Making Stuff Out Of Broken Computer Equipment? 594
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."
Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magnets (Score:1, Interesting)
Fun party game: Stick to magnets together with random body parts in-between. Not THOSE kind of body parts you sick perverts!
P2 heatsink (Score:2, Interesting)
Your can make speakers... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"...ask /. readers the first of these questions (Score:1, Interesting)
My cousin (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [bawk.net].
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Jewelry (Score:4, Interesting)
They make good refirgerator magnets, as well. And if you're patient, you can make your own motherboard clipboard.
Tried but true (Score:5, Interesting)
Mac fish tank (Score:5, Interesting)
Fridge Magnets (Score:2, Interesting)
Stepper motors for CNC, UPS batteries for RC boat (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
What to do with the rest of the keyboard (Score:1, Interesting)
I've been working (Score:3, Interesting)
B.E.A.M. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Daft idea (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
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-use electronic components! (Score:5, Interesting)
A hot air paint stripper will surface mount components even more easily but it's hard to use surface mount components.
Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I've been working (Score:3, Interesting)
Broken terminal light show (Score:3, Interesting)
classic mac clock (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My cousin (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [cox.net]
goatee comb and free advertising (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why is there a purple octopus on your couch? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
printer as a doorstop (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [aircraft-world.com]
This is nothing (Score:2, Interesting)
Stepper Motors = Marble Sorter (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Stud finders (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
Picture here [terminatorx.cx]
Re:Dead HDD magnets (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My cousin (Score:5, Interesting)
Here [cox.net] 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:Question - shortest sentence (Score:2, Interesting)
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! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My cousin (Score:4, Interesting)
\|/
-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.
Where to get "supplies"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wall o' boards (Score:3, Interesting)
Install pegboard to entirely cover one wall of your computer room or office.
Mount the boards via standoffs to the pegboard.
Bonus points:
Re:Why is there a purple octopus on your couch? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wind Chimes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Question (Score:1, Interesting)
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg!"
THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID
Aoccdrnig to rsceearh at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht
oredr the ltteers in a ?wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the
frist and lsat ltteer be
in ?the rghit pclae. The ?rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed
it wouthit any porbelm.
Tihs ?is bcuseae the ?huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but
the wrod as a wlohe.
It may not really matter if you have all the letters but enough to make some sense of your intended meaning.
HD Magnets (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Toys for the girls (Score:1, Interesting)
First off, women just won't use any old thing that vibrates. The dildo market is pretty innovative and many women prefer certain types over others. Go to your local adult "bookstore" and take a look, you'll see all sorts of designs, but the phallus with the clit stimulator is pretty popular. There are all sorts of plastics/latex/whatever that aim for either realism or just pleasure. Lets not assume that we can't out-do mother nature, but a vibrating computer mouse is a pretty crappy idea.
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. A nice hack off the top of my head is to use an optical mouse, stuff a pipe in there, and let the powerful red LED bounce off the smoke revealing particulate patterns. A wireless mouse would just work off the battery, a normal one would work off the ps2/usb port.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Milkbottle People (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Hmmm (Score:1, Interesting)
My Wife Make Collages... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [merrie.com].
Re:Mac fish tank (Score:4, Interesting)
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. [www.exn.ca]
On irregular English plurals. (long) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
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."
Clocks, mostly (Score:3, Interesting)
Lain Art (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
72pinn dimm keychains (Score:2, Interesting)
My gf does (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Resistors (Score:3, Interesting)
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
scanner lamp (Score:1, Interesting)
The motor was dead, or at least we couldn't get it to work, but it seemed the power supply was still putting out voltage, so when we hooked it up to the flourescent lamp it turned on! The possibilities...
Being a repair shop, we often had to dim the lights to do monitor adjustments. The other techs (not having night vision goggles) would have to stop their work and wait through this.
So, connect the dots- We got some drywall screws, attached the flourescent bulb in it's housing to the bottom of a shelf over the bench, hooked up the control panel from the front of the scanner to the power supply so when you held down 'SCAN' the light would come on. The best part was that the buttons were some kind of varistor, so the power to the bulb was variable, a pressure-sensitive dimmer switch! Of couse we also made a real flip-switch so you could turn on the light without having to hold the button down constantly.
We kept the metal bar around beat the sales guys away when they came back to try and sell our tools to the customers...
-mike
Re:My cousin (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Why is there a purple octopus on your couch? (Score:2, Interesting)
A laser light show (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn (Score:3, Interesting)
With strong magnets like those found in harddrives, the effect is quite pronounced with a simple coin.
Please refer to this article [thefreedictionary.com] for more information and links.
Re:HD Magnets (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Rip apart the hard drives and take out the magn (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [ship.edu] for more details.
Re:"...Possible tall tale alert. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why is there a purple octopus on your couch? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Hardest languages (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
The VAX Bar - a great re-use... (Score:2, Interesting)
You turn it into a VAX BAR!
You can see it here. [glendale.ca.us] I've really not heard of anything that can top that, in terms of the size and quality of the conversion...