Laser printers and photocopiers are full of especially interesting mechanical parts, with myriad gears and a variety of sensors and electromechanical components.
When my Laserwriter 12/640 PS tragically passed away, I ended up with drawers full of useful and fascinating components.
Photograph by Tom Owad
Old computers vary greatly in their say, “That lamp used to be my scanner; that night
desirability. A handful of systems are in great stand was my server; that digital picture frame is
demand. No Altair 8800 or DEC PDP- 8 is going my old PowerBook ...”
into the trash, but more common computers, Hard drives are such a frequent point of failure that
especially ones that were popular in schools, are I’ve yet to scrap a working one, but I’ve encountered
still headed for the dump by the truckload. What’s plenty of dying drives — most of them have two
to happen to all those Apple IIe classics, PC clones, extremely strong magnets in them. When I bought a
and printers that can’t even be given away? magnetic CB antenna for my car, I was disappointed
I now tear apart anything I can get my hands to find that it wouldn’t stick to my trunk lid. I placed
on before passing it along to the garbage man. four magnets scavenged from dead hard drives on
Rugged old computers are sure to have some the inside of the lid, and they’ve successfully held
quality parts within them, perfect for use in future the antenna in place at more than 80 mph.
projects. Any circuit board from the 80s is likely to 5. 25" floppy drives almost always contain a step-
have TTL or CMOS chips, and if you’re lucky, they’ll per motor to adjust the head and a DC motor to spin
be socketed and take a second each to remove. the disk. Scrap out a pallet of old PCs, and you’ll
Many boards will also have EPROMs, which you have enough motors to build some pretty complex
can quickly identify by the sticker covering the devices. The drives also typically have two stabilizer
chip’s window. Remove the sticker, expose the bars, just like in the scanners but smaller. I haven’t
circuit to ultraviolet light, and they’re as good as yet figured out what I can make with these, but I’ve
new. Pick up an old EPROM burner at a swap meet got a drawer full of them. 3. 5" floppy drives tend to
or on eBay, and you can reprogram it. have junkier parts (especially the newer ones), but
Mechanical devices are even more likely to con- the motors are much smaller, which can be useful.
tain interesting parts. A typical scanner includes a As systems get more compact, it gets harder
stepper motor and a handful of belts and gears, plus to find decent parts, but it’s still not impossible.
a long stabilizing bar that guides the scanner head The death of my wireless router yielded a nice
(and could be used to guide anything). The one I collection of LED arrays, two crystal oscillators,
tore apart last week also had a nice transformer and an 802.11b card, and two antennas, complete with
an EPROM on its circuit board. Invariably, they’ll internal cabling.
have a fluorescent or xenon lamp, too, which can be
made into a bench lamp, if nothing else. I haven’t
Tom Owad ( owad@applefritter.com) is a Macintosh consul- actually done this, but it would be fun to be able to tant in York, Pa., and the editor of applefritter.com. He is the point around to various objects in your house and author of Apple I Replica Creation (Syngress, 2005).
References:
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