper to remove the components. Then I reuse them in various projects. I have a well over 90% success rate with ICs.

A hot air paint stripper will surface mount components even more easily but it's hard to use surface mount components.

Re:Re-use electronic components!

[sploxx]

Uhoh, I did that myself but stopped as I heard how toxic the substances are which will be generated by this process!

Some components (especially older ones, and you're probably desoldering lots of *old* boards) are made flame resistant, and heating them produces really nasty stuff. You aren't heating them with a temperature-controlled soldering iron, you're using an uncontrolled heat gun, mine can melt glass!

I read it in several magazines here in germany. Maybe someone has a link? A quick google turned nothing up.

At least, I would take several precautions, such a doing this outside, wearing a gas mask etc.

Also there's much lead on older boards. 40% in the solder (Sb60Pb).

People already freak out about the lead and, at least here in the EU, lead containing solder will be, IMHO, phased out in 2006. I'm now using more and more lead free solder myself (for the hobby work), but more as a general precaution (it's available and not *too* much more expensive), and, of course, I also solder older boards without worrying too much.
But heating lead very much may produce lead fumes - I do not want to inhale them.

Not all computer equipment is safe for this

[banz23]

I think many people neglect to realize that the computer components were designed to operate in a closed box and to have very little direct contact with people. There is plenty of lead and other nasties in these components that I certainly wouldn't want to handle them frequently or for that matter my kids. Now things like keyboard key are obviously safe, but motherboards are another thing.

Re:Not all computer equipment is safe for this

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just damned silly!

The amount of lead you are exposed to from electronic components is negligible unless you grind them up and eat them - a lot of them! You do realize that toothpaste, up until about 20 years ago, was packaged in lead tubes, don't you. And it was something that people put into their mouths everyday. The practice was discontinued not because of any lead poisoning to people using the toothpaste, but because of lead contamination to groundwater from dumps filled with the stuff.

Find something real to worry about.

Question

[timeOday]

Since you're only using the keys from a single keyboard for your fridge magnets, a question arises: what's the longest english word that only uses each letter once? How about the longest sentence?

Re:Question

[Zocalo]

what's the longest english word that only uses each letter once? The longest I (OK, egrep and the words file) can come up with is "uncopyrightable" at 15 letters. I'd have posted the command line too, but the Slashdot lameness filter is eating it for lunch... :)

Re:Question

[infolib]

Sentences that use every letter in the alphabet exactly once are called pangrams. Several examples exist. The "Veldt jynx.." one may be the oldest - at least it's the only one i recall seeing in the Guiness Book of Records.

Toys for the girls

[pilybaby]

I'm sure I've seen "toys for girls" that look just like my MS wheel mouse. I'm sure it can't be that hard to plug in a vibrating motor and some batteries. If you make it a wireless one you could even use a caddy to charge it. And the best thing is that you don't have to worry about someone finding it in your desk draw. You just say it's an old broken mouse. Kill two bird with one stone. Hell you could do it and have it stay as a fully functioning mouse too.

Re:Toys for the girls

[maskedbishounen]

Sounds great.

...except this is Slashdot. Who are we going to get to test it?

*sound of crickets here*

Dare I say, the more productive thing is to actually fill it with some sand to weigh it down and throw it at some birds. You might get lucky!

Re:Toys for the girls

[myowntrueself]

And the girls who use them could sell them secondhand to geeks at a *huge* markup!

Re:Toys for the girls

[BashDot]

Wow, this mouse has force-feedback! But why is the cursor buzzing around like that? I can't click anything!

Broken terminal light show

[jejones]

A local (for me, local = Des Moines) band (long disbanded, alas; they were quite good) used broken terminals as a backdrop for a performance. They weren't hooked up to anything (save the outlet, of course), but they were sufficiently fried that the CRT traced a pattern on the screen with no input at all.

classic mac clock

[trb]

a classic hack (i don't know who first thought of this) is to take a handful of 128k macs and line them up and run software to display the time of day, one digit per screen. you can get arbitratily complex, with or without seconds, with a screens for the colons (flashing or not), date, networked or not, dali morphing, etc.

