New Ways to Play with an Old Hardware

"QUANTUM SHOT" #288
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Creative Recycling of your old PC

Given the Moore's law that the power of computers doubles every 24 months, we end up with a lot of useless devices and obsolete hardware, that you sure can recycle in a normal way, but it's much more fun to recycle it in a wild and unusual ways! Let's see how to give a new life to the computing zombies of yesteryear.

First, just rearrange them. You can make nesting dolls out of them, stacking them like matryoshkas:


(image credit: Andy Ihnatko)

It's cool but not very practical. Better make a buck displaying them as an avantgarde piece of art:



Make a dinosaur out of motherboards (show them for what they are):


(image credit: Travis Hudson)

or a bike out of the hard drives:


(image credit: Alex Andromeda)

Hard drives, however, come handy in other things:



Old electronic parts can be re-used in earrings:



or, again in fanciful bikes:



Make runners out of the old keyboard (must be really uncomfortable...probably would not sell outside of Japanese market)



...but maybe go all out and create a cool costume for Halloween. Something like shown on this old ad:



Make various clock structures:


(image credit: Exler)

Good use of CD tray on a picnic:



To chill your drink, attach this to your cup:




Here is a great use of an old mouse in a bathroom:


(image credit: Poison Angel)


For animals & pets

Use the old monitor husk as a cage for your hamster:




or PC case as a bird-feeder:




Monitors to the max!

Sandy Smith arranges a bunch of functioning and dead monitors into walls and sculptures, achieving some sublime effects. Take for example this "Mauritian Sunset" with its rather complex glow:





The "Crucifix" wall is more rugged, but perhaps more meaningful. The monitors constantly run the most often searched words on Google News - bringing to mind some pseudo-spiritual ideas about "living" words & virtual martyrdom.




(images credit: Sandy Smith)


CDs are cheap and plentiful

Fancy applications aside (like this spectroscope...) here are some easy DIY projects:

Make a weather vane:






(images credit: cvmonofil)

Make an LED lamp out of the stack of CDs:






(image credit: Max Pantzyrev)

Make furniture out of them. Not very comfortable to sit on, but then you can call it a fancy name, like "AOL Throne":


(image credit: Stupidco.com)

Enhance a door to your office with this, or do a "wallpaper":




(image credit: Alarik)

Make a killer boomerang (throw very VERY lightly). Range about 9 meters.



Probably the most practical use of all:



Become a true IT warrior, build yourself an armor:



Most impractical use? Utilize the power of snails, to make the "snail mail" come quicker:



What else to do with old CDs? If all else fails you can always hang them around your garden to keep the birds out, or run'em through a powerful paper shredder and use as confetti.

If you run out of inspiration, or just can not be bothered, you can always finish off the silly thing with an axe.



Sources: Exler, Lobzik

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Category: Computers,Gadgets
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It's a Geek Thing, Computer Gadgets Roundup

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