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What to do with old computer parts?

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Genocyde

Wed Dec 16 2009, 02:49AM

Registered Member #1575 Joined: Sun Jul 06 2008, 12:21AM
Location:
Posts: 6

I have a bunch of old junk computer parts, they still work, they're just kind of outdated. I don't want to just throw them away though, does anyone have any fun ideas? Anything I could do with old RAM sticks or processors or motherboards?

Turkey9

Wed Dec 16 2009, 03:17AM

Registered Member #1451 Joined: Wed Apr 23 2008, 03:48AM
Location: Boulder, Co
Posts: 661

You could build a home server with them. Also a pretty good firewall. Could network them all and experiment with how viruses spread. I've got a bunch of old computers too and make Frankenstein machines... just group together the most ram and add a bunchy of hard drives and use the fastest cpu....quite fun! I haven't done it, but you could build a linux cluster out of them and end up with a pretty powerful machine. If you have done much with linux installing it on one of your scrap machines is a great way to learn! And if nothing else you can always part them out and sell the stuff on eBay.

There, there are some ideas! And not to mention building things that aren't functional, such as sculptures... Have fun!

rp181

Wed Dec 16 2009, 03:24AM

Registered Member #1062 Joined: Tue Oct 16 2007, 02:01AM
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Posts: 1529

look up beowulf computer clusters.

Hon1nbo

Wed Dec 16 2009, 07:10PM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040

clustering is fun and very easy, however if you do not have matched parts things can get a bit dodgy but still functional for the most part

watching virii (is that the plural/) spread can be interesting, but you must use caution to protect your other assets (e.g. the methods used to infect and monitor must be protected, etc)

there are a gazillion options, and it boils down to what's available and what you want to do

here is a short list of what I think can be done on most any machine of a respectable age (e.g. still has serial or parallel type old): custom musical instrument, a basic oscilloscope, automation for just about anything, a server (in fact my website server is a recycled old computer!), a MAME machine (or other form of video game system, lots of fun to be had with this one), internet linked projects, or if you want a couple more years of normal use on them before turning them into something, slap linux into them!

of course, those are just the ones which preserve the machine intact - I, for one, love making electronic art and sometimes they perform a function in an artistic way sometimes I just make circuit art; the hard drives (assuming they are magnetic disks) make very good gyroscopic stabilizers (there is an instructable for that, he used it on a camera for slow shutter speeds while holding the camera for fantastic results, though you could use it to stabilize other things as well); the RAM might potentially be suitable for use in a RAM PCI-Express card that turns it into data storage; the PSUs can be used as a bench supply with a little modification; the processors can be used to cook things or warm beverages

the list goes on, and on, and on!

Renesis

Wed Dec 16 2009, 08:32PM

Registered Member #2028 Joined: Mon Mar 16 2009, 08:13PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 319

JJHman mentions MAME machines, but you can emulate more than just arcade games. There are tons of emulator software for console games too, like Project 64 (N64) and ZSNES (Super nintendo). There are also tutorials on how to modify old console controllers to communicate with serial, paralell and even USB ports. Some graphics card can even be configured with special software to drive its VGA port at PAL or NTSC frequencies so you can play on your tellie:

Genocyde

Wed Dec 16 2009, 08:54PM

Registered Member #1575 Joined: Sun Jul 06 2008, 12:21AM
Location:
Posts: 6

Great ideas guys, thanks. I'll look into clusters, sounds interesting.

Dinges

Thu Dec 17 2009, 02:44AM

Registered Member #2511 Joined: Mon Dec 07 2009, 02:46AM
Location:
Posts: 36

Why not give the humble power supply unit (PSU) a little consideration...?

Convert the power supply to variable voltage (1.2-29V) with adjustable current limiting (0.1-10A)?

This one I did last weekend:

(notice the potmeters to adjust voltage and current); the cabinet in that picture is the one that PSU and 2 others will end up in, with voltage and current meters.

