What happens when I have too much time on my hands

[deicist]

So, It's a saturday morning, I've woken up early because I'm going through the pain of giving up smoking (not conducive to sleep) it's weeing down outside and I'm very very bored. So I decide to root through my stash of defunct computer parts.... among other things I discover I have

1) An AMD K6-2 350 CPU & Motherboard
2) 128MB of RAM for aforementioned board
3) a 1.6 GB Hard drive
4) a CD Drive
5) A PSU

everything I need for a PC really...except a case. Then I have another root round and discover I have

6) A cardboard box

and, most crucially

7) way too much time on my hands....


this is the result (sorry for the poor picture quality, blame my phone)

A: front view of my finished PC, note the clean lines with just a CD rom to indicate this is anything other than a standard cardboard box....

http://homepages.gotadsl.co.uk/~deicist/boxpc/front.jpg

B: Rear view, not quite as clean but hey, you try fitting PC components into a slightly too small box, it ain't easy fella.... also note the PSU, you may notice a wire running out of the fan grill and off to the left. That's because I had already nicked the fan out of this PSU, so I had to fit another fan, then run a power cable for the fan out and to one of the molex connectors round the back...

http://homepages.gotadsl.co.uk/~deicist/boxpc/back.jpg

C: another rearview, this time with my 'drive bay' exposed. Note the cunning use of something I like to call 'scissor & tape' technology which was used to create a drive bay door. The hardest part of this entire thing was routing the IDE cable, it goes up and over the motherboard.... good thing I had a long cable lying around.

http://homepages.gotadsl.co.uk/~deicist/boxpc/drives.jpg

D: Side view, note the fan to assist in cooling... to compete with AMDs current cool & quiet technology which slows down system fans when the temperature drops I have implemented a similar system with this fan, basically you can cut the power wire whenever the fan gets on your nerves, then twist the cut ends back together when you notice the box turning black due to heat build up

http://homepages.gotadsl.co.uk/~deicist/boxpc/side.jpg

E: Top view, again 'scissor & tape' technology has been used to create access panels for when I need to fiddle with stuff.... obviously this case is an upgraders dream, you can get at everything without removing other components, something proper PC cases sometimes have issues with

http://homepages.gotadsl.co.uk/~deicist/boxpc/top.jpg

F: Close up of the right hand access panel, showing the CPU.... you may also notice the IDE cable looping over the PCI cards to the left of the picture.....

http://homepages.gotadsl.co.uk/~deicist/boxpc/cpu.jpg

G: Close up of the other top panel, bit dark in there but you can just about make out the IDE cable plugged into the motherboard and the motherboard power cable. Also, in the bottom of the picture that criss-cross pattern is the sheet of plastic I used to prevent the board shorting out, since it's actually resting on top of the PSU.

http://homepages.gotadsl.co.uk/~deicist/boxpc/board.jpg

H: incredibly poor quality picture of the PC actually running. I've currently got mandrake Linux running on it, but I'll probably stick slackware on it at some point since mandrake runs incredibly slowly. You may notice the flap sticking out of the top, that's a little cooling flap I cut out over the CPU.

http://homepages.gotadsl.co.uk/~deicist/boxpc/running.jpg

[panzerkw]

That's ghetto-fabulous

[TheGr81]

;D Dude that's awesome! Ya know, if you don't plan on doing much else with it, you should add it to your folding farm. You are folding right? :thumbsup: It's not much, but every bit helps.

[Leonardo]

Great production for a rainy, Saturday morning! I like it! ;D Funny writeup there, too. Thanks for the amusement.

[bothered]

Nice case but it could use a coat of paint. Don't you have a half empty tin of gloss with a half inch skin under the stairs or in the shed? Also have you installed a sprinkler system over it? I'm thinking 'fire hazard' here.

[dragonV8]

Nice case but it could use a coat of paint. Don't you have a half empty tin of gloss with a half inch skin under the stairs or in the shed? Also have you installed a sprinkler system over it? I'm thinking 'fire hazard' here.

Sprinkler system.....now that is a good idea.....the first watercooled cardboard pc, lol.

[PressX]

That's the ideal PC for "Shelter" - cool job, very cool. I have been thinking about puting a pc into a welly boot - being Welsh and all that - or mabe a toy sheep?

http://www.ipressx.com/images/welshwave.gif

http://www.snoozeshop.com/acatalog/163453a03.jpg

[deicist]

Well, after the success of BoxPc-1 I decided to have yet another root round and found:

http://homepages.gotadsl.co.uk/~deicist/boxpc/next.jpg

Again the picture makes it difficult to work out but that's a pentium II - 266, an ancient PCI video card (an S3 summat or other), an ancient PCI soundblaster, a CD drive and a Hard drive. Oh, and of course the all important box. This time I've selected a trendy silver effect box, in fact it's the one my lava lamp came in.

Unfortunately I'm short of some memory (66Mhz DIMMS are hard to come by these days) and I've just remembered that the hard drive pictured doesn't work.... however, I'm upgrading a friends PC next week so I may be able to cannibalize (steal) some parts..... look out for BoxPC-2, coming soon.....

[bothered]

or mabe a toy sheep?

I was wondering how long it would take our Welshman to introduce his 'friend' ;D

[entropy]

Lol, c'mon dude, let's see some wicked paint jobs on those!! Check out this "Bling Bling Case" ... http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=112205

[PressX]

Shhh.... don't tell ppl about my friends


:crazy:



http://www.journalism.cf.ac.uk/2001/Student/sjorn/sheep.jpeg

[profdlp]

Shhh.... don't tell ppl about my friends
Hey - the one second from the left, three rows back looks pretty nice! :thumbsup:

[TheSmJ]

That K6-2 would make a fine Smoothwall box. My K6-2 was a terrible Windows machine (crashed all the time, without warning, etc) but is a perfect Linux box (Smoothwall is based on a Redhat distro).

I highly recommend SW. It beats the pants off my old router/firewall (it actually can do things only $200+ routers can do, and it's FREE), and you could have the whole thing done (as in going from a blank HDD, to all the computers connected to it configured and talking to it) in 15-20 minutes.

[Shorty]

Shhh.... don't tell ppl about my friends


:crazy:



http://www.journalism.cf.ac.uk/2001/Student/sjorn/sheep.jpeg
You gotta be British to understand the complete humour in that post ;D ;D ;D

[deicist]

I have played with smoothwall in the past, personally I preferred IP-cop (think it was called that) which was a fork of Smoothwall, without the 'buy our coporate edition' stuff.... also, since my DSL modem is built in to my router / switch I can't physically put a box in between my DSL connection and my network without gettting new hardware....

[PressX]

Try HERE (http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/windowsxpbox/) and HERE (http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/cardboardcube/) for box inspiration and tips...

these guys get a pc into anything!!!