Come Celebrate our 10 Year Anniversary!

Question

It's hard to believe that 10 years have come and gone. This community has grown so much since then! We're now averaging 70+ questions per day with over 270k questions already amassed. All of these represent questions from individuals who came here to look for answers to some of their most difficult questions. Now, look at the number of answers you've provided over the decade. It's about 2 answers per question! That's just amazing. Thank you all for making this site such a wonderful place for people to come and get help.

The Contest

In honor of this great site, we'd like to celebrate the 10 year anniversary with a fun contest. Let's see who can come up with the most creative and artistic use of old server parts! Not sure what you could use? No problem, use it all! Wall art, avant-garde compositions, up-cycled projects, original sculptures, homemade improvisations, it's all welcomed.

We'll have this contest up and running for three weeks as of this posting. In the meantime, we'll allow members to post and vote on their favorites! Once the 2 weeks expire (on April 23) I'll tally the votes and announce our winners publicly on April 24. Let's plan on having 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners along with one or two honorable mentions (if need be).

The Prizes

What's a contest without some fun prizes right? Well, if you're wanting some sweet ServerFault swag and an autographed card from Joel then this contest it for you. Enough said.

The winners of the contest will need to contact me with their mailing address once the contest ends. I will provide additional details at that time.

What are you waiting for! Let's get started! Post your photos and share a small blurb explaining what you are presenting!

* This contest idea was suggested by yagmoth555

Answer 1

In 1990, I was hired at a place that had just built and was moving into a new building. The company had a long history of using Digital (DEC) minicomputers - first a PDP-11, then a VAX 11/750, and in the new building it was a clustered pair of MicroVAX 3400s. At the time, it wasn't clear that twisted pair cabling was the right way to go, so the building was wired with DEC's RS-423 serial cabling (for terminals) and with a Thickwire backbone and thinwire for the microcomputers.

I kept a bunch of stuff from that job for many years (e.g. the CPU, memory-management, and FPU boards from the VAX 11/750), but the only thing I've held onto is the huge pile of BNC T connectors I accumulated:

For the first 15 years or so that I was there, for every PC we bought, we also bought a network card, most of the cards were from DEC and they each came with a BNC T connector and a termination resistor that we didn't need:

You could make simple things out of a few T connectors - I particularly liked the caltrops:

The basic caltrop uses 6 T connectors, you can keep adding more - this is 6, 8, 10 and 12:

You can keep going and it becomes more like a necklace:

Or, you can use the circle of Ts as a fence to keep multi-legged creatures from getting out:

Answer 2

Not exactly server equipment but let me try. So what can you do with old computers? Clean them!

Back in 2002 (as you can tell by my old-fashioned cell phone) I was working for a university library in Poland which had a set of PCs put in the main hall to access the book catalogue. These were good old HP Vectras with 386 CPU, running MS-DOS. While relatively pricey, they were extremely reliable, even in such harsh conditions.

One day we decided to open them up and see how much dust they accumulated. We were in shock to find a thick layer covering the whole MB and PSU. None of them died. So we gave them a good cleaning, just as a way to thank for their reliable service.

Answer 3

I tried a small artwork. I call the it the battle over data, the super hero won with the usb flash at the top :D

Answer 4

This isn't server technology, but I just realized it's from the same job where I collected all the BNC T connectors - a real IBM Model M keyboard:

It's from an IBM AT (I have one from a PS/2 somewhere), so it takes a couple different adapters to make it work - AT to PS/2, then a USB to PS/2 adapter from a KVM switch:

There's a few other bits of ancient technology visible here:

Answer 5

I made a smartphone charging station out of pci slot covers (from several servers).

Ingredients:

• 20 pci slot covers with holes (at least 12)
• 6 screws (2 motherboard screws and 4 hard disk screws)
• 2 Motherboard standoffs (with washers)
• wire (about 30cm)

Tools:

• Screwdriver
• Cutter (for the wire)

Assembly time:

• 10min - 15min

Here are some pictures:

I have still plenty of pci slot covers, so any other ideas welcome!

Answer 6

This 10 year anniversary contest has now come an end.

Each one of the entries were pretty cool so I have decided to award all of the participants with a 1st place prize being that they were willing to make and share their creations with us! Please join me in congratulating the following winners:

Ward

yagmoth555

wanted

lepe

Each of you will receive a $350 USD GC to ThinkGeek to use as you please. In order to claim your prize, please send me an email (jgarza @ stackoverflow.com) with a link to your contribution and your user account. I'll take care of the rest and email you your prize.

Thank you all for a wonderful 10 years and also for joining us in celebrating the continuing growth of this community!