This one was done about 2 years ago; again, 2.5-29V at 0.1-10A:

1261017073 2511 FT81081 Sophisticated Psus

Convert to a variable voltage (5-60V) with adjustable current limiting (0.1-5A)? This one was done last weekend too:

Convert to an induction heater? (working on that now)

1261017148 2511 FT81081 Induction Heater Trial

Convert to 2.5-25V with 8A current-limit so you can charge a 1.5F capacitorbank? And use it as a powersupply for your own projects (capacitor-discharge spotwelder, for example)?

http://picasaweb.google.com/motorconversion/CDSpotwelder#

Or convert to 24V/10A and use it as the powersupply for your CNC machine?

http://picasaweb.google.com/motorconversion/CNC#

The AT and ATX power supplies offer near-infinite possibilities for hacking. Link to a how-to (not my idea, BTW):

http://www.thebackshed.com/Windmill/FORUM1/forum_posts.asp?TID=2187&PN=1

The basic schematic for the variable-current modification:

1261017073 2511 FT81081 Oztules Schematic

The possibilities with those supplies are endless....

Peter.

wylie

Sat Dec 19 2009, 12:12AM

Registered Member #882 Joined: Sat Jul 07 2007, 04:32AM
Location:
Posts: 103

At one point i had an assortment of old Dell boxes (mostly pentium1&2's, 1 pIII lol) all running seti@home. They couldn't compare with the northwood p4 i had at the time in throughput though. Even my Octane could complete more work units in a day than they did in a week. Heck, my lil sparcIPX wasn't much slower than the pentium2's for seti@home. I think the IPX beat them all if you consider watts vs. performance.

I've been thinking about my own rendering farm since i got into using blender and synfig studio, but i've been considering using playstations. Once the ps3 is old enough to be had to for around $200, a 10-node cluster would be pretty attractive. Seems like a poor-mans alternative to server blades. Do they have enough RAM though? The 32mb in a ps2 seemed too small for use in a render farm. (And putting linux on them seemed like a nontrivial task last time i looked.) Is the 256mb in the ps3 going to be enough for each node? I have to go google the typical throughput of a render farm now dangit. But seems like you'd get alot more bang-for-your-kWh going that route. Or maybe build a custom cabinet and use a bunch of pentiumM boards. With electricity prices going up, the power requirements become a bigger concern.

Really, running them at all is a cost/benefit analysis. Home File Server? Sure, probably worth the electricity. Home Automation? Yeah, would be cheap, but you could get something new thats much more efficient and not that expensive. I mean, running a pent2 all the time, even with minimal drive activity (ie, letting em sleep) is using 20-30W just for the CPU. I don't want to try to quantify the overhead of the rest of the system, but you could use a pic micro or some commercially available embedded board that used under 10W total. Just throwing out a number there, might be able to control a home automation system with way less power. I guess it depends on the features.

For whatever use though, you want to consider the power consumption of those old beasts. Even if i hadn't messed up the network settings on my Octane so that i couldn't telnet in anymore, i still would be hard pressed to power it up. 730Watt powersupply. I doubt it actually draws that much, but based on the space-heater like characteristics of the air from its fan....it's using a good amount of power. Now maybe if i needed a space heater, i could use its computational abilities on the side. But it just doesn't make sense to run it only for the computing power.

@Dinges

Very quality work on those mods! The induction heater one is really neat, got more pics/info on that project? I tried winding a gdt on those yellow toroids with poor results. Anyone got a guess as to what material# those are? I only tried ones that had xformer windings on them to begin with, so pretty sure i wasn't using a choke-grade material.

101111

Sat Dec 19 2009, 01:28AM

Registered Member #575 Joined: Sun Mar 11 2007, 04:00AM
Location: Norway
Posts: 263

A little OT.
Dinges, I really like all the reverse engineering you have done to those ATX SMPSs.

rp181

Sat Dec 19 2009, 02:46AM

Registered Member #1062 Joined: Tue Oct 16 2007, 02:01AM
Location:
Posts: 1529

wylie:
playstation's are not good for rendering, for the reason you said (low RAM). Linux installing is easy, and if you can't figure that out, a company sells PS3's with yellow dog linux, and even PS3 clusters for supercomputing.
Have you looked at lux render? its great for running a render farm, with very realistic renderings. The built in networking is bad as it distributes chunks. If you are interested, I can send you a program my brother wrote that distributes frames (its only for animations) to each computer. It was tested on 32 computers, each with 2GB of RAM, and a AMD athalon (don't know AMD, equivilant to Intel dual core processors, probably around 2ghz each)
I agree with 101111, great mods! especially the CD spot welder.

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