PC Cover, toddler-resistant

[johnpipe108]

My grandson, Nathan, is 13 months, and is naturally attracted to the blinking LED's and pushbuttons, etc, on a computer. I made up this simple cover to render the PC's controls inaccessible, while concealing the lights.

The box is bottomless and back-less and consists of two sides and a top of 3/8" Baltic-birch, with a face-frame of 1/2" poplar, and door of 1/2" x 1-1/2" pine frame and 1/4" birch-faced ply insert. A rib across the back just low enough to catch the top-back of the computer prevents the child from pulling the cover off the table and onto himself.

No knob and a magnetic-latch makes it unlikely a toddler can open the door, as It's difficult for 4-year old Clara to do so.

 

[Mike Davis]

Might want to think about some vent holes somewhere. Check to see where the air flows when the PC is heated. Might be OK as is, but I'd hate to see you burn up a PC.

Even though I prefer a MAC. :rotflm:

 

[Glennbear]

Nice work John, out of sight, out of mind keeps Nathan occupied elsewhere :wsmile:

 

[johnpipe108]

Might want to think about some vent holes somewhere. Check to see where the air flows when the PC is heated. Might be OK as is, but I'd hate to see you burn up a PC.

Even though I prefer a MAC. :rotflm:

It's an old 500MHz AT box, they don't give off as much heat as the contemporary stuff. The box is open at the back and that's where all the airflow on the old computer is anyway.

MAC's are great; they took a hint from the BSD/Linux crowd and came up with a great OS based around a BSD micro-kernel, as OS-X; I was at the Berkeley meeting for the FreeBSD user group the night one of the principal developers (who had left FreeBSD to work for Apple) let us know about a week in advance of Apple's upcoming release of the new OS.

Cheers, Johnpipe

 

[NCPete]

so, John, one would imagine you are not using a Microsoft product on that old machine? Which version Linux are you using? I had a rough time getting a good burn of the Ubuntu disk, and then the laptop I was going to put it in had the monitor go out....

 

[johnpipe108]

so, John, one would imagine you are not using a Microsoft product on that old machine? Which version Linux are you using? I had a rough time getting a good burn of the Ubuntu disk, and then the laptop I was going to put it in had the monitor go out....

I've got old RedHat 6.1 (w/various upgrades) for daily desktop as it's faster than newer stuff, but also have Vector Linux 5.8 which is contemporary and good for lower resource machines and is pretty good. I have Ubuntu on here too, but it's slower than VL5.8 so RH & VL get my regular use, and I've not visited my Ubuntu install since sometime early last year.

I'd still like to find a good mechanical drawing program for linux that was as straightforward for me as AutoCAD, so I still have Win95 for AutoCAD 10 (the pre-Intel 386 version!) for any wood project that needs more carefull planning.