What's the worst computer chassis hack you've done?
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I've seen a computer run out of a pizza box (on the Internet anyway) - just the mobo and drive and stuff sitting in a greasy box. When I was young I put a 286 mobo and MFM HDD (remember those?) inside a cabinet with wood screws. Soon I will be propping my PC up on 4 soup cans to give my 1000 watt PSU's fan some clearance to see if that solves my overheat problem when I use 4k rendering. Gotta wait for some adapters for my 2 remaining fans though before I try that. Life goals are the setup from the movie Pi.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
OK, not a computer chassis, but a hack nonetheless... Way back in the mid 80's, I bought a new Korg synthesizer. It had inputs for 3 pedals: 0: Naturally, a sustain pedal 1: A switch to advance to the next programmed sound 2: A volume pedal I couldn't afford the factory pedals, so I made my own with parts from Radio Shack, a few old pieces of wood, springs, some string, and a few girders and pulleys from my old childhood Erector set! The sustain and program advance switches were easy, but the volume pedal took some engineering so that it would rotate a rheostat using the string. :) It worked until I could afford better equipment!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
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I've seen a computer run out of a pizza box (on the Internet anyway) - just the mobo and drive and stuff sitting in a greasy box. When I was young I put a 286 mobo and MFM HDD (remember those?) inside a cabinet with wood screws. Soon I will be propping my PC up on 4 soup cans to give my 1000 watt PSU's fan some clearance to see if that solves my overheat problem when I use 4k rendering. Gotta wait for some adapters for my 2 remaining fans though before I try that. Life goals are the setup from the movie Pi.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
Not computer hack, but nevertheless worth mentioning: A fellow student of mine bought a used car really cheap. One problem was that while driving, the shift box frequently slipped from the selected gear into neutral, disengaged, loosing all power. So my friend bought a couple of neodymium magnets, gluing one to his shift stick, the other one to the dashboard. This was enough to keep the speed stick in position, keeping it from flipping back to neutral.
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Not computer hack, but nevertheless worth mentioning: A fellow student of mine bought a used car really cheap. One problem was that while driving, the shift box frequently slipped from the selected gear into neutral, disengaged, loosing all power. So my friend bought a couple of neodymium magnets, gluing one to his shift stick, the other one to the dashboard. This was enough to keep the speed stick in position, keeping it from flipping back to neutral.
:laugh:
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I've seen a computer run out of a pizza box (on the Internet anyway) - just the mobo and drive and stuff sitting in a greasy box. When I was young I put a 286 mobo and MFM HDD (remember those?) inside a cabinet with wood screws. Soon I will be propping my PC up on 4 soup cans to give my 1000 watt PSU's fan some clearance to see if that solves my overheat problem when I use 4k rendering. Gotta wait for some adapters for my 2 remaining fans though before I try that. Life goals are the setup from the movie Pi.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
Another car hack (referring to the above one) from the student days: One of my fellow students broke the multi-function handle of his car - the handle only, none of the switches. The handle itself couldn't be bought separately, you had to buy the entire box with all the switches, at a cost that was a fortune on a student budget. So he rather bought a tube of super-glue, gluing an old toothbrush to the remains of the old handle. For years, we saw him flipping his old toothbrush up and down, forwards and backwards, and twisting it around, serving all the functions that the old handle did before he broke it.
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I've seen a computer run out of a pizza box (on the Internet anyway) - just the mobo and drive and stuff sitting in a greasy box. When I was young I put a 286 mobo and MFM HDD (remember those?) inside a cabinet with wood screws. Soon I will be propping my PC up on 4 soup cans to give my 1000 watt PSU's fan some clearance to see if that solves my overheat problem when I use 4k rendering. Gotta wait for some adapters for my 2 remaining fans though before I try that. Life goals are the setup from the movie Pi.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
Windows for Workgroups 3.1 came pre loaded with networkable Hearts, the card game for up to four players. We took a left over chassis that had dual floppies. Hacked enough of the OS and game across the 2 floppies (total of 2.4 Mb) to be able to boot it and join the game. Never bothered to put the case back on in case we wanted to scavenge serial port cards or the monochrome monitor card.
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Windows for Workgroups 3.1 came pre loaded with networkable Hearts, the card game for up to four players. We took a left over chassis that had dual floppies. Hacked enough of the OS and game across the 2 floppies (total of 2.4 Mb) to be able to boot it and join the game. Never bothered to put the case back on in case we wanted to scavenge serial port cards or the monochrome monitor card.
