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Hardware

Power Your AMD Via Tesla Coils 167

Posted by chrisd from the can't-imagine-that-passing-spec dept.
Propane writes "Here's a fine gentleman that decided to power his AthlonXP via a Tesla Coil right here at arstechnia. Looks like he has some cooling issues, he is currently looking for suggestions on cooling, maybe he can get some tips from Misson: Submersible."
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Power Your AMD Via Tesla Coils More

Power Your AMD Via Tesla Coils

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  • someone has too much time on his hands!!!!
  • Next Up - Tesla Powered Laptops!

    What will they think of next!?

    • Oh, great. As if the air industry didn't have enough troubles. Now you want people to bring Tesla coils onto planes?

      I'll take the non-smoking section.
    • Next Up - Tesla Powered Laptops!

      What will they think of next!?

      Hopefully some pretty lightweight Faraday Cages for hard drives given the huge EMP field assaulting the microscopic magnetic charge states on the hard drive platters.

      Here... let me get my degausser and run it over my hard drives a few times and I'll enjoy the side effects of a Tesla Coil powered PC. Oh wait, that would be WRONG.

  • What a waste! (Score:5, Funny)

    by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMstefanco.com> on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:23AM (#4243001) Homepage Journal
    I use MY Tesla Coil to talk to the ALIENS...

    • Re:What a waste! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I use my Tesla coil for demon summoning. Black Magic draws a helluva lot of power.
  • creativity at its finest but english needs help.

  • Is anyone out there? (Score:3, Funny)

    by tedDancin ( 579948 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:25AM (#4243010)
    Me thinks the SETI aliens he's looking for will notice the tesla sparks before he notices the aliens.

    I'm sure there's noise limit laws to prevent this kind of thing (:

  • Maybe I'm wrong.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sokie ( 60732 ) <(moc.rotcafegde) (ta) (essej)> on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:25AM (#4243011)
    ...but those first 2 shots of the "arcs" from his "Tesla coils" look a hell of a lot like the lightning effect from Photoshop.

    Maybe not, but with no actual details on the page...I'm skeptical. :)

    -Sokie
    • I think in the second one you can see the reflection of the arc in the coil on the left. If it is photoshopped, he did a damn good job.
    • It's a hoax. That third shot (the giant fan) is wayyyy old. Still funny though.
    • Or it was just stolen.

      Hey, look at this quote:

      "Dude.

      Slashdot got trolled.

      From the writeup, they think it's for real.

      Jesus.

      I hope not."

      When did they say that? Oh, February of last year. I don't like this one bit.
    • >...but those first 2 shots of the "arcs" from
      >his "Tesla coils" look a hell of a lot like the
      >lightning effect from Photoshop ...or the lightning effect from Photoshop looks a hell of a lot like the arcs from a Tesla coil.
    • Don't be so skeptical or you'll lose too much fun, you're that kind of person who wouldn't even believe to snake oil :)

      I want to believe [google.ch]

    • Re:Maybe I'm wrong.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12, 2002 @06:22AM (#4243536)
      I know about tesla coils - i play with them as a hobby. The tesla coils in the pic look very real. Actually it looks to me like there is only one tesla coil in the picture. The other coil is a recieving coil tuned to the exact same frequency as the real coil so as to act as an attractor for the lightning strikes.

      I don't think the lightning effects are photoshop - thats exactly what a tesla coil looks like if u photograph it in the day time.

      This is without a doubt a joke - if u really did this you would fry the motherboard without a doubt. Tesla coils produce 100,000's of v's at frequencies of around 150Khz and very little average current (though peak current in a strike to ground can momentarily become very high).

      Look at http://www.hot-streamer.com for more pics and stuff and http://hot-streamer.com/christophertelford/teslaco ils/tesla3.html
      if you want some nice pictures / divX 5 videos of a real coil operating.

      • if u really did this you would fry the motherboard without a doubt.

        Yes, they can and do throw lightning bolts like that - you can see the one in the garage striking the door and something hanging down.

        For a second I thought someone had actually made something in the true spirit of the Tesla radio patent and powered a pc using energy from a resonant coupled rf coil - that is, one coil is powered from the wall socket in the usual manner, maybe w/o the dramatic lightning. A few yards (or further) away another resonant coil is setup and power is drawn from that, somehow rectified and regulated down to +12 and 5 volts dc. I really don't know how much power can be 'transported' for how much distance with something like that - but just last night I was playing with a small version of something similar: a simple coil/variable cap (resonant at from 80 to 150Mhz - it was from a one tube FM superregen rcvr experiment) and a grid dipper a couple of inches away. Anyway, with a 'scope on the 'receiver' coil/cap at resonance you can pickup about 3 - 5 volts peak-peak. Again, don't know how much current/power is available but the voltage resonance rise can be amazing to see. YOu can also pickup a volt or so from a tank ckt tuned to a nearby AM station.