Mouse Necklace

[bokmann]

I once made a necklace our of a dead mac mouse... just fed the end that normally attached to the computer back into the mouse case, and voila!

On a dare, I wore it out one night (while still in college). I took it off when a hot girl asked me why I was wearing a medic-alert necklace.

goatee comb and free advertising

[rende]

Other then the tried and true practice of using toasted CDs as coasters, a friend of mine found old processors (of the socket 370 variety) made an excellent comb for his goatee.

At a computer place where I volunteer, they hand out old RAM chips cut in half as key chains. They slide the ring though the holes where the memory would click into place and slap a sticker with their name and phone number on the back. A big bowl of them sits on the front counter and the majority of people who come through take one.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

True Story

[djsmiley]

In school i was always the geek, the odd one out etc...
Just check http://djsmiley.blogdns.com to see.

Sometimes i would play on this fact and i 1st made a keyring out of some old ram i found in the computer room. (now i find its been done before =[ )

Then, i found a LARGE ISA card and stuck that on a keyring, to take the piss. The 1st years were loving it, til i hit one of them over the head with it and split it in half =/

Over time this story of this keyring got around, with people asking to see it... Eventually i got bored and dumped it.

Then i saw hackers (the film people, the film!) and decided i wanted a new keyboard, for some cheap pc i brought of a friends uncle, i had 2 cans of spray paint... I just forgot to mask the letters off. So then i ended up with a keyboard, only i could use... It became the most "bling" necklace ever, as i walked into 6th form waring it around my neck!. (using the cable as a string).

This was the high light, but i also decided after we tried to fix the school computers (taking them apart and putting the working parts in the same one), and finding it still didn't work, that if i took lots of NON-working parts, and placed them in a broken machine, it might just work...

how ever it just got attacked by the mobs and left on a bus somewhere.

So, paint your keyboards and go hang out on the west side...

printer as a doorstop

[chrismtb]

I found out that printers, especially those made by Lexmark, make very functional doorstops.

I purchased a lexmark printer last year and it turned out that they didn't make win XP drivers for it. I called tech support and they told me that I could use my printer if I reverted back to win ME or earlier.

Having no use for the printer, I affixed an appropriate sign to it expressing my discontent with lexmark and used it as a doorstop. It worked well for propping the door open a few inches, the flex of the plastic helped to bounce the door back so it wouldn't hit so forcefully, and best of all, whenever I was pissed off, I could just kick the printer against the wall.

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:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn

[boaworm]

Harddrive magnets are great. In fact, they are rather expensive, and quite strong!

Even better, if you have a broken CD/DVD-player, you can extract the electric motor. It's a high-quality product. A lot of people convert them into small, high-performing engines on R/C aircraft. This is one example

This is nothing

[Pan T. Hose]

Making stuff out of broken computer equipment in nothing. Back in my day, we were making computer equipment out of broken stuff. And we were grateful! Seriously. Have you ever made hundreds of NAND gates out of broken TVs and radios from the junk yard and used them to build a huge binary calculator? With multiplication? You might laugh, but in my opinion that was something to be proud of.

Stepper Motors = Marble Sorter

[auburnate]

I built a 4 color marble sorter out of two stepper motors from 5-1/4 inch drives, a photo-sensitive cell and some PC software driving parallel port inputs and outputs. It won $150 in a engineering contest at Auburn University.

dead hard drive cases = fine stompbox chassis

[screeble]

Commonsound Collective (see 4MS section) has a line of DIY stompbox effects you can build in the privacy of your mad scientist laboratory.

4MS specifies electrical junction boxes as chassis since they are cheap and durable. I've always found them a bit too tall so I use dead hard drives for the chassis instead.