I approve of this. :)
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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ElectronProgrammer wrote:
buy the brackets
Yeah, I'll get right on that. :-D This is an early-80s system, getting drives (narrow SCSI?) is difficult enough. I did check Ebay a few years ago. I should check a again, but I would likely need to buy another entire system. https://www.codeproject.com/Uploads/Membership/Uploads/2587207/ermine.png[^]
That keyboard brings back memories. Back in the day when I worked on a microVAX-II with a VT220 I had a little program that would set the "Do" key to emit a string. Very useful when doing an edit/compile/debug cycle.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I prefer the cotton string because it does not propagate vibrations as much as cable ties if the HDD is hanging in the air. The down side is that it deteriorates a lot faster. Vibrations were the reason I used four laptop HDDs in RAID instead of a single desktop HDD. Obviously, the situation I described was temporary and after some time I bought a proper chassis. But, if it works in your case and the HDDs are not shutting down/parking heads/becoming corrupted you can let it be. Anyway, I would recommend that you buy the brackets if you can and, if they are made of metal, they will help dissipate the heat from the HDDs. The HDDs will be healthier and live longer.
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Another car hack (referring to the above one) from the student days: One of my fellow students broke the multi-function handle of his car - the handle only, none of the switches. The handle itself couldn't be bought separately, you had to buy the entire box with all the switches, at a cost that was a fortune on a student budget. So he rather bought a tube of super-glue, gluing an old toothbrush to the remains of the old handle. For years, we saw him flipping his old toothbrush up and down, forwards and backwards, and twisting it around, serving all the functions that the old handle did before he broke it.
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I've seen a computer run out of a pizza box (on the Internet anyway) - just the mobo and drive and stuff sitting in a greasy box. When I was young I put a 286 mobo and MFM HDD (remember those?) inside a cabinet with wood screws. Soon I will be propping my PC up on 4 soup cans to give my 1000 watt PSU's fan some clearance to see if that solves my overheat problem when I use 4k rendering. Gotta wait for some adapters for my 2 remaining fans though before I try that. Life goals are the setup from the movie Pi.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
Not a chassis hack, but a peripheral hack. The Commodore 64 joystick had 4 contact switches for directions and 1 for the button. There was a Track and Field game where you just had to move the joystick Left Right Left Right to run the 100M dash. I made a custom joystick adapter using the little spring connectors from a Radio Shack project board so I could wire any switch into the joy stick port. I finally set the “world record” using the Fan On/Fan Automatic switch from an old thermostat. Very clean connection on a very short lever.
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I've seen a computer run out of a pizza box (on the Internet anyway) - just the mobo and drive and stuff sitting in a greasy box. When I was young I put a 286 mobo and MFM HDD (remember those?) inside a cabinet with wood screws. Soon I will be propping my PC up on 4 soup cans to give my 1000 watt PSU's fan some clearance to see if that solves my overheat problem when I use 4k rendering. Gotta wait for some adapters for my 2 remaining fans though before I try that. Life goals are the setup from the movie Pi.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
Well, there was that abacus that I had to bind together with twine made from flax, because the granite beads were too heavy for the sabre-tooth ivory frame. But then I am bit older than a lot of you.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.
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Did you do an ohm meter test on the cotton string? I would be afraid of static transmission. I thought silk was a better insulator. I vaguely remember some story about Ben Franklin flying a kite in a lightning storm with a silk string.
If you want to go to so much detail... No, I did not ohm tested. But I anticipated that static electricity might build up so I kept the string away from any electronics, plastics, and other strings. I added long screws to the usual mount points of the motherboard and the string strapped to those, on both sides of the motherboard to avoid bending due to too much tension on just one side. Used a similar setup for the HDDs. Also connected those screws to the case of the PSU with copper wire (insulated obviously) to establish the connection they usually have in a normal ATX chassis. So, effectively, those connections were grounded. Tip: some motherboards fail to boot if those points are not properly grounded. I approached the build as a suspended cable bridge project where the motherboard and the HDDs are part of the deck, floating in the air but at the same time secure and without excessive vibration (that in bridges can lead to collapses). So, anticipating that the strings might come loose due to the vibrations (because cotton stretches more than metal) I stress tested a single string with the double of the maximum length I would need to find how many I would have to use per cable (one cable per mount point) so that stretching was imperceptible. Then I built braided cables with the double of that amount. I did not use plain string to secure things. Those cables had a hole near the middle that could be used to twist them to increase the tension if they ever got loose and, anticipating moister, those holes were also used to hold desiccant bags. On the points the string cables attached to the mount points I used electrical tape to prevent tearing on the screws threads. Also used electrical tape to bound the strings together and prevent the cables from unwinding. That setup lasted two years and then laptops started to become cheap enough and powerful enough so I replaced this setup with a laptop.
