a contest idea

[Sephiroth]

you are tight on money, restricted to an area, only 2 shops sell what you can use, and you have 48 hours to get it all done and working. it would be neat to see what you could come up with. not only in computers, but for other inventions.

a year ago my cousin wanted a computer. she doesnt have much money so it was sort of a gift from my grandmother, who is overly sensitive about money. no more than $100 she said, and she thought she had bought all the right stuff.

it was more like random crap, but it was all computer related.
a list of what i have to work with

2U ( i am guessing that is the size) server case, WTF and where did she get this.
1 486 gateway 2000, with monitor and everything
1 IBM 286 PS/2, with everything
4GB IDE 5400 hard drive
a box of cables, had alot of floppy and old IDE stuff

all this stuff came from a church she works at, they had updated/cleaned and sold her this stuff for $25, a real deal honestly.
however not much i can use to build a good system

so i go to a local PC store, ok they dont got much but i do get a P2 450Mhz and a keyboard.

PC store 2, a shit load of stuff. and i am in luck, a sale. they had just gotten stuff from a school. mostly gateway computers. these use micro ATX boards. however the guy was selling kinda strange. bare bones system (gateways) where $100. but the main board's he was selling for $5 each. so i grab a few. the bare bones system has 128MB ram, the case, a floppy and that mainboard. so i snagg 3 main boards $15, a stick of 128MB $30 and head out.

now i need a case. at first i thought about modding the gateway 2000 case. a very large ATX. then i look at the 2U case. it has a 250 micro AXT powersupply. however that thing is like 1/6th the size of the AT PowerSupply. so i try to place the micro board in the 2U case, holy shit it fits! everything lines up, except i need to cut a hole for the modem, on board.

a do a quick test, i had already tested the PS on the 2U and it looked and acted fine. i get the normal errors, no keyboard and no hard drives/floppy. i put the hard drive and CD rom in next. the CD-rom is from the gateway 2000.

it all fits back togther and i install windows98se. not a high preforming or great looking system but it gets the job done.

needless to say she loves it and it is still working, i have added a burner and there was room for a floppy so i added it later.

it is comical to see a small rack server on a desktop with a monitor and keyboard. the server case is slightly smaller than the PS2. i kept all the extra stuff. infact the IMB PS2 has a very important job, it holds a box fan up so thae air flow is over my body at night.

i did try makeing a fox hole radio but I was never able to get it to work too well.

[Bucket]

Yeesh. Can't get to a computer show, can you?

[Linguica]

Jesus Christ you are fucking addicted to buying old computer parts.

[AndrewB]

Computer parts age like wine.

[Naked Snake]

AndrewB said:

Computer parts age like wine.

Yeah, eventually they turn WORTHLESS!

[Ultraviolet]

http://www.newegg.com