They do require a bit of grinding but the RF shielding seems to be far superior to junction boxes.

I recently pulled an old SCSI drive out of one of 3 dead DG Aviions I have (which make fantastic speaker stands, by the way) and have it all cleaned out to make a Noise Swash.

Noise Swash info

One more thing

[Pan T. Hose]

Making stuff out of broken computer equipment in nothing. Back in my day, we were making computer equipment out of broken stuff.

Oh, and before you start asking stupid questions--no, it wasn't in Soviet Russia. But those NANDs and NORs--it surely was an impressive cluster of those!

Stud finders

[Camel Pilot]

Recently I took apart several old 2.4 gig full height hard drives and recovered the magnets. These guys are extremely powerful and will cause injury to fingers if careless handling two of them at the same time.

Anyways I found them to be very good stud finders as they will quickly locate the screws or nails hidden in drywall and are powerful enough to hold themselves in place.

I have taken two of them and fashioned a small clip on top and pulled a chalk line between them. This arrangment is great for creating a nail line.

Also a placed one in a small pocket in my electrical tool holster. Then fasteners and small parts stay attached to the outside making them very accessible. In fact, when working on something I just throw the small parts in the general direction of the pocket with the magnet and they stick.

I made the first optical turntable

[t0qer]

I used Linux, TerminatorX a broken optical mouse and a $10 used turntable I bought from a grandmotherly looking ladies garage sale.

Picture here

My cousin Walter

[ubugly2]

One time my cousin Walter got this mac stuck in his ass. True story. He bought it at our local mall, so the whole fiasco wound up on the news. It was embarrassing for my relatives and all, but the next week, he did it again. Different mac, same results, complete with another trip to the emergency room. So, I run into him a week later in the mall and he's buying another mac. And I says to him, "Jesus, Walt! You know you're just gonna get this mac stuck in your ass too. Why don't you knock it off ?" And he said to me, "Brodie, how the hell else am I supposed to get the one button mouse out ?" My cousin was a weird guy.

Re:Dead HDD magnets

[nuffle]

Out of curiousity, what nation's currency do you use, such that this would work? I believe the Dutch and Canadians use at least some magnetic coins. The coins that currently clank in my pocket are American, however, and are all non-magnetic.

Re:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn

[tylernt]

This subject has been visited on Slashdot before.

Re:Question - shortest sentence

[makavelli]

To make a sentence using the 26 letters only once, you need acronyms, initials and such.
Here ya go:
Glum Schwartzkopf vex'd by NJIQ.
I don't use that particular sentence as much as this one though:
Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q.

Decorate!

[oldosadmin]

I keep old, broken processors/motherboards on my wall for decoration. I know, I'm a freak.

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

[Billy the Mountain]

You've got a point there. Many don't realize that once magnets get to be a certain strength they get dangerous--even something comfortable enough to otherwise carry around for curiousity value. Imagine this embarrasing scenario: You carry around a neodymium magnet around in your jeans pocket and wander into the subway and brush up against the steel turnstile and CLANK! There you are!

BTM

Where to get "supplies"?

[ZorMonkey]

I've had ideas for things to do with dead hardware, but I dont have enough of it layin around. Where do you guys go to find good stuff when you have a project in mind? Right now I'm think I need some dead hard drives, which I could probably find if I jumped into a computer shop's dumpster. But it'd be nice to get my hands on something larger than a 3.5".

Wall o' boards

[pla]

Gather a large number of random old motherboards, video cards, sound cards, whatever.

Install pegboard to entirely cover one wall of your computer room or office.

Mount the boards via standoffs to the pegboard.

Bonus points:

• Turn an upper central motherboard into an analog clock (guts from a craft store fro $0.99)
• Turn an upper central motherboard into a digital clock using (appearently) on-board SM LEDs
• Conceal the room's light source behind the wall-o-boards
• Use one of the motherboards as your primary PC
• Have all the boards functional as a Beowulf cluster
• Have a significant number of non-PC boards (I have an ancient term server and a 3B2, for example)

Okay...

