Posts Tagged ‘DIY’
Into the Pit…er Scrap…I mean Old Harware Storage
So here I am thinking of wonderful things to do today…
Ok mabey not really that wonderful, but i have decided to start going through all the stuff I have laying around collecting dust. My primary objective is to weed out the things that I will use, and liquidate the things I will not, by setting them aside and selling them on ebay or eventually giving them away, and if I cannot do that, it’s to the recycler.
This is something I don’t like to do. For me it’s like throwing away a book I ‘may’ read. So I’ve decided to take some pictures to illustrate the amount of stuff I have. And to see if I can get a response out of you readers as to what I should do with some of them…perhaps.
Here we have an original Xbox console which needs repair, which I have not gotten around to fixing, an older Zenith television set, and an old Amiga (I dont remember the model)
A cascade of piled junk, miscellaneous peripherals, a USB and wireless keyboard motherboards and an old camcorder which I’m thinking of converting to a night vision headset as seen here.
Yes, I know I should likely take better care of my junk…anyways. Here we have a poorly modded PC case, which was actually fun to have while I was using it.Blue lighst windows and a drive bay mod that hid the drives. Now it just lays in a closet waiting for my opportunity to use it again. I need RAM and hardrives, to get this bastard back up to par.
So thats it for now, I have a huge array of wires, cables and the like that i need to go through as well as other miscellaneous pieces and parts. So please input and suggestions are welcome. I’m looking forward to getting this stuff organized, worked on, and rid of in the future. Cheers.
DIY-Laptop Cooler
My laptop gets hot, especially on the bottom. It’s funny because I rarely ever sit my laptop directly on my lap, but anyway, I still needed a solution. I’d seen an array of various types and styles of laptop coolers all with their promises and different prices. I simply did not want to spend any, if not much, money to cool my laptop. I decided to build one of my own.
The design is pretty simple. Materials are as follows:
- section of speaker box about 13-14 inches wide
- some pc fans, I use 3
- an old unused PSU
- toggle switches, i used 3
- neon lights (optional)
I ripped the fabric off the section of speaker box, you can do this if you want too, some people don’t mind ESD. I drilled holes in various places on the top to allow a draft.
One side of the speaker box had a speaker wire connecting port. This I cut the back plate off, and mounted a fan behind it to act as an exhaust.
The PSU is a 200watt ATX Power Supply. I used one of those cool red shielded toggle switches to power on and power off the PSU and exhaust fan. You can switch a PSU on/off without a mother board by connecting your switch between two wires. The people over at Gideontech have an awesome tutorial on this modification, very well explained, with nice pics.

I built this up in a couple of hours, but its well worth it, the box is slanted on the bottom, so when it sits on a flat surface it’s easier to type, reminds you of the lifters under your keyboard. Also with that slanted bottom, it allows the laptop to sit flat in the passenger seat of my truck.
I used some red toggle switches to switch the power on/off to the main fans and the neons in the box (which currently aren’t working for some reason). The cooler isn’t completely finished, there are some areas that need filled in to seal and help the flow of air, but I’ll get to it eventually. Anyways with some simple electrical wiring, old spare parts, and some ingenuity you can easily make a laptop cooler. Cheers!!

