MAIN » ARTICLESCardboard box computer
What can you imagine doing with a collection of assorted computer parts, an eye for original design, and an underappreciated cardboard box?
Exactly! Try and sell them on ebay.com.
This was my first plan, but didn’t really work, as there isn’t much demand for Pentium 300’s or 518MB hard drives, the market has somewhat moved ‘along’ since 6 years again when they were made.
My second plan was to put the bits into the box, and then drop this box from my bathroom window on Michelle Lord in the morning, when she delivers my trusty Guardian newspaper. I would gain much pleasure from hearing her scream in pain, heh, ahem.
I dismissed this idea as well, as I thought it a tad too dangerous, a 5 Kilo box from 10 feet would possibly kill her, this wouldn’t be quite as funny, and not worth getting up at 7am for.
My third and worst plan, was to ‘ram’ the components into the box, feed in 230 volts of her Majesty’s finest and take some pictures. This is exactly what I did.
I did contemplate taking pictures along the way of ‘building’ the cardboard box computer, but if it ended up not working this would be a bit of a waste of time.
THE PREPARATION
I purchased Alan’s old P300 motherboard, complete with 128MB ram and onboard 2MB graphics, for the sum of £5, bargain.
I tested to see if it would fit in the box, alas it was a tiny bit too wide, just getting stuck about 1cm from the bottom, to get around this I dropped in two abstract illusions test CD cases, perfect.
I marked out where all the connector holes would need to go, and cut these out with a blunt Stanley knife, checked that they lined up and continued.
The onboard sound only played one song the ‘sound of silence’, this was a bit poor so I slotted in an old 5.1 sound card [red]. A NIC expansion card was added to this, for networking enjoyment – being able to play songs without having to store them locally. I removed the backing plates from both of the PCI cards to reduce height.
Installation of the hard drives was easy, they fitted perfectly wedged between the network card, and end of the box, sitting on top of the unused ISA card slots, heh, ISA, beasty.
Room in the box above the CPU, was just enough for the PSU, I put some screws in through the side of the box to hold it roughly in place.
When the box was closed I could hear a sucking noise, this was due to the PSU taking out air from the box, and more not being able to get in easily. To get around this I cut a hole directly next to the PSU, this looked a bit poor so I tried to hide it with a fan [80mm before you ask, Alan Edkins]. This makes a bit of noise, but it makes the outside of the case more interesting.
FINALLY I realised I needed some status lights, one for power, and one for HDD activity. I nabbed these from an old 33Mhz Lucy Bickers computer, they are opposite colours to what they should be, but this is ok. Put a few holes in the side of the case and voila. I got a power-on switch from David Randall GCSE electronics supplies.
I plugged in me power cable [the old ‘rawson’ favourite] and we were all systems go. It booted flawlessly from windows 2000 installed on the hard drive the day before. Windows detected and installed the sound and network cards, and I played a rendition of ‘vengaboys – sex on the beach’ in celebration of the moment.
Then I went to bed as it was 1.25 am.
Full specification, and part funding:
GMB-P57sAXm motherboard - Alan
Pentium 300 processor - Alan
128MB RAM [4 SIMMs] – Alan
1.01 GB HDD – Paul Hendy
0.52 GB HDD – Lawrence Bickers
CMI sound card – Paul Hendy
SIS900 network card – Ryan
Vent fan – Lawrence bickers
300w PSU - Rusty
Cat5e network cable [5m] – BT Exact Technologies
IDE cables – Lawrence Bickers
Zenith data systems keyboard – Lawrence Bickers
‘chic’ mouse – Paul Hendy
Headphones – Alison Hendy
Status Lights – Lawrence Bickers
Power Switch – Randy
Power cable – Rawson
Windows 2000 OS – Jay
CARDBOARD BOX – Unitek systems limited
Here are some of the best post-production pictures.[31]
1/31 - outside, showing the royal mail, 'special delivery' sticker
2/31 - onswitch cable, this way up sticker, and HDD retaining screws
3/31 - holes for the plugs. also IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS ENCLOSED!
4/31
5/31 - robert hendy ownz j00z
6/31 - remove the selotape retaining strap, and the cage is open - the beast is still asleep
7/31 - closer
8/31 - [left to right] 1/2GB HDD, network card, sound card, PSU
9/31 - one of the two hard drives, the other is underneath the visible one, both belly-up
10/31 - yes, that is a small selotape roll wedged between the CPU fan and the PSU. for 'technical' reasons
11/31 - the money shot, look at that rainbow display of power supply cables, beautiful
12/31 - award bios 1.03B, legendary. note selotape [top left] holding cables together
13/31 - long IDE cables are too long for this job
14/31 - the 80mm fan, dusty
15/31 - fan outside. any hole's a goal.
16/31 - status LED's. HDD top, power bottom.
17/31 - all plugged in, front
18/31 - side
19/31 - rear
20/31 - but what type of power cable is that?!
21/31 - ey! a RAWSON CABLE. remember, dont use the monitor cable after Jan 1992.
22/31 - the essential network cable, into the hendy intranet
23/31 - power on.
24/31 - power to motherboard LED on
25/31 - ready to go, the black button is pressed
26/31 - ooh la la! memory check affirmative.
27/31 - ooh, professional, in a box.
28/31 - hard disk activity as windows loads
29/31 - the fan goes round, as it should
30/31 - more lighted excitement.
