The Saga of the XPC

My Super Computer, the Shuttle XPC, Pentium 4, Liquid Cooled, state of the art Machine in 2005, has died.  I bought it almost 10 years ago exactly.  It had its troubles through the years, but kept going.  The Mutha Board is that which quit.  Every other component works...

A fortunate event happened that gave me posession of a Dell B110 chassis, Muthaboard, and a Celeron, no memory, or drive.  Turns out this is a socket 478 Mutha board that will support my Pentium 4, and DDR2 memory.  So my system has reincarnated in a drab Dell body, and doesn't like it very much.

 This system was built in the XP era, but won't load XP because Microsoft ended its support.  The only option was to install 7, but now the machine is handicapped because Dell never developed drivers for 7, and never will.  This machine is ripe for a Linux install...  Hello Professor Falken...

Solder Exhaust Fans

This is scraptacular...  I've been building Solder Exhaust Fans from scrapped components.  At work I have a large scrap heap, and there are a lot of base materials, and some complex devices, like computers.  I take the CPU Cooling Fan out of the computers, and use it as a Solder Exhaust Fan.  I need to add some things to it like screens to keep the fingers out, and a base to keep it from cruising around the table.  Here is the latest set, minimized to take up as little space as possible.

This started with my Fan Controller from another project, and got simplified into an extremely cheap product.  The early models were mounted on a block of wood.  Then I moved on to a aluminum box, and now  its just a plate of aluminum with rubber feet.  The speed control is a LM317 Variable Voltage Regulator mounted on the top.  I use a switched potentiometer to provide On/Off control on the speed control knob.  Here is a shot of some "Classic" Solder Exhaust Fans...