a while back i was chatting with Ge64 (or whatever his name it today) in the shoutbox about my mum's work throwing out a load of computers. of course i asked my mum if i could have one but of course she said no. well, yesterday i was at my mum's work tending to a broken printer (again) and decided that i would try and smuggle one of the computers out. i couldn't just take the whole computer because that would be too obvious. the one i had in mind was an 8 year old Viglen Genie ES2. i chose this one because it has a i have a load of spares for one already (i was given one with a fried mobo), and it was one of the few computers i could find that was screwed - rather than riveted - together. I had my trusty swiss army knife with me to fix the preiter with but it came in useful for dismantling the genie.

so i rummaged around looking for something to put all the bits of computer into and found an old cardboard box that used to have another printer in. so i get my trusty swiss army knife and flip out the sctrewriver attatchment and start to dismantle the beast. i carefuly placed into the cradboard box all the pieces and put the printer i was fixing on top to hide them. i simply said to my mum that i didn't have the tools i needed to fix the printer there so i wanted to take it home. job done. what i hadn't thought about though was what i was going to put this thing into when i got home. i had a spere mini-atx case lying around mu the genie's mobo is full-atx so obviously it didn't fit. so i set it all up on my desk and powered it up to make sure it had survived the transit from work to home, it had and all was well. i then sat down and had a think about the casing issues.

BANG, the cardboard box! of course!. so i whipped out my trusty old swiss army knife again ant went bout laying out the components in the box and cutting holes for them. i got a few cable ties, stabbed a few holes in the box and tied everything down. the result: GHETTO COMPUTER!

From the putside it may look like an ordinary cardboard box, but inside:



Drives:


Back:


The guts:


Drives from the inside. Note the hdd held in place with a folded up piece of paper:


Here you can see the ram (all 96mb of it) the cpu cooler, the fan cable tied on top,  the Graphics card and an errant floppy cable:


The other cards, a TV capture card and a LAN card:


The PSU, 2 LED's and a switch pushed through the cardboard. note, no solder used:


Meticulous cable management:


Mounting method of choice: cable tie:



The specs are as follows:
intel celeron 333mhz CPU
96mb SDRAM
ATI rage pro turbo AGP graphics
3.5gb hdd
250watt PSU
onboard audio linked to the ISA bus
32x cd-rom drive
floppy drive (i love floppies! but not that kind of floppies!)
100mbit LAN
TV capture card


i spent 2 hours installing xp. once it was booted and ready i disabled all the visual sheit and made a few tweaks and its now a fairly quick machine. it doesn't take long to boot and one its going its more responsive than my main rig. it can easily handle pinball and hasn't once frozen or crashed on me in any way. i now need to get hold of a LAN switch so i can link it up to my mini network between mine and my brothers computers. I'm thinking of using it as a glorified firewall/bittorrent downloaer so i don't have to leave my main rig on all the time. (it has 2 PSU's to power all the poo poo i have in there and runs on the tears of red squirrels.) this ghetto rig should hopefuly be a little more frugal than my main one.


Comments?

... sugoi!!!!
I would be afraid of someone watching me take it apart

none of them know sheit about computers. someone asked me what i was doing, i just said 'i think the computer might be the problem, not the printer' and they went away. if they knew anything about computers they wouldn't be throwing them out. its more than powerful enough for web browsing/word processing and that's all they need

edit: i forgot something,

when i was opening up the computer, i grounded myself against the frame. it felt greasy and slightly sticky. i thought it might just be some residue but i think it was a security measure. my fingers have now been stained black. I think its to help police find a thiefes who could have 'borrowed' components from the computers, like me.I've tried washing it off but its a real bitch. so far I've got one finger relatively clean.

wait, it i take out 64mb of ram I'm left with 32mb, which means:













MY PSP WOULD BE AS POWERFUL AS A COMPUTER!!!!

XFD


That takes Ghetto to a whole new Level

I just added another hdd i had lying around. a 3GB Seagate Meddalist. cost £99.95 ($200ish) when new. i now have a total of 6gb storage WOOT! i think I'll buy a cheapo lan switch at the same time i buy replacement parts for andrewcc's laptop (I'm fixing it for him (again). new hdd and ram this time)

PSPkiller Wrote:I just added another hdd i had lying around. a 3GB Seagate Meddalist. cost £99.95 ($200ish) when new. i now have a total of 6gb storage WOOT! i think I'll buy a cheapo lan switch at the same time i buy replacement parts for andrewcc's laptop (I'm fixing it for him (again). new hdd and ram this time)

  wee may want to open the whole thing up..... there's a kind of dent in my keyboard in the shape of my fist...... the keys work fine and there's no cracks but wee may want to push it back up...