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I've seen a computer run out of a pizza box (on the Internet anyway) - just the mobo and drive and stuff sitting in a greasy box. When I was young I put a 286 mobo and MFM HDD (remember those?) inside a cabinet with wood screws. Soon I will be propping my PC up on 4 soup cans to give my 1000 watt PSU's fan some clearance to see if that solves my overheat problem when I use 4k rendering. Gotta wait for some adapters for my 2 remaining fans though before I try that. Life goals are the setup from the movie Pi.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
oh man... where to start. When I was at university I had a 486 Motherboard hanging from the celling using fishing-wire and a huge desk fan blowing air on it to keep it cool (This was largely in the days before most CPU's had coolers on top, and a lot where still passive), I had to keep it cool because I'd overclocked the 66Mhz 486 DX 2 I had in it to something like 80Mhz. I've built cases from Lego, changed airflow technology's and ducting using tea-bag boxes and cereal cartons, and during my 4 and a half years as an engineer for Orange UK, you don't want to know how many bare systems where glued into racks in data centre's using "No More Nails", when on a 4AM call out and no spares where available! Right now in my rack up in the loft is a couple of AMD servers that are basically just bare boards sat on a piece of cloth (To prevent shorts) and propped up in the rack on those bus bars you have for connecting patch leads :-)
Still Crazy (Best and only way to be!)
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oh man... where to start. When I was at university I had a 486 Motherboard hanging from the celling using fishing-wire and a huge desk fan blowing air on it to keep it cool (This was largely in the days before most CPU's had coolers on top, and a lot where still passive), I had to keep it cool because I'd overclocked the 66Mhz 486 DX 2 I had in it to something like 80Mhz. I've built cases from Lego, changed airflow technology's and ducting using tea-bag boxes and cereal cartons, and during my 4 and a half years as an engineer for Orange UK, you don't want to know how many bare systems where glued into racks in data centre's using "No More Nails", when on a 4AM call out and no spares where available! Right now in my rack up in the loft is a couple of AMD servers that are basically just bare boards sat on a piece of cloth (To prevent shorts) and propped up in the rack on those bus bars you have for connecting patch leads :-)
Still Crazy (Best and only way to be!)
Apparently you're the reason I asked the question about hacks. This is what I was hoping for. Well done!
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Well, there was that abacus that I had to bind together with twine made from flax, because the granite beads were too heavy for the sabre-tooth ivory frame. But then I am bit older than a lot of you.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.
That sounds like something a particular friend of mine might say. Mark, is that you? :laugh:
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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That sounds like something a particular friend of mine might say. Mark, is that you? :laugh:
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
honey the codewitch wrote:
Mark, is that you?
Sadly, no.
Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth. To err is human, to arr is pirate.
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Apparently you're the reason I asked the question about hacks. This is what I was hoping for. Well done!
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
LOL... :-) I've had many accolades over the years, but that ones a first!
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If you want to go to so much detail... No, I did not ohm tested. But I anticipated that static electricity might build up so I kept the string away from any electronics, plastics, and other strings. I added long screws to the usual mount points of the motherboard and the string strapped to those, on both sides of the motherboard to avoid bending due to too much tension on just one side. Used a similar setup for the HDDs. Also connected those screws to the case of the PSU with copper wire (insulated obviously) to establish the connection they usually have in a normal ATX chassis. So, effectively, those connections were grounded. Tip: some motherboards fail to boot if those points are not properly grounded. I approached the build as a suspended cable bridge project where the motherboard and the HDDs are part of the deck, floating in the air but at the same time secure and without excessive vibration (that in bridges can lead to collapses). So, anticipating that the strings might come loose due to the vibrations (because cotton stretches more than metal) I stress tested a single string with the double of the maximum length I would need to find how many I would have to use per cable (one cable per mount point) so that stretching was imperceptible. Then I built braided cables with the double of that amount. I did not use plain string to secure things. Those cables had a hole near the middle that could be used to twist them to increase the tension if they ever got loose and, anticipating moister, those holes were also used to hold desiccant bags. On the points the string cables attached to the mount points I used electrical tape to prevent tearing on the screws threads. Also used electrical tape to bound the strings together and prevent the cables from unwinding. That setup lasted two years and then laptops started to become cheap enough and powerful enough so I replaced this setup with a laptop.
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Got a desk with drawers on one side, and a box (closet?) on the other one. Box is four drawers high. Mounted a mini-PC motherboard in it. Passive cooling, very silent. The current PC doesn't fit; a monster of a machine built by a gamer. I still miss that old mini-PC though. In terms of performance, it outran many full sized desktops. Remember I said passive cooling? It burnt in a summer three years ago, scorched the desk. I was proud of it, and consider it my "best" machine. The worst, could have burnt down the house.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Sadly, no. The VT220 went "pop" a few years ago. :sigh: I still have the keyboard and hopes of getting another VT of some sort. These days I use Putty to access these systems when I use them (which is rare).
I still have a microvax II chassis and a VT terminal in my basement. Haven't been powered up for over ten years.
