Pentium Powered Extra With Friggin’ Lasers


[Neil] sent along this one and I found this one highly amusing. The latest use for recycling those old cpus: overvolt them a bit with a USB cable and keep your coffee cup warm. Use them as dressing for heat generating resistors.

[nik] came up with a non-destructive way to mount an external wi-fi antenna to his thinkpad. I like it, but I think you need a double height PCMCIA slot to fit it – Maybe a slimmer version could be built for a powerbook/macbook.

[Hybrid] found some interesting diy LASER projects. Including a $10 air laser. Sweet.

[joek1010] noted some interesting webcam laser hacks. The laser tracing webcam has definite possibilities.

[dualbandit] found a similar twist, but this time a laser pointer is used to remote control a mediacenter.

In case you’ve been following it, my DIY HD projector build on Engadget is finished up with the final review. I’m pleased with the image quality, but I’ll probably be tweaking the lamp/reflector assembly a bit.

Oh, and if you were into exploiting vending machines and getting free coke, it looks like they’ve pushed out a firmware patch.

Remember, only 11 more days to get your entry in for the Design Challenge. Just check out the prizes if you need motivation.

20 thoughts on “Pentium Powered Extra With Friggin’ Lasers

  1. There was someone a while ago who straped 7 cpus of this era onto a big metal plate, and connected wires to them randomly. It managed to cook eggs, but I think a 360 would be more effective.

  2. Yeah, when I first looked at the processor mug warmer I to thought that he was somehow running power through the P1 chip, instead he has a couple beefy resistors heating up under the P1 chip with some thermal paste transfering heat to the chip.

    Still a fun idea though.

  3. paul, the processor hot plate is a fake, if you look at the pics there is a lm7805 voltage regulator hooked up to the hot plate, the lm7805 can only handle 1 watt.

    1w is nowhere enough to cook an egg, unless you were in the desert with a magnifying glass over you.

  4. i was talking about the Cyrix hotplate, heres a link:

    http://www.rabidhardware.net/index.php?id=44

    5 watts spread out over that much surface area would do nothing, i doubt you would feel it if you held your hand to it.

    the pentium cup warmer on the other hand, has a maximum of 2.5 watts, because usb only puts out 500ma, which is 0.5A @ 5v = 2.5W

    i’ll admit, i did not realize the hotplate one on my own, but the usb one was all me.

  5. Re: The coke machine hack. The vendors have always had the option to disable a refund on “empty”; this patch just makes it off-by-default.

    This information comes from a coke employee.

    All the vending machines in my area were updated as soon as this got on hackaday the first time, because an employee I know reads the site and went and fixed all his machines.

  6. Just for the heck of it, I wired one 486 CPU directly to a 250 watt power supply using a supply voltage and ground pin. Gave off no heat. I think you would have to be doing some calculations or something to make it get hot. (You’d probably need to connect EVERY FREAKING power and ground pin too.)

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