The joy of old tech
The link made it onto Boing Boing, and it truly is a wonderful thing: Waffle-making robot a hit
Funnily enough, I read this article after reading the latest installment of Cory Doctorow’s story Themepunks, which is about people doing odd things with junk technology.
I’m loving the story. The first real linux box I built was a 486/100 with 16 megs o’ RAM. It served as a web proxy for 4 of us in my dad’s office, giving us all ‘net access over the screaming fast 56K connection. And it worked flawlessly. A year or two later I would use another 486 scrounged out of a box of parts shoved in a closet to run an anonymous remailer.
I’ve never done anything astoundingly cool with old, discarded parts, but I have been able to use older computers to do useful things. The latest is taking “obsolete” computers donated by my employer and setup linux boxen at Amber’s clinic.
Besides… the robot makes waffles. What else is there to say, really?
Oh, and go read Themepunks.