Pandora's Indelible Beer Box

Building a Sustainable Computer

At some point, the accrual of music hit ridiculous, and it needed to be outsourced. It was decided that a Linux machine would be the best way to go;

1) Minimal parts needed, that were cheap and accessible (even compared to production machines, like Dell or HP),

2) because we ran Macs, and Macs ran Unix, a few scripts could turn the outsourced music folder into a broadcasted iTunes Library, and thus the machine into a media server,

3) the shrunken sizes, the lack of any fan, and the sheer lack of parts equate to power savings.

Named after the God's infernal gift to man, Pandora (who was the first woman, and thus brought about all evil) is of small size, has a small foot print and, thus, needed a small case. Because we were transporting her as loose bits (the top picture), it was wearing on the cables involved, so we used the first box we could find as a temporary solution. (It was decided that a Play Station 2 box would be about the perfect volume, but one was never found.)

Numerous Linux distributions were tried (debian, slackware, gentoo, suse, etc) and after a few attempts with RedHat 9.0, it turns out that 7.3 hit the sweet spot between its awkward little mobo (Via Epia M5000), its onboard components, and its optical drives (Seagate Barracuda 125gb, and Matshita DVD/CD-RW - the same as iBooks use). As you can see from the bottom shot, during programming, Pandora was posted up on the living room floor, as we could get directions online via AIM.

Impact:

Not including case, the computer consists of something like 11 parts (which is unheard of in modern computing). Besides the hard drive, everything else has been shrunken and minimized cutting energy consumption by 50-70%, vs regular desktops. Then, the efficient use of what power it does get means low energy loss due to heat- the system has no fans, and is completely silent. (If the monitor was unplugged, the only way to tell if it was on was to touch the table to feel if the harddrive was spinning.) On the versatility tip, the thing was tons of fun to play with (for us dorks), so doesnt that count for something?