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by Jule
In this instructable I will briefly give you some ideas components you will find inside. Maybe I will cover
on how to reuse some parts of old computers that some of the projects later in following instructables.
everyone is throwing away. Post in the comments what do you want to see in
detail.
You will not believe, but these old computers have
many interesting parts inside. Here you will see some of my past projects I made
with these recycled parts. some of them are
This instructable will not give full instructions on all "mainstream", others are not so much :)
the project,because it will get too long. But it will give
you many new ideas on how to use these old
This is the first project I made, many years ago, when - black wires are ground (negative)
I was still in middle school.
- red wires are +5V
The project is very easy to do. Just chop off the
connector and identify the wires: - orange are +3.3V
- yellow are +12V - grey wire is +5V POWER-OK. Connect a LED here
if you want to see when the power is OK. If you
- blue is -12V (comes handy in rare cases) overload the power supply, the LED will turn off and
you will know that there is no sufficient power.
Connect the above wires to some connectors or
therminals, so it will be easy to connect your project Most of these ATX supplies need to have some load
boards to them. I put just ordinary screws on some present on +5V(red wire) if you want to get the full
plastic board, because back then I had no money to power out on +12V line (yellow wire). So if you want
buy banana plugs. to extract the full power out, you need to draw an amp
or two from +5V, so just put a few power resistors (10
- green wire is important. It needs to be connected to ohm or so) or some 12V car headlight bulbs on the
ground - black wire in order for the power supply to +5V line and you are good to go.
turn on
It is good to leave one or two 4 pin HDD power
- purple wire is +5V standby power. If you connect the connectors hanging out. You will see later that they
LED on it, it will turn on if the power supply is plugged come in handy.
into mains. You don't need to connect it if you do not
need it.
2 2
3 1
1. Green wire to grount for the supply to power on 1. HDD power connector comes in very handy.
2. Purple wire is 5V standby. Use this with an LED to see when the mains 2. At that time, I was short on money and instead of installing banana
is connected. plugs, I just put the screws for terminals
3. Grey is "power OK". Connect to LED. LED turns off when you short or
overload the supply. Useful feature.
Now that you have a power supply, you can put it to can just leave it in.
some good use.
You can take the magnets out. They are very strong
Take an old HDD and plug it to the power supply you and can be used for many cool things. Watch your
made earlier directly to the HDD connector you left fingers!
hanging (I told you it is going to be useful). You want
the HDD to start spinning. If it does not start spinning, Then unscrew the plate off the motor and glue some
try to switch a jumper on the rear side in order to spin fine sanding paper on it. Cut it to shape and
when the power is applied. Just try all the assemble it back on the motor. Now you have a mini
combinations, one should work. grinder. I made a slight modification and added more
plates from many drives on the same shaft, so the
Then, disassemble the HDD drive. grinding plate is heavier and has more inertia.
In the guts you will see the plate, arm and two metal The older the HDD, the better it is, because it usually
things that are magnets that move the arm. You can has stronger motor inside.
rip the arm off because you will not need it, or you
1. Strong magnets
If you have one of that older CD-ROM drives that 5V and 12V and you are good to go.
have headphone jack, then you have some cool old
junk :) Just insert the CD, plug the headphones in the jack
(or connect it to an external amplifier via this jack)
These players can play regular audio CDs all by and press the play button. Voila! Music plays! You
themselves! can ajdust the volume with built in potentiometer and
you can also skip tracks with play button.
Just plug them into your converted ATX power
supply, or create separate power supply that supplies
1 3 4
2
1
1. Volume 1. Found this CD inside the unit from junkyard. Weird music :)
2. Headphone jack 2. Powering from power supply
3. Play/next
4. Stop/open tray
I needed to make a headphone amplifier for a TV that In my case it was MS6308 in one device and BH3540
had only LINE OUT audio output in the rear. The "line in the other. They are all pretty simillar.
out" output does not have enough power to supply
the headphones with enough volume for normal
listening, so I needed an headphone amplifier. Fast.
1. Shortened PCB
I re-used my case by installing my CNC router electronics inside the case. Including the inverter for the spindle.
Everything fitted nicely inside.
These cases are great for some bigger projects. I have seen people use them as bird houses, post boxes, you
name it.
The printers have all sort of cool parts inside. Guide encoder and drive the motor with Arduino motor
rails, motors, gears.. you name it. shield, added a servo motor on the print head carrier
for moving the arm and in few stormy weekends, and
I converted one of those old inkjet printers into the the useless machine emerged!
Most Useless Machine - Advanced Edition :)
See it in action in the video above!
I stripped the printer of all of the plastics and left only
the base, the guide rail, the print head carrier, the This project is too big for just one instructable step. I
motor that drives the head and the optical encoder for will probably need to make a separate instructable on
positioning the head. this one.
https://youtu.be/sC8sxy9vP_w
1. The donor
Save the fans, heatsinks, LEDs, switches and simillar stuff for later to use on different occasions.
Old CPU heatsinks are ideal for cooling powerful LEDs, power supplies have many smaller heatsinks that you can
use for voltage regulators, also the wires come in handy