How to Make New Stuff From Your Piles of Obsolete Tech

A new book shows you how to make usable items from old PCs, cell phones, scanners, printers, and other dead tech gear.

By Anne B. McDonald

Earbud Speakers

If you're like us, you have an attic, closet, or garage stuffed with unused, outdated tech junk. A new book called 62 Projects to Make With a Dead Computer (and Other Discarded Electronics) gives you some good and some goofy ideas for DIY projects. For instance, we whipped together this Earbud Speaker system in about an hour from parts from our discarded tech drawer--plus some new odds and ends that cost less than $10 total. The speakers work pretty well, and--more importantly--doing this project put those two defunct 2002-vintage Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen MP3 players back to work doing something other than filling a drawer. (History detour on the Nomad Jukebox Zen: Great software, 20GB of storage, and a street price of about $350 at the time! RIP.)

Skill level for project: Novice

Note: Material in this slideshow is excerpted from 62 Projects to Make With a Dead Computer (and Other Discarded Electronics) | Copyright 2010 by Randy Sarafan | Used by permission of Workman Publishing Co., Inc. New York | All rights reserved.

(Slide photo above by Nick Mediati: All other photos are from 62 Projects to Make With a Dead Computer)


Republished with permission from PC World. (View original version.)