Be* Broadband "Pimp your Pc" - My Entry
by Endellion

 

SCARY

For this competition, I would like to submit this, the last in my "extreme modding" series, after the first mod, which was a computer inside a vacuum cleaner ("My Computer Sucks"), went wrong on account of some flaws in my measurements. Oops. Well never mind, here is Scary.

This is our router: a full-featured Celeron-based, (fridge) rack mounted, wall hanging installation of Clark Connect Community Edition which is based on CentOs which is based on RHEL, which is based on Fedora which is based on Lunix which is based on UNIX.

 

 

And just look at all those magnificent features:

 

1.Power Button. This old-style 125W power supply supports hard switching!

2. Speaker mounted on PSU using it's own built-in Magnet. Can be remounted anywhere at will, though maybe on the drives is not such a good idea.

3. Activity LEDs for various functions, as seen in the close-up picture.

4. "Drive Cage" made from garden wire, for ease of reconfiguration!

5. One Gigabit ethernet card, for fast access to packet sniffings! :-)

6. One really old 10/100 ("fast") ethernet card, because the internet is slow anyway! (Only kidding. But can't wait for some sort of DOCSIS 3.0 implementation in my street though.)

7. One AGP Graphics Card, an antique S3 Trio, the museum wouldn't have it and it's broken now anyway!

8. Full complement of Red Warning Lights, on account of above-mentioned graphics card!

9. Electronics part from dismantled keyboard, to fool motherboard into skipping the "no keyboard present, press any key..." warning!

10. No less than two vast 10 GB hard drives, including a 1998 original in a beautiful faux-leather jacket!

11. A x8 CD ROM which will only open if prodded with pointy stick. Only been used twice!

12. Fridge Rack mounted, allowing for easy and decorative wall hanging!

 

As you can see, my design involves no blue leds or neon, and has been pruned of all unnecessary detail. Yet it is a strikingly decorative computer which never fails to be commented upon by guests. Especially those guests who have had the privilige of the use of the computer room as a make-shift guest room wax lyrical with regard to the soothing hum produced by the fans, and the reassuring blinking of network lights all through the night. (After they've stopped whinging about the fold-out futon.)

I'd also imagine that this goes a long way towards explaining why I really deserve to win this competition. For the price of six months' broadband I can finally buy a case!

 

P.S. You'll have to click "back" on your browser now because I've fsck-ed the cascasding server side include carp.