Quite some time ago - like when this whole Computer Circus 'blog began - I took an old dead power supply (yeah, remember that one?) and gutted it, and tried to install a much smaller power supply inside of it, along with an embedded computer. Well, that didn't work out, because the power supply I installed (that I bought supposedly brand new from a surplus electronics store) didn't work.

I abandoned that project, thinking I would never find another power supply like the one that didn't work. But I put a search up on ebay with a six-month lifespan on it, and just the other day, I hit paydirt. I just bought another tiny 100W power supply and am waiting for it to arrive. This means, I can now finish that project. Good thing I didn't throw it away. Actually, I did at one point, but fished it out of the trash before it got dumped.

So today I spent some time installing the embedded computer and a disk drive into the power supply case, along with the old dead tiny 100W power supply that will soon be replaced with a WORKING version.

Here is a shot of the work in progress. The embedded computer is being installed at this point:


And here you can see I have installed a laptop hard drive. I bolted it right to the outer casing. The embedded PC is installed and is just waiting for the power supply:


And here is the tiny computer fully assembled:


Looks just like a power supply, doesn't it? I think it will make a great little shop computer for programming microcontrollers, etc. In fact, I was thinking of installing it into my combat robot ("Road Rage"), either with a long extension cord, or an on-board power inverter, to implement some autonomous control into the beast. It would be a great test bed for my RC4 device. I would love to drive it around, recording the R/C control signals that I give it along its path, then play back the sequence to watch it repeat the course on its own.

Anyway, just something fun to play with. I'll make sure I get some video of the activity and make it available here when that time comes. :-)