Frankenputer

This is Frankenputer MkI

This is the only picture I have of the thing because I thought about taking a shot of the inside but then I was like "nah, that's kinda boring."  But I realize now that to most people this whole post is boring and pictures would probably have made it better.  

A hobby of mine is taking dead and dying computers anywhere I can dig one up and stitching together the good parts into a half decent atrocity.  Hence the designation "Frankenputer".  

The MkI is my first useful and successful resurrection of old, crappy, forgotten parts.  It currently resides in my father's theater room serving to relay several terabytes of media data to his 7.1 theater.  There are parts from at least 6 different computers in this thing.

Specs on this beast are as follows:

                                                                         Air-cooled

300W power supply

CPU: Pentium 4

RAM: 768mb

Video: Radeon 9600 128mb

Sound: Creative 7.1 surround

Bays: 1DVDRW, 1CDRW

One 3 1/2" floppy

One 3 1/2" drive bay multicard reader

OS: Ubuntu

All cobbled together in an old Gateway case.

The power buttons is actually an automotive push button I swiped off my old Land Cruiser.

It's certainly nothing fancy, but it was pretty much all free (except for a case fan, and the sound card which I purchased from a friend in order to help fund his replacement)  

The only thing pending is figuring out how to hook the 7.1 from the computer to the 7.1 receiver since the plugs are all sorts of different.  But it isn't really an issue because the media on the hard drives are all ripped in stereo anyway.  

It functions nearly perfectly.  There was only one hiccup where it got stuck in hibernate and it wouldn't shut down, nor would it boot up.  But that problem was resolved easy enough.  It is a bit noisy due to the big case fan I installed but I figured cooling was more important than decibel level because it seemed to run the CPU at 100% most of the time.  But should soon be a non-issue as it is located in the "electronics closet" just behind the screen wall that is just waiting to be finished.

MkII is currently in the works and I can see a MkIII beginning soon after.

I thought I should mention this as well:  The computer I use most at work is an old AMD equivalent of the P4 with built in video, and 64mb of RAM.  64.  The computer I built out of scrap parts has a video card with twice the memory of the of the motherboard of my work computer.  When I discovered this I was blown away.  The P4 is 13 years old.  Not only was I impressed that this work computer had lasted this long, but that it still kinda runs it's software okay.  I mean I would gladly take that tower out and send some lead through it at high velocities but now it has a little bit of my respect.  Computers age like gallons of milk.  My work computer would be like opening the fridge, pulling out the jug, popping off the lid, and pouring yourself a glass of finely aged cheese.

Interesting note:  the bicycle you see the back wheel of in the background of that picture has about 20k miles on it.  Just about everything on it has been replaced once.  It's not that I'm one of those crazy people that wear spandex and cruise down free-way service roads dreaming of the next big bicycle race.  (Because I'm not)

* insert Queen music here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nQiiES9_I *

It's that for a bit it was my only mode of transportation, and I currently still try to ride it to work at least once a week.

The End.