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

[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

[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.

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

[mrchaotica]

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

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.

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.

Tried but true

[thejoelpatrol]

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

My favorite use for old hardware...

[john_smith_45678]

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

PC Load Letter?

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.

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.

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: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: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

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.

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.

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.

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.