Computer Hardware That Can Pull Double-Duty? 64
MicklePickle asks: "It's been raining very heavily here in Sydney Oz, and as usual when we, (the SysAdmins), come in to work we take off our very wet shoes and socks and place them on one of the two hefty UPSs to dry out. They dry out very quickly on the hot fan. We even have a couple of 'toast racks', (a metal frame for housing an HP web console), to lay the shoes and socks out on. Does anyone else make use of computer hardware in a manner for which it was not intended?"
best site (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:best site (Score:1)
Re:best site (Score:2)
Sun E450. (Score:3, Funny)
Pretty bad ergonomics for the price, but it atleast had castors.
Easybake Oven (Score:4, Funny)
Cookie Oven ... for the new low price of USD500K (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Easybake Oven (Score:1)
Them legionaires bacteria will if the trichnea doesn't make you kill yourself.
Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
300 or 400 (Score:5, Funny)
Then again, do any of us use computers for what their original purpose was? I do not think Alan Turing had surfing for pr0n in mind when he thought of logic gates.
And buying Alpha EV67's just to bust seti work units is pretty weird. 3.5 years worth of seti work has been done by EV67s, and they were all done by the same person over the last 2.5 years, so someone bought 2 EV67s @ $22,000 a piece minimum primarily to crunch Seti. Could it have been Compaq themselves? Perhaps - But I expect they could hardly afford it.
Are computers for games? Sure. Games are an 8 billion dollar a year industry. They drive users to seek greater performance machines. Moores law would probably have failed years ago if all we ever needed was a good office suite.
Do I use my 12 by p166 cluster to heat my house? yes. Is there any other reason to have 12 p166s? I never run it in the summer so the primary reason to run it must be for heat. If I was actually using it for production, I would certainly have faster/more machines.
Do I leave the machine in my room while I'm sleeping? No, but I like the white noise it's fans generate to keep me from waking up for every bump in the night.
Do I really need a PC based PBX? no, but it is nice to have a convoluted voicemail script that includes "If you are a telemarketer or if you are placing an unsolicited telephone call, you MUST press 4"
Has anyone else taken apart an old ps2 mouse and hung a piece of paper from one of the rollers to create a clap on monitor (the slightest breeze or moderately loud sound turns my monitor on... I use a usb mouse for actual work).
Can you all reboot your stupid dsl router through power over Ethernet/DC relay?
Anyone else buy 100' of that thick orange cable at home depot with the 2 fibers, 4 CAT5e and a Cable TV coax then use the fiber with a cheap roto rooter sewer pipe inspection camera to spy on other rooms?...
OK, I'm a little weird... but at least I have dead man switched degaussing rings under all my boxes so when the black helicopters come for me, all the incriminating evidence will be erased.
Re:300 or 400 (Score:1)
Plans would be ideal..
Is this in an all-metal case, and if not, how do you keep the plastic face from getting melty? ;)
I think I'll refrain from turning the unused 3.5" external-accessable bay into an ashtray though..
Re:300 or 400 (Score:2)
That's the coolest Idea! Wonder what make/model of car has a flush, flat ashtray?
Re:300 or 400 (Score:1)
As to finding an ashtray that would work, write down the measurements (HxWxD) and go to your local junkyard. If you want it to be springloaded, alter the measurements to provide for some rails, or even small 'wheels'.
Or, you could take those measurements and dig out an old Compaq 386 or an old IBM PS/2 and hack the case to bits of the sizes you need. The metal in those things would work well. If you go for that idea, you can even re-use the plastic 'blank' so nobody would guess it's even there.. until you open it and their jaws drop. :) For added effect, take the processor out of the machine as well. If it's got J-leads just glue it to the bottom of the ashtray.. if it's got pins cut the suckers off first, then glue.
An old single-speed CD-ROM (you know, the kind that hooked intoyour oringinal Soundblaster? ;) could be modified as well.. hack the tray a bit, and make an area at the back roughly the size of a pack of cigs.. set it up so the tray works like those straw dispensers do. All you'd need is a 5 or 12 volt motor, a switch on the tray itself (to reverse) and a button to go behind the.. well, button. The cig dispenser would be harder to do, and even more pointless.. but it would be funny as hell.
Re:300 or 400 (Score:2)
Re:300 or 400 (Score:1)
Any ideas for uses of old tape backup drives? I've got 2, one internal and one external.. they're useless to me.
Re:300 or 400 (Score:2)
Youre giving me ideas. (Score:1)
Re:300 or 400 (Score:2)
He might have. Did you ever read Cryptonomicon?
Re:300 or 400 (Score:2)
I had in my computer the following: cd-rw, dvd, sb live platinum, ati radeon dual display, 2x 7200rpm 40gig with athlon xp 1600 and lot of stability problems with a 300w ps.
Sometimes dvd-drive would not spin up in the beginning and computer would have to be turned on and off a couple of times before all the components would power up. Sometimes one or another hd did not get recognized, etc..
All these problems disappeared when i got a 400w ps.
Re:300 or 400 (Score:1)
Sinclair ZX 81 (Score:1)
Dirk
40Mb Door Stop (Score:1)
I had a 40Mb hard disk that I ran with it's lid off for about 3 days before it crashed beyond use...
Then that became my door stop - just jam it in the hinge end of the door... ahh student days ;)
A few I can think of... (Score:3, Funny)
At the cafeteria they sell chelsea buns and give you free butter, but the butter comes in little tubs and its rock hard. I sit the tub on the back of my monitor for ten minutes and it's nice and soft.
I also have a friend who reckons the back of a monitor is great for drying weed.