      • This has always been kind of a dream of mine. IO always hear baout 802.11b/bluetooth and wireless this wireless that. Why not wireless power? Of course it wont actually work ion the average home but it could be possible to build a tesla coil and then build a receptor that brings the voltage down so the mobo can use it. The problem is that there would have to be some serious caps in there to store energy for the comp untill the next blast from the coil. Also you dont need a tesla coil to power a mobo to higher voltage. Even a 250W power supply could fry tyhe hel out of the average motherboard if you set it to. So even though this looks cool its prob a fake but maybe someone WILL make somehting like this.
    • We got hosed Tommy... We got hosed...:(
    • Those are real tesla coils. But they are not powering the computer. I see a picture of what looks like 1 million volt teslas out on somebody's lawn. (Yes, big coils like that really do shoot those huge sparks)

      I just can't imagine how this would power a computer. Most computer circuits run on low voltage. Just a few volts. I can't imagine how a huge tesla coil wouldn't fry a processor considering unnoticable low current 1,000 volt static discharges can cause a mobo to fail.

      This guy is full of shit. I just see a picture of the coils out on a lawn and then some pictures of a computer. Powering a computer with a tesla coil is a good way to make liquid silicon.

  • Pfft. (Score:5, Funny)

    by p00ya ( 579445 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:26AM (#4243012) Homepage
    If he was smart, he'd have used all the excess heat released to power the tesla coils... And what about all those spare photons coming from that monitor.

    Any real inventor would make sure it had an infinite supply of power.

    • Oh god you got modded insightful. Just for those of you who didn't mod as "funny" its impossible to make perpetually powered computers.
  • isnt this WAY overboard? first off, the bottleneck in overclocking is not power, but cooling. second, he doesnt even say what clock speed the thing is running at. third, to say that other people should do this to crunch seti WU's is idiotic because you can buy a barebones WU-crunching athlon machine for a few hundred bucks.

    but is it cool? hell yeah its cool.
    • life is like a big mac

      Slow and overpriced? Oh wait, you're talking about the burger, aren't you?

      (Calm down, guys. I run a Mac news site ;)

  • wow, that's fake. (Score:5, Informative)

    by dirgotronix ( 576521 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:28AM (#4243019) Homepage
    Wow, that has got to be the worst arrangement of misc. pictures I have ever seen. None of the pictures there are even closely related. In no way does the person show how it would be possible to link a tesla coil of that size to his pc, and in the next picture, of the pc in front of the industrial fan, it has a power supply (oh wait, didn't he say he needed to remove that?)

    Amusing for the overclocking crowd, but even more amusing if you believe it.

  • HUH..... (Score:3, Informative)

    by SevenTowers ( 525361 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:28AM (#4243021) Homepage
    This is supposed to be a joke. is this the 1st of april? Dudes, it's a joke! but then again, this IS /. :P

    • Re:HUH..... (Score:3, Informative)

      by SevenTowers ( 525361 )
      the picture with the fatass fan has been online for ages. the one of the video card too. and the rest is photoshopped. Did the poster actually believe this? what about checking out the link before posting a story, it's so damn obvious its a fake. "Hey look im running 5k Volts through my ahtlon and its at 250C.... shit, I mean come on
    • Yeah, it's a joke. Looks like Slashdot is starting to lose it's touch. Is it me, or do you also notice that some of the more intelligent people have left Slashdot? Where have they gone? I think I will follow..

  • Mysterious. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Renraku ( 518261 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:29AM (#4243022) Homepage
    First of all, the poster of the pictures doesn't speak very good English. Second, all he shows is a few Tesla coils in action, a computer, and some cooling devices. I do believe this is what we like to call a 'hoax'. And if he did get it to work, he should post details on how that Athlon XP could survive at the voltages required to power a Tesla coil. Give some designs or something, not just badly narrated pictures of random objects.

  • Very funny. (Score:3, Informative)

    by re-Verse ( 121709 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:31AM (#4243031) Homepage Journal
    A very cool/funny hoax. The post says "Now it crunch a workunit within 50 minutes!!!" and "my new farm will end the seti.germany-threat forever!" I completely dig this, terribly funny... but shouldn't /. put this under the "Its funny. Laugh." category? You don't have to know too much about the way computers work to know that replacing your power suppy with a bigger beefier one will in no noticable way effect your processing power.

