What could I do with an old, broken ps2?

My friend has a bunch (like 3 or 4) old broken ps2s and he's willing to sell them to me for $5 each. I can't ignore this opportunity. I <3 opening things up etc. I'm 14 and I like taking stuff apart to see how they work. If I bought one of the broken ps2s and I couldn't fix it what do you suggest I do with it? Are there any useful parts inside? Could I squish a mini-itx board into it? (It's the old, fat ps2, not the slimline). Do you know of anyone that has fiddled with a ps2 in such a way?

Comments

[gmxx]

A computer inside would be awesome. a mini-itx board should fit, as long as a slimline cd/dvd drive and laptop hd were used, along with a pico psu or external power supply. if it all doesn't fit in one case, then you could always drill a hole for the wires, and then use two stacked ps2 case to make a bigger case.

[Bardouv]

Hammer smash!

[11010010110]

4 bad ps2s --> up to 3 good ps2s. open them and start swapping parts you can mod a pc computer into a ps2 case - possibly using the existing cdrom drive

[countable]

I doubt it, normal PCs need a 44 pin IDE cable to connect to a disk drive, and sony didnt need to do that since they only needed to read info off the disc as opposed to burning a disk too. You could still get a slimline dvd drive and put that in place?

[11010010110]

can you hack a pc drive to work with the mechanical parts of the ps2 drive ? (so that electronics etc are from the pc drive)

[snowpenguin]

No. It is the laser that is different from a Write or Read drive. Plus, why go to the work of swapping out parts between drives when you can just mount the Write drive in?

[Matt21497]

OOh i have a good idea FIX IT

[Joe Martin]

I've still got the case from a broken one somewhere that wll be used once my PC with the mini-itx board comes back. See www.mini-itx.com for some ideas

[Pyrotechnic-Robot]

ship it to me also you could put a computer in it after you gut it. If you can re-program it, you could boot linux on it.