Re:A few I can think of... (Score:1)
Table legs (Score:2, Interesting)
-- Tim
Re:Table legs (Score:1)
I have *one* machine holding up a table - I wish I had a picture of the actual table, but the machine is one of these [reputable.com] beasties. The problem is that there's an 8-node beowulf (4xdual PII/333, + 2gbit myrinet) on top of the table, along with an Indigo2, 2 21" SGI monitors and a 15" Compaq p.o.s. for the KVM switch, and the table was designed to hold... say... a plate of deli meats, a salad bar, and some napkins. Maybe.
So, long story short - some genius snaps off one corner of the table by standing on it. The rest of the table bows downward a little bit, resting itself on top of the SGI 4d/310 beast. Whee, computer furniture!
Cup-holder (Score:1)
Lower Heating Bill... (Score:2, Insightful)
It is just the opposite in a server room though - you end up paying more for venting and air conditioning in order to keep things cool.
babysitter (Score:2)
also as an excuse to stay home :
"the server's gone down at work and I'm on call"
I also use a few mylar splitters and run a 12v lights from the PSU!
computers have lots of uses (Score:2)
I had another friend who bought a VAX at one of the MIT Flea Markets and used it as a coffee table.
I had a third friend what used to drop monitors from a second story window and record the sound of impact and use it in techno songs. When the monitor hits the ground it makes this funky metallic implosion sound.
Back when I was in college, our computer science lab had these DEC monitors that used to get super hot--hot enough to lightly toast Pop Tarts from the vending machine down the hall.
I'm sure there are other instances--but can't think of them off the top of my head. Most of these (except the monitor dropping one) involve the immense heat generated by some hardware and the rest involve the shape of the hardware. I'd be interested to see any alternate uses that don't involve heat/shape.
Apple Macinclock (Score:2, Funny)
We had removed (and subsequently lost) the keyboard and mouse, and it ran quite happily doing nothing else for about 6 month when it mysteriously crashed. Without the keyboard there wasn`t much we could do about it.
CJC
I'm surprised there weren't more of these (Score:2)
VAXbar [arizona.edu]
SGI Challege Fridge [planet.nl]
Bagels (Score:1)
"Server - Australian for..." (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sorry, I had to.
Define 'double duty'. (Score:2)
So in that case, I'd have to say that I've used a Wang before to keep pizza warm in the machine room (it was just the right size on top for a large pizza, and conveniently table height).
I've seen towers used as stools, older generation systems (Honeywell, Wang, etc), used as tables, but in those cases, they're normally not still running, or they're running next to nothing, so they might as well not be doing their primary job.
Then we get to what I think of as 'recycling' more than 'double duty', which normally involves keeping the system from being able to do its primary function because it's doing something else. Fishtanks, tables, shelves (IBM 7171 terminal server [annoying.org]; Wang [annoying.org]) and beer fridges all seem to be fairly common.
(Please note -- there's more than one set of pictures, and they're still a year old...the house may be messy, but it's no where near where it used to be, now that my brother took most of his stuff to college, and isn't using my place for storage. I don't have any recent pictures, so the Honeywell's not there yet, and the reel-to-reel tape drive's buried in crap in the pictures I have)
Re:Define 'double duty'. (Score:2)
Speaking for Leon Phelps, the Ladies' Man [tripod.com] (warning - tripod popups), I have to say you're right about the height, but you should see a doctor about that shape problem.
laptop external PS as a footwarmer (Score:2)
My laptop PS is nice and warm and will warm my feet when it's cold in the house. Plug in and enjoy!
pets don't have the slighest problem finding any (Score:1)
When the battery is loaded, she just invades
the briefcase if it is not perfectly closed !
Hair haven't provoked any malfunction yet
(there was a story recently about how much
abuse a laptop could stand, don't know if cat hair
were mentioned).
Re:pets don't have the slighest problem finding an (Score:2)
Always mount a scratch monkey... (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM RS/6000 (Score:2, Interesting)
So each Friday we bought some six-packs of beer and put it in the (empty) drive bays. Came out wonderfully chilled at the end of the workday.
No refrigerator modding [planet.nl] required.
Re:IBM RS/6000 (Score:1)
Considering some of the server rooms I've been in. Colder than ambient equils frozen beer.
specs for cpu closks to BTU? (Score:2)
I have no idea how much computing power it would take to heat a 2100 squarefoot home though.
any idea how many BTU's (heat energy is put out by an average processor?
Re:specs for cpu closks to BTU? (Score:2)
BTU = Watt-hours x 3.414
BTU/hour = Watts x 3.414
A 500MHz PowerMac G4 is rated for about 752.4 BTU/hr. A processor that uses 50W average would be rated for 170.7 BTU/hr if all of the power was lost to heat. The typical thermal power of an Athlon XP 2000+ is 62.5W or 213.4BTU/hr.
CD-ROMs (Score:1)
I've found that, miracle of miracles, the retractable coffee-cup holder can read CD's. I'm amazed at this innovative use of computer hardware.
Well... (Score:1)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
I have TWO cupholders on mine.
Bottom one pops out faster, to think that was the cheaper one. Ya don't get what you pay for nowadays...
Monitors for drying things (Score:2)
Other people I know have used their monitors for drying fruit (for ornamental purposes). It's amazing how different an orange will look after sitting on top of a monitor for several months!
Weight (Score:1)
Coffie warmer (Score:1)
ZAP! (Score:3, Funny)
"Excuse Calendar" *flip-flip*: Ah, yes. The UPSes seem to have suffered from electro-chemical ionisation of a dihydrogen-monoxide current pulse across the positive-negative poles. Please hold this cable in your teeth, so we can test humistatic differential levels between black and red.
Re:ZAP! (Score:1)