September 4, 2009
Junk in a box.
It’s all John Baichtal’s fault.
After stumbling across this photo in John’s Flickr stream, my curiosity was not only piqued, it was practically carbonated. A box full of electronic junk? Most excellent. But, wait a minute … a box full of electronic junk that you are encouraged to take things out of, put things into, and then continually track on the interwebs? It sounded too good to be true, but that’s exactly what “The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronic Junk” or TGIMBOEJ is all about. Loosely described on the project’s site as “… halfway between P2P zip archive sharing and a flea market …”, it was something I was destined to participate in.
After familiarizing myself with the various “rules of acquisition”, I added my name to the box requests page. It didn’t take long before another Canadian pack rat contacted me regarding a brand new box he had assembled — the appropriately named Blue Bomber. Alex hails from Winnipeg (hence the “Blue Bomber” reference), but he just so happened to be visiting relatives just south of Calgary this summer. Rather than following the more traditional, postal method of shipment, Alex stopped by the house and hand delivered the box.
Upon opening the box, I helped myself to a pair of Copal model LC-177B stepper motors and seven lengths of Sumitube 5.0mm heat shrink tubing. I didn’t want to get too greedy with the goodies, but there were a couple of servos that caught my eye as well. I decided to leave the servos for the next recipient and started to gather bits from my own collection to add to the mix.
To replenish the contents, I added the following choice items:
- The stylus from an original Newton MessagePad
- A Centronics style 50-pin passive SCSI terminator †
- An Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II (Serial Number: LC7121VKT18) †
- A perfectly functional Linksys EtherFast® 10/100 5-port workgroup hub (Model: EFAH05W Version: 2.0) This particular nugget was salvaged from the “giveaway table” at Veer during one of the annual office wide “clean up” days. Sorry, no power supply.
- And finally … two analogue controller boards, each with a potentiometer. I’m pretty sure that one of these was the speed control from a portable humidifier. Not sure where the other came from, but it sported a neon bulb and a surface mount varistor.
The box was summarily repacked, labelled, and secured for shipment, and is is now in the capable hands of multidisciplinarian Brent Marshall. By the looks of things, he might already have a plan for that surplus mouse I plopped in there. You can track Blue Bomber’s current progress on the TGIMBOEJ wiki and see a full set of images in my Flickr stream.
What’s next, you ask? I suppose I could wait for another box of junk to arrive at my door. However, I’m beginning to think that this might be a good opportunity to clear out even more electromechanical detritus from the basement and start another box. Who’s in?
Oh, and it’s still your fault John. Maybe you’re next.
† By the way, if anyone needs a SCSI terminator or ADB mouse for their own project, let me know. I have dozens of these stupid things.
This item was posted by .
Categories:
Leave a comment or send a trackback from your own site.