    The only way i could see this as a serious Slashdot headline would be to post it on April first.
    • You don't have to know too much about the way computers work to know that replacing your power suppy with a bigger beefier one will in no noticable way effect your processing power.

      Well, this IS /. .. most of the people here still believe that raw CPU MHz is how you measure processor performance.

  • Defective or broken parts... (Score:4, Funny)

    by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMstefanco.com> on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:32AM (#4243033) Homepage Journal
    After obliterating his computer with a Tesla Coil, will he return the parts as defective or broken? [slashdot.org]
  • I thought only ATI cards printed their circuits on red PCB.

  • Hoax - Look at the image URLs (Score:5, Informative)

    by abimelech ( 244219 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:39AM (#4243054)
    http://www.datenburg.de/download/sparks3.jpg
    http ://www.datenburg.de/download/sparks1.jpg
    http://o dense.kollegienet.dk/~madsj/images/cooling .jpg
    http://www.moloch.org/pn4pics/images/laser-c ooling .jpg
    http://www.xpcshop.idv.tw/img/raymond/46007. jpg

    Looks like none of those photos are his. That giant fan looked suspiciously familiar as well.

    It's still funny :)
  • Looks like some people even believe in this hoax. Maybe this is a marketing study, where they try to measure if it is profitable to sell some new "technical miracle" to unsuspecting people.

  • Tesla coils are dangerous! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We have seen a lot of cool pictures of tesla coils recently on slashdot, but I have not seen a single word about the dangers of high voltage! It should be reminded, that tesla coils are extremely dangerous and they are not toys. You can get killed if you start playing with them.
    • But I don't need to wear safety gloves, because I'm Homer Sim--
    • I've done research about this. I've seen all of the movies about lightning and read all of the comic books. They lead to this conclusion:
      1) The main effect of lightning is that you black out. When you wake up, something will be different.

      2) Usually the different thing is your brain. You may have gained ESP, or perhaps telekinesis.

      3) Sometimes the result of a lightning strike is speed. Since lightning moves so fast, it may transfer this speed into you. It is also possible that conditions #2 and #3 both happen, meaning that you think super-fast.

      4) Occasionally, the electricity of the lightning will be transferred to you. If this happens, you have most likely become a being of pure energy, capable of jumping into electrical sockets, flying, etc. You'll also have super speed, since as we know, electricity is fast.

      5) If its a rare, freak accident, you may not gain any super powers at all. However, this means that something important happened to someone ELSE while you were passed out. Perhaps, for example, your arch-nemesis kidnapped your fiance. This is most likely to happen if you already HAVE super powers, or at least really cool talents.

      6) All plasma state electrical discharges have the same capabilities of imbuing super powers as lightening does. Be warned, however, that when you do experiments in a LAB involving lighting, you're likely to get a side effect of criminal insanity due to the electrical strike, especially if you already know a super-hero or are working late into the night. If your an ASSISTANT of someone else who is doing the work, and you're just there because you're trying to make money for a good reason (for instance, to buy your mother a nice birthday present), you're almost guaranteed to get super powers if there is an accident.
    • And Don't Run With Scissors!!!
  • If you follow what he is saying it makes no sense at all :) Backed up by the fact the images are all nicked from other sources and the power supply is very obviously still in the case and powering the motherboard...
  • and you are sure to get chicks! To get started, browse to this page about Electricity from wood waste [67.82.213.252].

  • Space Age Engineering (Score:3, Funny)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdoug@RABBIT ... minus herbivore> on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:48AM (#4243080) Homepage
    From the look of this setup, I have a strange feeling this guy did a tour of duty on that Russian refueling station in Armageddon. Wonder if he quit smoking.
  • It is generally a bad idea to hook up several HUNDERED THOUSAND volts to any computer. Unless you have that one from the Superman movie (and have some one-man blimps to carry you and your henchmen to your secret lair*).

    * Superhero seeking missle not included.

  • Bogus (Score:3, Informative)

    by Colonel Panic ( 15235 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:50AM (#4243085)
    OK, so exactly how is a Tesla coil supposed to make your Athlon run faster?

    Tesla coils produce high voltage (1000s of volts) but not much amperage. This kind of voltage would probably zap your Athlon into oblivion...
    And as someone else pointed out, there's no mention of clock speeds - a processor won't run faster just because you feed it high voltage.
    • No, but a CPU is supposed to make fewer errors when geting higher voltage, even though usually it's just like 0.1V more..

