Anyone out there re-purposing hardware under linux? I do not have any real money for all the fancy Arduinos and such, so I have been using the parallel port to do some interfacing with re-purposed parts. I have (did have before I started extracting parts) a bunch of old 5 1/4" drives, printers, and scanners. Stepper motors are the biggest find. Took me a while to research the parallel port to build timing routines for the stepper motors and servos. Been playing with relays also. There is a lot of crap out there. Epanorama was the the biggest help. My goal is to build working robotics without going to a specialty linux distro. Old pc's are perfect for doing this kind of stuff. Just wondered whether there is anyone else pursuing this idea.

Not yet, but getting around to it. I managed to pick up 2 (new) digital 10" photo frames for £17 at the weekend. I want the LCDs ! The idea is to make a linux based control panel for home automation. The frames are fairly dumb, they can only do jpeg stills or slideshows and no video, but I put that down to the firmware in the controller. They have USB host connections and multi card readers. As long as I can learn to speak to the display, I could steal lots of parts (I have access to lots of scrap computers). It would be quite nice to retain the photo frame functions, but that may be pushing my luck. I have several XBee zigbee chips and just as many 3d accelerometers lying around which might come in handy too.