[SharpFang]

On the wall above me... Stepper motor from a floppy drive (pretty!), Socket to Slot CPU adapter, and a harddrive - nice gallery :)

I actually took an optical encoder from an inkjet printer and used it in my thesis work. (you see, it pays better to buy 2 printers and take them apart to remove the encoders than to purchase one such encoder from a distributor...) - same about sliding axis of the CD-rom head (try to order a REALLY hard 3mm diameter axis somewhere! Good luck!)

Diodes from the power supply work well somewhere in the car electronics.
Floppies... Really nice plastic! So many uses!

But usually I take things apart and use them in other computer related stuff. You know, 486 can be really quiet if you detach the original cooler and radiator and attach an athlon radiator -without- any cooler instead... :) Logitech mice have that nice balls that collect dirt without letting it get to the rolls... so my new A4tech mouse rides on Logitech ball from a dead Logitech mouse. get a nice battery of fans taken from old power supplies, place them on your desk, power them up, really handy on the hot days. Amiga joystick? On parport interface. Etc, etc...

Wind Chimes

[Rex Code]

Platters from dead hard drives make really cool sounding wind chimes. They also develop an interesting patina after a little bit of outdoor weathering.

Re:Wind Chimes

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried making one, but it got really tangled. Also, since the platters are all the same size, there isn't the musical variety I'd expect from a wind chime. Guess I need to salvage some 5.25" hard drives, and some 2.5"ers.

Got two dead keyboards?

[fishnuts]

cut the cables off, put them both behind the rear tires of a front-wheel-drive car. roll car back onto keyboards, engage emergency brake tightly so rear wheels stay locked over the keyboards. put car into gear, slide around and do donuts on your new plastic "car skates".

Re:Got two dead keyboards?

[bonkedproducer]

I've got a keyboard made from several DOAs that reads
"HELP-CAPTIVE-
IN-KEYBOARD-
FACTORY"

hanging on the wall - most folks have to look at it 5 or 6 times before they get the joke.

HD Magnets

[big_groo]

I use an old HD magnet as a coin catcher. Just keep it away from your credit cards ;) ...

Re:HD Magnets

[macgyvr64]

But aren't coins not affected by magnets?

Re:HD Magnets

[CAlworth1]

Even new coins here in the US are no more magnetic than older ones...

...Which isn't to say that they aren't magnetic. They are... just not very much. It takes either a very strong magnet, or a very careful eye or measurement to see that the coins can be moved.

Now, in my opinion, American coins kick the crap out of European coins, and are better than Canadian by a small margin. Whats the point of coins that don't make a 'ting' noise, and instead remind you more of loose sheet metal than something of value?

Re:HD Magnets

[CAlworth1]

Alas, not so in the US. I have tried, and the best you can do is to either pull it down a ramp where friction is minimal, or pull it up while the quarter sits on a scale, and watch the reading change ever so slightly.

P-P-P Powerbook

[Caseyscrib]

I built a P-P-P Powerbook.

Wasn't really me, but I laughed my ass off reading the story. :)

Re:Dead HDD magnets

[bigberk]

but it appears some 2003 and 2004 pennies are magnetic (this surprised me)

Based on empirical observations, it seems that Canadian pennies with the letter 'p' under the Queen of England's head are magnetic and other pennies are not. I have yet to find an exception to this!

Re:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn

[__aafutm5472]

I have a friend who used some hard drive magnets in the gas tank of his '65 Mini so it would collect all the bits of rust and metal to it instead of feed them through the pump and clog up his fuel filter. Mind, it would have been better to replace the tank...but hey, it's cool.

Milkbottle People

[pjay_dml]

I work on different art projects, and one of my current projects involves using parts savaged from chucked out PC's, printers, montiors, and the like.
My carrying structural element is a plastic milk bottle, common down under.

