I have a dream (or more like half an idea)

A bunch of old school PC parts, a corner in the workshop, a stripped back operating system, a nearby 3d printer and a mild curiosity at rolling my own A.I. What could possibly go wrong here?

SO I HAVE BEEN WONDERING WHAT TO DO WITH THIS PILE OF PARTS FOR A WHILE NOW

Once upon a time I scored a free computer from a former boss, an old school gaming PC that had belonged to his son and hadn't been used for quite some time. So he gave it to me, I stripped it out and put the motherboard and other bits into my son's PC and for a time the whole 'Circle of dads and PC's' continued to do it's circle thing. Hakuna matata and all that.

But then Jnr Al (I'm Snr Al btw) got a job and before you know it, he was having a lovely shopping spree on computer store websites working out his next machine. Which meant when the parts arrived and eventually sang in new parts harmony, the old motherboard, CPU, fan and ram were relegated to a shelf in my garage/workshop where it's sat for a little over a year going nowhere in a hurry.

Until now. 

I will explain those 3d printed bits in the corners in a future post

Yes in the spirit of 'I'm tried of looking at this and sick to death of dealing with absolute clown on Facebook marketplace, let's finally do something with this', I'm finally going to do something with this. Exactly what I'm really not that clear on just yet, suffice to say I'd like to get it up and running and tinker with some kind of rudimentary artificial intelligence. 

Obviously with what I'm working with here it's certainly not going to rival Grok or ChatGPT or even the onboard computer of a 90's Toyota Corolla, but that's not the point. It'll be more an adventure and learning process of what you can do with old bits marrying new software and if I can get it to the stage where it can read some news and go 'Hey Al, I think you should sell that .0089267 shares you have in Amazon today' (after looking at it for about an hour while it tries to figure it out) then I'll be stoked.  

SOME OF THE PARTS THAT I'M WORKING WITH

Yes I've underlined some due to fact that there's bits and pieces all over the house that I haven't relocated just as yet. I know they're there somewhere, I just have to move 52 boxes to get at the them. But I do know the basics on what's on hand currently, which includes:

Old school tech, new school purpose.

Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H. I know precious little about this other than a) it works just fine b) It cost me nothing (thanks boss and boss's son) and it probably made a good gaming PC back in the day. To help fill in any history blanks, I just asked Perplexity AI about it's highlights: 

The Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H is a budget-oriented ATX motherboard from around 2012, designed for Intel's LGA 1155 socket supporting 2nd-gen Sandy Bridge and 3rd-gen Ivy Bridge CPUs like the Core i7-3770K. It was praised for value, solid performance, and features like native USB 3.0 and PCIe 3.0

Thanks for that!

CPU - From memory I believe it's the old school gamers choice of an i7 2600? I'll know when I load in a stripped back Windows and it tells me!

RAM - 16GB's of dusty GSkill Sniper. Still working today, will help do something here I'm hoping.

CPU FAN - I can't even remember what model it is but that heatsink could probably kill a man at ten paces if you threw it hard enough.

GPU - Nvidia Quadro K2000. No not Quattro like an Audi, Quadro like in 'Why was this thing even made?' Painfully underwhelming, its one of those graphics cards I inherited from work for the sake of those computers that didn't have any onboard graphics and needed something. I mean look, I don't think my Garage Intelligence machine is going to need top shelf graphics at all (it might need GPU processing to think though? TBC) but for now it stays here until something better comes along. Which is pretty much anything at this stage.

You're not doing much here and we all know it!

HDD/SSD's - A couple of low end, low size SSD's I have floating around from brands you've never heard of. There's also a 500GB HDD I unearthed that might get connected and tested (the Garage Intelligence machine will also double a testing bench!) This is why I'm using a stripped back Windows, for space saving reasons.

Operating system - ATOM OS10. Windows 10 without the bloat. This project doesn't need any bloat to slow it down slower than it probably already is. 

Case - Caseless for now, structural solutions slowly being added via the 3D Printer in the same room (Creality Ender 3 V2 from a few years back.) 

PSU - Er not sure. I have one someplace.. same with a spare keyboard, mouse and monitor. They'll be functional and certainly not pretty. You can't really expect much when you get things from free (or never throw out still working tech) But this isn't a showstopper PC by any stretch of the imagination. As mentioned earlier, if it works then it works! (If it doesn't, I'll probably turn it into a MAME machine..) 

Wifi - I swear there's a USB dongle somewhere. 

What's that other thing connected in there? - Hmm, not sure. I think it's just a random bit I found in the collection and slotted into the board just to make sure I didn't lose it. It's highly doubtful it'll be relevant to this project but you never know..

SO THAT'S WHERE WE SIT AT THE MOMENT

I'm grouping the bits together, I'm slowing figuring out how to build this without a case (ie I don't have a good spare one and until one pops up dirt cheap I'm more than happy to 3d print design around it) and once it's up and running in a bare bones capacity, then we'll work out the right LM/AI/Brains thing to put in it. Until then why not bookmark this page and then drop me a line below suggesting anything you think I should look at/avoid at all costs.

Let's go Garage Intelligence!