  • The point? (Score:2, Informative)

    by lpret ( 570480 )
    Whether or not this is actually real is not really the point.

    I'm trying to figure out why this is even on Slashdot to begin with. Is this some ingenious way of modding a system (Quickly becoming the computer equivalent of "rice rocket" Civics)? No, it does not:

    Improve the system's performance - as one poster has already mentioned, other bottlenecks exist which would more efficiently improve the system.

    Look cool - call me crazy, but his setup looks like my old Pentium 100 I can't bear to throw away. I've seen some really great case mods on /. and this doesn't even qualify. Now, is this a new way to power a system? Perhaps, but usable -- never! What purpose does this serve to anybody? Do we learn anything? Not really.

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that Slashdot needs to have a better criteria for what is being posted. Clearly updates on the newest version of Mozilla is acceptable as we are, for the most part, users of alternative products (non M$), yea even the claim of the third moon affects our intragalactic geography. But a Tesla Coil powered system (that looks completely fake)? C'mon, this has no relevance to anybody.

    • I also wonder if slashdot is dwindling. Did the upper eschelon leave once a more general public caught on?
      • people with user #'s of 4 digits or less just read slashdot to remind themselves it was all better when...... .... meanwhile we all hang out on boards you guys can't even find ;)

        Occasionally our highly sophisticated intelligent agents write stuff to convince everyone slashdot is still populated by *real* hackers.

        Meanwhile I have this rather clever water powered windmill that drives a wind turbine to pump up oil which I use to turn an internal combustion engine which drives my laptop. When the laptop is off, I use the excess power to fill up my water reservior. At night I use my batteryless solar torches to power a tesla coil to run a rather natty blue fluorescent tube.

        or something

        Troc
    • considering it appears to be a joke i think it should just go under the laugh it's funny catagory
  • If this is indeed real, he is obviously doing this for the FLARE. I imagine it can look pretty impressive to the non-iniated, and young wanna-be geek. Or even to stoned girlfriends, who like the pretty lights. She'll find it useful lighting her blunt with the SPARKS.
    • Speaking of lighting things on fire with a tesla coil..

      I recently purchased a "mini" tesla coil.
      Its about 10 inches high, with a ball on top rather then a toroid.
      Now odviously its not going to shoot 6 foot streamers across the room, but it will do 2 - 3 inch ones.

      The cool thing is because the streamers are soo small, it actually makes a pretty cool toy.
      (Its also much lower voltage. around 60,000 volts.)
      When I cant find a lighter, I just fire it up, tune it to 13 clicks past start,
      stick my cigarette about half an inch away from the ball, and in about 10 seconds, I have a lit cig. :)
      One of the other cool things to do with this insanely small tesla, is fire it up within about 10 feet of someones comptuer.
      Computers are pretty well RFI shielded, but keyboards and mice sure as hell arent.
      Watch your friends freak as their mouse cursor flys randomly across the screen,
      Programs opening and closing at random, and text appearing out of nowhere that looks like it came out of a random number generator.
      One small drawback is that when they realize whats going on, you normally either get completely bitched out, or the crap beaten out of you. (depending on whom your playing this little gag on)

      Also, if you place a 100 watt or higher incandecent light bulb on top of the thing, You have a mini plazma globe..
      Even more fun for your stoned girlfriend, Or your acid tripping self for that matter.

      --Una
  • This is just lame. I wish the guy actual would have hooked up a tesla coil to his mobo. It would make for a much more interesting story.

    I can't wait for the quantum computers. It'll be funny watching people try to squeeze a few more exa-flops out of thier computers via relativity.
  • I always thought of hooking a tesla coil up to a computer to be more of a security option. Heck, I want one to skeletonize the PHB that keeps entering my cube.
  • Dude. Slashdot got trolled. From the writeup, they think it's for real. Jesus. I hope not.
    So there ya go. A post on the forum that this "article" comes from. I also don't see how the hell a Tesla coil has anything to do with improving processor performance. But then again, E&M has always been my weakest area in physics...

    Anyways, this is a hoax. There is no need for all of that stuff. Why is this here?

  • YHBT (Score:2)

    by tunah ( 530328 )
    From the messages underneath:
    Quote:
    Originally posted by Jonny 290: Dude.

    Slashdot got trolled.

    From the writeup, they think it's for real.

    News at 11.
  • This is a fake;
    1) If you check the URL'ds of the images, they are coming from different sources.
    2) The Lightning coming of the coils is a photoshop effect
    3) The Tesla Coils are not Tesla Coils at all. If you look at the bottom of the structires, they are being held in place with plastic plant pots. These wouls melt in seconds
    4) Everyone on the board over at arestechnica is laughing at us

    At least we gave them a few hits...