Out of all this and with the help of a black marker, I create little Milkbottle People (old CD's are great for ears).
I wanted to make people smile, when they see them. Thinking especially of kids. Then at night I go around, and hang them up in different places. Trying to integrate the Milkbottle Person, with its environment (e.g. make them look at something specific).

In another project, I use broken bits of circuit board to draw portraits. This is more difficult, and to be honest, I haven't managed to create a satisfying object yet.

I have also used the discs of hard drives, to create a mirror for a geeky friend of mine, who needed a little mirror for shaving.

Last but not least, I use the empty cases to build my shelves, desks, and other non-secific-use objects (coffee table, morph, laptop table, morph, lamp stand,...). Besides the fact that I don't have much money to my disposal, I can't be bothered with worrying about my furniture every time I move. Which I seem to be doing a fair bit.

Things to do with wireless antennas

[cryptor3]

I like to make containers to hold my chips out of my old wireless antennas. I also like to cook my noodles with some of the other old computer parts.

Pioneers of the GUI

[Halcyon-X]

Looks like Apple had been planning the Aqua interface long before any of us realized...

My Wife Make Collages...

[eselgroth]

My wife makes and sells custom collages out of old parts... typically framed 3' x 4' works of three-dimensional art.

Kewl in hi-tech lobbies, conference rooms, offices etc. Much better than sending the stuff to a landfill.

See example.

On irregular English plurals. (long)

[SoulOfMyShoe]

Actually, the English system for pluralization is quite simple compared to many languages. We do in fact have a fairly regular pluralization scheme. There are several exceptions to the simple -s/-es pluralization, but take a look at some other languages. Latin has 5 different declensions, each with their own pluralization. Even with this many classes, there are still exceptions. German pluralization is very complex. Nouns may pluralize with -n, -en, -e, -er, or by remaining the same (there may be even more, my German is a bit rusty) based on the ending, and sometimes involves a vowel shift somewhere else in the word. Old English, like these other languages, had several noun classes with several pluralization schemata. It is only due to the Normal conquest in the 11th century that Middle English and Modern English are as simple as they are in this regard. English during the Norman occupation was a language of the common people, with Norman French being the language of court. This led to a lot of simplification in the language. The words that have irregular pluralization are generally the result of one of two scenarios. If the word is Germanic in origin (as are all of the examples you gave, as well as many more: child, sheep, deer, fish, ox, etc.) then generally is has kept a version of it original plural because it was so frequently used. Each successive generation could hear the "proper" plural frequently and emulate it, while being corrected by their parents if they improperly pluralized it. This would not happen as frequently if a word was not used as often. We can see this even now. We are much more likely to know that the proper plural of child is children than we are to know that the proper plural of matrix is matrices. The other branch of irregulars are words that were imported from another language, such as octopus (Greek in this case). I don't think that the person (or persons) who corrected the pluralization of octopus were doing so to make fun of the individual who pluralized it as octopi. I know when I found out that the plural was octopodes, I was highly entertained, and told lots of people about it, because it is one of those instances where many of us (myself included, in this case) try to sound educated by using the "proper" plural instead of saying octopuses (which is a totally acceptable plural, by the way), and it turns out that octopuses would have been closer to correct. We just overgeneralized a rule that applied to Latin loan words and used it with something that is not from Latin. Also, I disagree with your suggestion to strike all irregular plurals from the English language. Language is a free-flowing thing. For years, countless people have tried to change language to suit them and what they see as logical, it just doesn't work. If you were to succeed in your vision there, we would not really be speaking English, but rather a created language based on it. But don't worry, we seem to be moving closer to regular pluralization. A lot of the acedemic imports from Greek and Latin are at least beginning to get -s and -es endings. Children and feet are probably going to be around for quite a while, but time will probably regularize many of the less-frequently-used irregulars. OK, now that I am done with that frightfully long and very off-topic soliloquy, let's get back to using computer parts in innovative ways.

