Well it is Spring Break and I got bored with an old laptop, so I looked into some DIY projects and found some on instructables.com.  I then changed them a little bit so I didn’t have to buy anything.  What I used:

• Old 10″ x 12″ wooden frame
• Old Dell laptop (I forgot what model it was, latitude d610 I think)
• Leftover foam board
• Lots and lots of Hot Glue

I took everything apart, figured out how to fit the laptop screen in the frame with the foam board, then I took all of the unnecessary parts out, including the battery (will be powered by the power adapter) and the CD Drive.  I attached the foam board inside the frame as a make-shift matte, then the screen, which I glued in with hot glue, careful to avoid sensitive parts.  I then glued in the laptop parts (upside down at first, so I couldn’t hit the power button , but I fixed the mistake).  Then I plugged it in and it worked!!!

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What will come of this combination?  I have downloaded and made a bootable CD of Xubuntu 8.04 and I plan to install it on my Cardboard Computer when I get home from work today.  I hope it doesn’t take all night, but we’ll see I guess.  And yes, if you haven’t already figured it out, I am a fan of low resource Ubuntu flavors .  I hope that it will run it, and I’m pretty sure it has enough RAM to run Xubuntu.  More updates after I get it installed.

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Here are the specs and some better pictures of the CB-PC II.

It is still running Windows XP SP2, it has a Pentium 4 Processor, at 1.7 GHz, which runs at about 109F.

I have a 40 GB HDD, 248 RAM, two extra fans, and a bunch of duct tape and cardboard.  Both sides are open, it has network, six USB ports, and it runs pretty cool at a system temperature of 83F.

Here are some much better pictures, sorry about the old crappy ones.

It looks like I’ve got some cleaning up to do!

The CB-PC II code-name: “Puckulence”.

I am hoping to try Fedora on this, or maybe another Distro

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I have (almost) completed the Cardboard PC II.  It turns on and it is running WinXP right now, but it will have some flavor of linux right now.  Currently it is running at about CPU – 107F and System – 82F with two extra fans on each side.  Here are some pictures, and yes, it really does run and it stays really cool.  I only need to secure a few more parts on the box and my project will be complete!  Then I hope to find more computer parts and make CB-PC III.  We’ll see what I can get…  Anyway, here are the pics, I will post the specs up as soon as I get home and fiddle with it some more.

Sorry some of them are blurry, I took them with my camera phone.  I will post more complete pictures when I am totally finished with the project.

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I have almost finished the CB-PC II, which I worked on for about four hours today.  I will post pictures this week, I promise.  I had a few things this weekend that got in the way of production.  This computer has less RAM, but the same CPU and the same hard drive, but a different power supply and motherboard.  We’ll see how this one runs.  I guess you could call this the first “real” Cardboard PC as it will actually run something, unlike it’s predecessor.  CB-PC II has four fans, and will run even cooler then CB-PC I.  Stay tuned for the release of more specs and some awesome pics!  Unfortunately, the CB-PC I has been taken apart and scrapped for the construction of CB-PC II.  I hope you enjoy the pics coming soon!

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I have not started taking this apart yet, or putting  the second one together.  I will this weeked, I promise.  Here you go for now.  My custom case mod, the CB-PC I, Code-named “Quick One”.

Specs: It has three fans (Power Supply, Random, CPU Fan), a 40 GB HDD, 384 MB RAM, Pentium 4, two 48x CD-ROM, one floppy drive, added on video card, pieces came from two HP Compaqs (not sure which model) and a Compaq EVO.  It currently does not boot into an OS, because I think I either hooked up something wrong, or there is no OS.  (I also had to replace the Motherboard battery, so I think for CB-PC II, code-named “Puckulence”, I will use one of the other motherboards.  We’ll see…

I hope that CB-PC II will be the first working Cardboard Fluxbuntu box.  We’ll see… yet again.

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I, uh, broke my laptop somehow…  I had Ubuntu, installed Xfce on it (it’s really slow), and it broke.  So I reinstalled Ubuntu 7.04 from a CD I have, updated it to 7.10 and then to 8.04.  It’s still broken!  Gaaah!  I thought I had it fixed after another quick update, but then it wouldn’t finish an update!  Then Firefox and several other programs wouldn’t open at all.

So what did I do with it?  I through it on the ground and ran it over with my Hummer.  (Okay, I need that laptop, and I can’t afford a Hummer, and what a waste of gas anyway.)  I installed Fluxbuntu, and everything (mostly) works fast(er) and seamlessy!  We’ll see in the long run.

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I have recently acquired an old HP Compaq from my work.  It has 256 MB RAM, 40.0 GB HDD, Intel Celeron Processor, and that’s about all I looked at to know when I got the thing home, I was going to put a low resource Linux install on it.  I had been researching one such install, called Fluxbuntu.  Well, I already burned the ISO, which is around 310 MB, very nice and waayyy smaller than a similar Ubuntu ISO, weighing in at about 696 MB (+/- 5%-ish).  Well, I brought the old thing home and tested out the Windows XPSP2 (I think).  The boot took about two minutes, log in another two minutes to set up everything that was installed from the company I work for.  This thing was sluggish like no other.  Now, I had previously tried Fluxbuntu on an old Tablet PC that I had lying around, and it would not install, so I just stuck Ubuntu on it, and it runs smoothly.  This made me slightly nervous to use partition the whole hard drive and get rid of everything.  I did it eventually, and the install started and ran very quickly.  It stopped however, nearly finished at 90% and sat for over an hour at 90%.  I restarted the install three times, before finally it worked!

Fluxbuntu Start Up

I was so excited to finally have the system run.  The computer restarted, and to my amazement the boot time was less then 30 seconds and I was totally logged in to my new Fluxbuntu system!  Amazing!  The graphics are really nice, and there is plenty of support for it, as it is based off the popular Ubuntu.  I even installed Globulation, a pretty awesome game, which runs pretty fast (unless you have more than five computer players!)  I like the browser, although it could use some more features, but it does have some unique things.  The tabs could use some work as well, as they seem slightly jumbled, and sometimes can be hard to use.  I have not looked at all the features of Fluxbuntu, but it seems to be a nice, extremely lightweight, mostly stable system.  I have used e-mail, Internet, games, and messed with desktop settings.  It uses Fluxbox (hence the name FLUXbuntu) as a window manager.  It is a little different, due to the fact that there is no start button, or application menu on a bar at the top/bottom of the screen.  You simply right click anywhere on the screen and BANG, there’s your menu, with all your programs.  You have Synaptic Package Manager to install programs, pretty much everything you can get in Ubuntu is there.  The only problems that I have found with it have already been reported as known bugs, and can be found and most likely solved here.

Fluxbuntu

This system is awesome, but I would recommend to experienced Linux users, and make sure you back up everything first.  Also, if you have another Linux flavor, I would recommend trying Fluxbox out first, to see if the interface is for you.  It is a little different, but is easy to get used to.  Anyone with an adventurous spirit, a low resource system, and some Linux and command line knowledge should definitely give Fluxbuntu a try.

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