Supplied by 2cooltek

Guest Writer: Adam “Norge” Shadoan

The cutting edge of case design never fails to amaze. Journey with us as the
pc gets “boxed” up ghetto style….cardboard box that is.

Disclaimer: Short-Media, its owner, its members, and this
author are in no way responsible for damage or injury incurred as a result of
attempting to duplicate or mimic this article. Please remember that cardboard
is flammable.

The idea occurred when I came downstairs and saw my roommate mmonnin
getting ready to beat down yet another defenseless
computer. Even though it was basically a piece of junk, I thought that I
might as well try to save it. After some work, I was able to save the more important
parts. Since the motherboard was bad, my other roommate Aranyic
gave me one of his old ones and I got an idea.

I already had enough parts to build a functioning computer, so why not do it?
The only thing I was missing was a case. That is when a cardboard box caught
my eye. Yes, a cardboard box. What better place to put an old computer than
in a box? My mission was clear. I was going to make the most kick-ass cardboard
box ghetto computer the world had ever seen.

To begin with, I rounded up all of my parts. I had a 200W power supply, a run-of-the-mill
3.5″ floppy drive, a standard video card, a whopping 1.6 GB hard drive,
and an old motherboard to support it all. This is powered, of course, by my
beastly 133 MHz processor and 48MB of RAM.

The crown jewel of all the parts, though,was the CD-ROM drive. I am not sure
of what the speed is (around 4x or 8x would be my best bet) and it has some
weird infrared port on the front for whatever reason. That isn’t even
the best part, though. The best part is that you have to hit
it in order to get it to open. High-quality crap like that is hard to come by.

After all of the parts were piled together, I wasted no time ripping up the
box with my trusty pocket knife. The first items to be installed were the floppy
and hard drives. They were still in the hard drive cage from the old case so
it was pretty easy to situate them. Once they were in place, I made some rough
guesses as to where the floppy drive would pop out and drew a few lines. I cut
the hole out and the drive fit in perfectly. Next I used electrical tape to
secure the cardboard braces I had made. Surprisingly enough, it was pretty sturdy.
I considered it a success.

The installation of the power supply went pretty much the same as the hard
drive cage. I cut a few holes and then threw some electrical tape around it
to keep it in place. I set it cattycorner from the hard drive cage so that they
could balance the upper level which I would add later on.

Mounting the CD-ROM turned out to be a huge pain in the neck. The plan was
to mount it inside of an old FedEx box and rest the FedEx box on top of the
hard drive cage and power supply. Then the motherboard would rest on top of
that. The plan seemed simple enough but I obviously didn’t put enough
thought into it. A hole was cut in the side of the FedEx box for the CD-ROM
to stick out of but when I attempted to put it in the CD-ROM, it went into the
box completely and slid around. My solution was taping small pieces of cardboard
on the top and bottom of the CD-ROM so that it could not slide past the very
front. The ribbon and power cables also turned out to be a pain in the neck
to hook up since the CD-ROM was so far into the box. I had to cut an extra hole
in the side of the FedEx box just so I could get my fingers in it to attack
the cables. From this step on the PSU and CD-ROM casings were one unit which
made them difficult to maneuver as I soon found out.

The real fun began when I placed the FedEx box on top of the PSU and hard drive
cage to create the upper level of the case. The motherboard power cables were
only about 6 inches long and wouldn’t reach through the space I had provided
for the rest of the power lines. To combat this I cut a hole in the FedEx box
to run the motherboard cables through. They were able to reach but just barely.

The rest of the cables were fine. The ribbon cables slipped right up from the
lower level of the case and right to where I needed them to be.

With my wiring problems out of the way I was ready to set the motherboard in
place. It was seated on top of the FedEx box as planned and connected to the
rest of the parts. It took some maneuvering to get it in the right position
so that they all reached but it was close enough.

The last step was cutting out holes for the motherboard, video card, and power
switch. Since the power supply is really old, the power switch had its own wire
and was directly attached to the PSU itself. It is definitely one of the more
unique setups I’ve seen. I put the switch in place and I was done…
well, except for the grounding wire. You have to keep it safe, you know, so
I attached that too. The last time I checked, cardboard was perfect for that
type of thing.

And there you have it! After about four hours of work and a ton of electrical
tape, I had one heck of a cardboard box ghetto computer. It is currently running
Windows 98, and is pretty bare, but once I get some of my old school games on
it my cardboard box ghetto PC will feel more like home.

Note: The PC that pwned mmonnin is at the bottom of the shot.

Short-Media Editor’s note: I have no note except to say the mind plays funny
things on you when you are bored. Short-Median’s are never afraid to try
new things.

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