Re:On irregular English plurals. (long)

[RedWizzard]

Use

for ending paragraphs, rather than
, as it inserts a blank line as well as breaking back to the left margin, while
doesn't.

Slashdot isn't just for the young

[lgbarker]

If anything, you could hide a little pipe in there and smoke pot out of it. Mom and Dad will probably never guess that that old Logitech mouse hides your stash and is really a pipe

Dear AC,
Thanks for the tip.
Dad

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.

Clocks, mostly

[da3dAlus]

Personally, I've made an aquarium from an old monitor, and countless clocks from 3" and 5" HDD's. I've also made a few photo frames from old laptops. Usually I end up giving them to friends and family since they're sort of first to request. I've also made the (already mentioned) keychains from ram chips, but I can't think of what to use all the HDD magnets for. I also have a ton of HDD, misc PCI, and MB PCB's that I can't decide what to do with. I've seen cufflinks on Thinkgeek, and clipboards a few years back, but I hate ripping off all the components from the boards...

Spell it "Calamari". It tastes better that way.

[NotQuiteReal]

I know, Calamari is often just squid, but the fancier places often put in little, whole octopi, like a little garnish, I guess.

Calamari at a nice Italian restaurant - about $16.99 or more.

The look on your 10 year old's face when you have an octopus on your fork and then eat it; priceless...

Re:Spell it "Calamari". It tastes better that way.

[fciron]

Actual record of my twelve year old at a tapas place

"Can I have some of your fried chicken?"
"That's good. Gimme some more."
"Can I have another piece, please?"
"This looks like some kind of alien octopus?"
"THIS IS CALAMARI!"

The look on his face as he slowly realized he'd eaten squid all on his own. That's priceless.

Lain Art

[cyb3rllama]

I made this a few years ago: http://www.particlesphere.com/gallery/animeart/Lai n_Assemblage_1

72pinn dimm keychains

[ArtisteTerroriste]

I support a lot of public schools, and I have a master building key for most, which are kept IN the school. I use 72pinn dimm's as keychains (use the existing hole), so when I loose it (not good to do with a master key), everyone knows who's it is.

Re:Question - shortest sentence

[Alsee]

Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q.

Not bad, 26 letters, 1 hyphen, 1 apostophy, and 1 period. Unfortunately you failed, there aren't 4 space keys on the keyboard.

Better luck next time!

-

Boom

[evilnissan]

Usualy when I come along a old case to a useless computer I take them to the shooting range and pump a box or 2 of 9mm ammo in to it.

Last time I did this it was a early 90's Gateway pc. Just so happen a group of WV state police officers were there and got the biggest kick shooting this poor case for a about a hour.

The look on _your_ face...

[leonbrooks]

...when it turns out that the octopus isn't quite dead yet? That one'll stick with your 10 year old until his dying day. (-:

BTW, you could get squid rings about the size of a truck tyre, but won't because squid use ammonia to adjust their bouyancy, and the larger squids use more than the littlies. Windex on a stick, yummo! (-:

My gf does

[dakranon]

My gf likes to pull apart old computers. She wears ram in her hair (on a head band), and has installed a cpu fan in a pair of pants (rigged up to work with a battery). Those pants also have a number of resistors stitched down the seam as a binary representation of the asci characters: 'V', '=', 'I', and 'R'. She is currently working on using old motherboards (and other components) to create body armour.

Re:My gf does

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! You've got a keeper!

Resistors

[annielaurie]

You can make quite interesting ancient-Egyptian-looking (sort of) necklaces out of various resistors. Packages of new ones, to be had cheaply at the Shack, are better for this purpose than recycled ones.

