New Keychain
In a recent flurry of boredom, I decided that I would go through some of my old computer parts and see if I had anything useful. Like usual, I didn’t get far before I was distracted. I started butchering an old motherboard with a dremel and a file. I had remembered a web page of unique key chains and I got the idea to make one myself.
If you want to make you’re own, you’ll need some type of saw, a dremel, and a file or some sand paper. The saw I choose was a jigsaw, although this was a bit hard to use since the board had a capacitors and others through hole components that got in the way. The sand paper or file will come in handy getting rid of those rouge copper traces that pop up on the edges of the board. If you don’t get rid of them, they’ll catch on all sorts of fabric and cause snags. Just smooth out the edges and it won’t be a problem.
The way I started was to find a spot on the motherboard that had a nice looking chip close to one of the mounting holes, we’ll use the mounting hole as the place to put it on the keychain. The area I picked had some annoying tall capacitors but those came off pretty easy with a pair of pliers. After I cleared the area of all the taller objects, I put the board in a vise and started cutting with a jigsaw. Once I had a rough cut I switched to the dremel.
I dremeled the heck out of it and what I got was exactly what I wanted, a cool key chain. I think this is the on board sound chip. The computer was blazing fast at 500mhz but those days have come and gone. At least its not just sitting in a box collecting dust anymore.
