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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."
What about the good ol' Celeron Paperweight?
And yet half of the answers will be to the second!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
out of old HDDs http://afrotechmods.com/cheap/hdspeakers/hdspeaker s.htm
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.
Listen to my experimental-industrial-techno!
I make computers out of them.
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.
-- dK
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.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
There's always the classic-Mac aquarium. See some at The Apple Collection
The original, classic broken computer mod is probably still the best place to keep your purple octopus. Various references are available.
Breakfast served all day!
is the one they put the printer to in Office Space.
PC Load Letter?
John Kerry is a Joke!
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.
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.
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
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.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
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.
A hot air paint stripper will surface mount components even more easily but it's hard to use surface mount components.
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
-ZOD-
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
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
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.
try french, and quit bitching about english. enlish is actually pretty damn easy :)
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.)
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
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.
Impossible, just another way of saying really hard--given sufficient time, all problems are solvable.
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.