We have a Mac-Quarium here in the house, created by my son. All I can say is that it's a mixed blessing. If you decide to build one, cultivate the friendship of the person who cuts your glass for you--you'll be seeing a lot of him. It has leaks despite the best prescribed adhesives. It also won't accommodate the heater, filter, and aerator needed for any sort of interesting tropical fish, so you're pretty much limited to a goldfish or two.

I believe ours has become a Mac-Terrarium for that reason.

Anne

A laser light show

[sr180]

A mate used two stepper motors recovered from some old 3.5" floppy drives connected to a laser pointer to make his own pc programmed laser light shows. Worked reasonably well to most extents....

Re:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn

[Suidae]

Ferrous metals aren't neccessary to the demonstration of inductive braking. The relative motion of the coin to the magnets induces eddy currents in accordance with Lenz's Law. The eddy currents generate their own magnetic field opposed to that from the magnets, causing the inductive braking effect.

With strong magnets like those found in harddrives, the effect is quite pronounced with a simple coin.

Please refer to this article for more information and links.

Re:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn

[polymath69]

U.S. currency contains no ferrous metals...

Doesn't matter. Magnetic braking is caused when conductive material is moved through a magnetic field. The induced current causes a resistive force in the moving metal, slowing it down. This works very well even in completely nonferromagnetic material such as aluminum.

Magnetic braking is in fact used in vending machines to slow coins by just a certain amount, to test against slugs. Wrong alloys will be slowed too much or not enough; either way, they can be rejected.

See question and answer #14 here for more details.

Re:"...Possible tall tale alert.

[Technician]

Handicam's in the US use NTSC. Most laptops use a propritory digital parallel interface. Most are VGA and above. They DON'T use the slow television sweep speeds. Unless they used a scan converter, broke out RGB analog and converted it to RGB digital, I doubt anything as simple as connecting the output of a camera to the input of the LCD display happened. Using a portable DVD player with a video input would be more believable. Getting consumer NTSC video into a laptop display has never been an easy patch.

Better night vision can be had with an IR sensitive monochrome security camera and IR LED floodlight. Find a camera with a removable IR filter or one without one made for IR use.

c'mon....

[discogravy]

Kind of like how Windows has all the same problems as UNIX PLUS some of its own.

some?

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

[plover]

Nahh, you don't need a special screwdriver. There are lots of alternatives.

For one, you can take a moto-tool and cut a straight slot in the head of the screw, then use a flat screwdriver in your new slot to remove it. This is a lot of work but on a frozen screw it's effective.

For another, you can usually grab the sides of the screw head in a pair of needlenose pliers and rotate it out. This is especially true of the hard drive lids, and is my preferred method (since I carry a needlenose on my belt.)

For another, you can sometimes wedge a flat bladed screwdriver right in between the points of the star shaped head (tipped at the appropriate angle). If the screw isn't extremely tight, this is fastest, but you run the risk of damaging the screwdriver if it is tight.

I typically loosen all the screws with the pliers first, then spin them out with a flat blade.

Finally, remember that it's just a broken old IBM DeathStar drive. You don't have to be kind to all the pieces. Use a screwdriver as a pry bar and separate the sheet-metal lid from the aluminum drive housing. Make a hole big enough for a pair of pliers to grab it and the lid will tear out of the way fairly easily. But don't be too rough or you'll shatter the disc platters and then have lots of nasty glass shards to deal with.

Looks like I picked the wrong week ...

[unsigned integer]

to stop sniffing glue.

Hardest languages

[ImWithBrilliant]

No one over the age of 12 has become fluent in Navajo. I believe there been attempts to document it since the 50's, but I'm not sure how successful that's been.

The VAX Bar - a great re-use...

[the narf]

While all these comments about re-using PC cases, chips, and the like are interesting, what do you do if the computer you want to recycle is a bit larger -- like a VAX 11/780 perhaps?

You turn it into a VAX BAR!

You can see it here. I've really not heard of anything that can top that, in terms of the size and quality of the conversion...