31/31 - and there you have it, a fully functional, windows 2000 networked machine, running from the comfort of a 12" by 9" by 6" cardboard box.
Written by Rib
This was my first plan, but didn’t really work, as there isn’t much demand for Pentium 300’s or 518MB hard drives, the market has somewhat moved ‘along’ since 6 years again when they were made.
My second plan was to put the bits into the box, and then drop this box from my bathroom window on Michelle Lord in the morning, when she delivers my trusty Guardian newspaper. I would gain much pleasure from hearing her scream in pain, heh, ahem.
I dismissed this idea as well, as I thought it a tad too dangerous, a 5 Kilo box from 10 feet would possibly kill her, this wouldn’t be quite as funny, and not worth getting up at 7am for.
My third and worst plan, was to ‘ram’ the components into the box, feed in 230 volts of her Majesty’s finest and take some pictures. This is exactly what I did.
I did contemplate taking pictures along the way of ‘building’ the cardboard box computer, but if it ended up not working this would be a bit of a waste of time.
THE PREPARATION
I purchased Alan’s old P300 motherboard, complete with 128MB ram and onboard 2MB graphics, for the sum of £5, bargain.
I tested to see if it would fit in the box, alas it was a tiny bit too wide, just getting stuck about 1cm from the bottom, to get around this I dropped in two abstract illusions test CD cases, perfect.
I marked out where all the connector holes would need to go, and cut these out with a blunt Stanley knife, checked that they lined up and continued.
The onboard sound only played one song the ‘sound of silence’, this was a bit poor so I slotted in an old 5.1 sound card [red]. A NIC expansion card was added to this, for networking enjoyment – being able to play songs without having to store them locally. I removed the backing plates from both of the PCI cards to reduce height.
Installation of the hard drives was easy, they fitted perfectly wedged between the network card, and end of the box, sitting on top of the unused ISA card slots, heh, ISA, beasty.
Room in the box above the CPU, was just enough for the PSU, I put some screws in through the side of the box to hold it roughly in place.
When the box was closed I could hear a sucking noise, this was due to the PSU taking out air from the box, and more not being able to get in easily. To get around this I cut a hole directly next to the PSU, this looked a bit poor so I tried to hide it with a fan [80mm before you ask, Alan Edkins]. This makes a bit of noise, but it makes the outside of the case more interesting.
FINALLY I realised I needed some status lights, one for power, and one for HDD activity. I nabbed these from an old 33Mhz Lucy Bickers computer, they are opposite colours to what they should be, but this is ok. Put a few holes in the side of the case and voila. I got a power-on switch from David Randall GCSE electronics supplies.
I plugged in me power cable [the old ‘rawson’ favourite] and we were all systems go. It booted flawlessly from windows 2000 installed on the hard drive the day before. Windows detected and installed the sound and network cards, and I played a rendition of ‘vengaboys – sex on the beach’ in celebration of the moment.
Then I went to bed as it was 1.25 am.
Full specification, and part funding:
GMB-P57sAXm motherboard - Alan
Pentium 300 processor - Alan
128MB RAM [4 SIMMs] – Alan
1.01 GB HDD – Paul Hendy
0.52 GB HDD – Lawrence Bickers
CMI sound card – Paul Hendy
SIS900 network card – Ryan
Vent fan – Lawrence bickers
300w PSU - Rusty
Cat5e network cable [5m] – BT Exact Technologies
IDE cables – Lawrence Bickers
Zenith data systems keyboard – Lawrence Bickers
‘chic’ mouse – Paul Hendy
Headphones – Alison Hendy
Status Lights – Lawrence Bickers
Power Switch – Randy
Power cable – Rawson
Windows 2000 OS – Jay
CARDBOARD BOX – Unitek systems limited
Here are some of the best post-production pictures.[31]
1/31 - outside, showing the royal mail, 'special delivery' sticker
2/31 - onswitch cable, this way up sticker, and HDD retaining screws
3/31 - holes for the plugs. also IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS ENCLOSED!
4/31
5/31 - robert hendy ownz j00z
6/31 - remove the selotape retaining strap, and the cage is open - the beast is still asleep
7/31 - closer
8/31 - [left to right] 1/2GB HDD, network card, sound card, PSU
9/31 - one of the two hard drives, the other is underneath the visible one, both belly-up
10/31 - yes, that is a small selotape roll wedged between the CPU fan and the PSU. for 'technical' reasons
11/31 - the money shot, look at that rainbow display of power supply cables, beautiful
12/31 - award bios 1.03B, legendary. note selotape [top left] holding cables together
13/31 - long IDE cables are too long for this job
14/31 - the 80mm fan, dusty
15/31 - fan outside. any hole's a goal.
16/31 - status LED's. HDD top, power bottom.
17/31 - all plugged in, front
18/31 - side
19/31 - rear
20/31 - but what type of power cable is that?!
21/31 - ey! a RAWSON CABLE. remember, dont use the monitor cable after Jan 1992.
22/31 - the essential network cable, into the hendy intranet
23/31 - power on.
24/31 - power to motherboard LED on
25/31 - ready to go, the black button is pressed
26/31 - ooh la la! memory check affirmative.
27/31 - ooh, professional, in a box.
28/31 - hard disk activity as windows loads
29/31 - the fan goes round, as it should
30/31 - more lighted excitement.
31/31 - and there you have it, a fully functional, windows 2000 networked machine, running from the comfort of a 12" by 9" by 6" cardboard box.
Written by Rib