  • Slashdot Gets Trolled (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Next idea: Apply those Tesla coils to Taco's shock therapy ...
  • What he needs is my case [gimmezamore.com] to cool his system down

    -dk
    • Hey! Great case. I take it that isn't one of those quiet fans?
      Seriously, I like the way the PVC piping and the clear sides come together.
      Very nice.

      Cheers,
      Jonathan
  • Unless of course you know it's a joke right?

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday September 12, 2002 @05:59AM (#4243500)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • power my amd with *WHAT*? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Power my AMD via Testicles?? WTF! Slashdot is gross!
  • ... Looks a bit fake. The third pic down I've had on my machine for over a year and the fourth doesn't seem to correspond to the fifth (needed more cooling then pic of fans).

    Oh well.
  • Must have some /extremely/ static RAM. But I think I want the big fan...
  • Got a funny idea that may help: assign karma to editors too, not only regular users. So when a editor posts a dupe or troll, he gets hit.

    Bad karma, Mr. Editor? Ya not posting on the front page for a while sir!
  • it's bull KAKA!

    check the img url's!

    Somebody get this off slashdot. Your given yourselves and all your readers a bad name!

    GET THIS OFF THE SITE!
  • He is the same one who believed:
    Ripping Vinyl Via Your Scanner? [slashdot.org]

    ChrisD is a moron. I agree with an earlier poster about editor karma; let's hit 'em where it hurts.

  • See, I always said those 'bzzz' things on Flash Gordon were the way to go!
  • Can't people recognize and appreciate a joke? For a "story" posted around 1am, there sure is a lot of griping going on.

    Read it, laugh, move along. If you can't, then just get over it or go away.

  • um.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NNland ( 110498 )
    It's being said on the arstechnica forum so I thought I'd pass it along to you guys (in case you don't realize it yet). It's not supposed to be REAL or a HOAX, it's supposed to be funny.

    You don't need to check image urls to know that.
    *shake head*

    - Josiah
  • Telsa coils produce massive amounts of voltage in order to cross their gap and although you are looking at greatly decreased amperage, you are still producing a hefty amount of wattage... now I will bypass stuff that can be argued such as the origin of the pictures and the like, we can't prove that but as usual we can use science to prove all... Reason why it's a HOAX #1 Now an experiment for the kiddies: Take one of your numerous AOL CDs and toss it in the microwave for only two seconds... what happens? you vaporize the aluminum inside of the CD. Now the wires on a PCB are a lot thicker than the tiny layer of foil in the CD however they are still rather thin and would be exposed for longer than two seconds. You would do immense damage to the wires of the mobo itself. Now take into account all of the basic circuits on a mobo. Run line voltage through one of those resistors and it explodes, run that kind of power through them and kiss them goodbye. Not to mention all those far more sensitive things like processors..... why this is a HOAX #2 Telsa coils are made to arc electricity over fairly long distances (as far as electricty is concerned anyway) if you run that much power through a motherboard with tiny (less than a millimeter on a board) spaces between the wires and what have you? a massive mess of electro-magnetic trash. You'd have electricity arcing from wire to wire, solder joint to solder joint, in other words, not a useable computer at all at best all it is a massive waste of electricity and a fire hazard. Lastly, I'd like to say that my warm feelings for slash dot have been harshed a bit by this, as if postings for porn pages showing up in the forums wern't bad enough... Really, slashdot is supposed to be about science and computers, not ridiculous ideas like using a tesla coil to power a computer (which btw, a tesla coil doesn't produce electricty, but I figure you all know that much). Granted, it's funny, but it IS a joke, if you thought it was real, I have some beach front property and a perpetual motion machine to sell you.
  • I actually used some of these [mineralsprings.com], these [fsu.edu] and these [akamaitech.net] to build [google.ca]
    some of these [royalsoc.ac.uk]. They [vanderbilt.edu]
    tried to stop me by using these [google.ca]
    and these [ou.edu]
    but I did not give in!
    I know a guy [spawntoys.com] and he helped me to bring these [ranor.com] in so we could design [google.ca] and design some more [ocn.ne.jp] and build some of these [ou.edu] and these [gepower.com] and fight everyone [firstscience.com] off and scary [netvigator.com] the rest.

    So finally, I could use more of
    these [nthu.edu.tw] and these [ihi.co.jp] and these [ou.edu] to get my freakingly cool nuclear powered microprocessor. [perfecthost.net]

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