(no subject)

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

After some light reading in the post below about the lady wanting to donate the 486, i got to wondering: How many of you are like me, and love scrapping old machines because of the parts that can be salvaged out of them?

Hard drives: Rare earth magnets are useful and fun, platters and separator rings are shiny, and aluminum recycles with positive cashflow.

Power supplies: Full of useful chokes, coils, ceramic resistors, and aluminum heatsinks. Can sometimes be salvaged intact and running, and i always have a need for 12vdc and 5vdc power supplies for model railroad applications.

Memory sticks: I always snag these and use a heat-gun to blow the actual chips off the stick; then add the sticks to my pile for eventual conversion into cyberpunk plate mail.

Processors: I want to mosaic tile my bathroom in used processors, with all the pins facing out. Perhaps i'll even install them in Space Invaders patterns. Heatsinks are also useful, and/or aluminum.

Mobos: Occasionally useful for lifting an odball logic chip or two; plus the bios EPROMS are typically reusable. I think i even used one for burning and swapping in macrovision/region-free firmware for my Apex DVD player.

Floppies and CD-ROMS: I usually find small gears and motors here. Also, some of the internal parts make great freight-car scrap loads, when painted to look like rusty steel.

Cases: Sheet steel. Useful for projects, or recycling.

Case LED/Switch harnesses: I reuse the header plugs for connecting signalling logic boards to the layout.

Keyboards: I pull the keys off and glue them to things. Like bus stop shelters and parking meters. Arrow keys are great for directing people along a route, and letters can be useful for quotation (or poetry, but that's not really my thing).

Mice: I've got a bucket of (cleaned) mice balls at work. Haven't yet found a purpose for these, but it's probably only a matter of time.

Cathode Monitors: ....well, i don't have much use for these. If they work and have A/V hookups, they can get used in the game room at cons. If not, trash.

Flatscreens: I love pulling the cold-cathode light bars out of these. 12v inverters are not too difficult to get, so i often use them as passenger-car or station lighting. The lucite sheets are fairly useful too.



How about yourselves?

Comments

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Processors: I want to mosaic tile my bathroom in used processors, with all the pins facing out.

Ow... don't ever trip and fall against your bathroom wall, now >_

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping the surreality will offset the pain.

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

A decent sized old case can be easily converted into a light box with a bit of picture glass and a light kit.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Hey, that sounds cool. Hadn't thought of that.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

I help all of my neighbors with their computer issues, and they often give me their old machines when they decide to upgrade, because I won't take money from them. (I can't. They're all old enough to be my grandparents, and taking money would make me feel bad.)

I've kludged together any number of Frankenboxen out of those, for kids whose families can afford the cheapassed internet access, but not the outlay for a machine.

It makes me SO happy to get e-mail from these kids. A whole different world is open to them now, and that pleases me.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

That sounds really fulfilling. Would that more people cared this much, the world might be a better place.

[chaobell]

HOLY SHIT I LOVE OLD COMPUTER AND OTHER MISCELLANEOUS ELECTRONIC GUTS. I have a box of such guts I use for various art projects; the box is currently being raided for proton pack parts for my Halloween costume.

But I love cannibalizing bits and pieces of old stuff. Especially hard drives and their beautiful shiny innards. I have a mobile in here made from platters and separator rings, along with some copper wire and bits of colored glass.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Dude, proton packs rule. Also, the mobile sounds really rad.

[snyperwolf.livejournal.com]

Man, that's like straight native american. Leave no part unused, for it would dishonor the machine from once it came.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of it that way... but seems fitting? I try to strive for balance in most the things i do.

[donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Straight up.

[chaobell]

[insert that "Take a good look at this, kids--we don't know what it is, but it's the only part of the buffalo we don't use" Far Side strip here]

[mavikfelna.livejournal.com]

Mice balls make awesome wrist-rocket ammunition. Just saying.

--Mav

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Oh nice! How often do you lose them, tho?

[fixerkitty.livejournal.com]

If you ever tile your bathroom in Space Invaders patterns, remember...pix or it didn't happen. ;)

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

I take pics of everything. Sometimes unnecessarily so. In fact, this seems like the perfect segue for linking to my photography (http://pics.livejournal.com/hiroe/).

[jokergirl.livejournal.com]

Heh, I do. I have jewelry made from old processors, and I just love twiddling resistors and the cores of induction coils into my stuff as well.

;)

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

YUS. I need to get a broach backpart, so i can wear an old processor as the pin for keeping my cravat nicely bunched.

[pixilated-serra.livejournal.com]

"cyberpunk plate mail"

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Heh, thank you. What are my options for taking delivery?

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

Me and my geek crew from college would scavenge old RAM out of scrapped machines all the time. Except, we hunted down the kind from the 486 era that had the little hole punched in one end. Those made excellent keychains.... I never lost my keys when I had a stick of RAM attached.

I used to have a huge box of old parts at my parents' house just in case I found a use for them. Sadly they got scrapped during a time when they were trying to compact my old crap into my old room. Haha. I'm sad their gone since there's tons of geeky arts & crafts I could do with them. :(

Though, I do need to find a new stick of RAM for a keychain so I can stop losing my keys in the bottom of my backpack.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

aw, that sucks. Fortunately my parents are both collectors like i am, so they've never tossed any of my old stuff.

Why not get a carabiner, and clip them on your belt/belt loop? That way you can show off your geek cred (via the ram stick keychain) without having to dig for them.

[ignescent.livejournal.com]

oooh, I love the idea of the plate mail. I tend to use the chips off old boards for various crafts, including voodoo bugs. (you make a bug out of the chip, and it scares away the software bugs)

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

I've seen those sorts of bugs at hamfests and swap meets. Where do you put them for maximum voodoo effectiveness?

[preserver3.livejournal.com]

Printers: I worked a job once where we used the Epson printer language to drive a cutter to cut out foam blocks for a specialized packaging process. I admittedly borrowed the idea from a friend, but I keep my Epson printer bible around and collect printers in hopes I can make a better RepRap.

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

cool. What kind of foam?

[arabwel.livejournal.com]

You = Awesome :D

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Aw, shucks. Thanks?

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

You win at life. :)

By the way I'm getting rid of my old Dell. Motherboard finally died on it. It's either donate it to a "Good Cause" (such as space-invader bathroom tiles), or get a new motherboard for it and make it a backup Unreal Tournament machine for LANs. Suggestions?

[donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Have you looked about for a local Free Geek org?

[alexanderc.livejournal.com]

I find it funny that most people dismantle things like the RAM and the board for arts and crafts. I actually use them all for their actual purpose and put them in new projects. RAM chips are useful for little projects with PIC processors for example.

If not that, I restore the machine to some functionality. I've got an old 386 crammed full of parallel ports and almost a GB of disk space to operate as a print server. I've got an old Sun IPX that I use with a GPS receiver as my master NTP clock. Another project coming up is an environmental control system. Doesn't need much horsepower, just lots of scripts running.

[jill-idle.livejournal.com]

For the balls from mice, you can make games out of them and give them as gifts. Pyraos is a game that needs 30 balls, half in one colour, half in another. I have more than one colour in my own ball collection, perhaps you do as well. http://www.abstractstrategy.com/pyraos.html