Reminded me of the Internet Beer Tap by Techinc, a hacker space in Amsterdam:<p>> Once upon a time, a lovely piece of Purple networking hardware got pushed into the obscene job of having to function in tapping the internet for law-enforcement purposes.
After liberating the quarter-million-dollar-networking-switch, we have taken it upon ourselves to offer it a worthy retirement plan that allows it to re-socialize itself.
The Internet Beer Tap became a fact.<p><a href="https://wiki.techinc.nl/Internet_Beer_Tap" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.techinc.nl/Internet_Beer_Tap</a>
Fun to see this posted this on HN (I am the author!). Happy to answer any questions. I think the general question I didn't really touch on is "why" and really the only answer for that is "why not?"
This reminds me of my favorite IT gear conversion when someone turned a SGI challenge into a mini fridge. I have a fondness for all things SGI (Irix era) due to labs full of Indys during my college years.<p>I was pretty surprised to find that the project documentation was uploaded to a modern website when I searched. I figured like many things of its era that it had been lost to web rot.<p><a href="https://www.instructables.com/Convert-a-Silicon-Graphics-Server-into-a-Fridge/" rel="nofollow">https://www.instructables.com/Convert-a-Silicon-Graphics-Ser...</a>
Got served carbonated gammel dansk from this tap, and tortured by "När man festar festar man" on repeat for 6 days during Chaos Communication Camp.<p>10/10, no notes.<p>Would do again.
SGI did an "Espressigo" as a marketing ploy back in 1992:<p><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:SGI_Espressigo#/media/File:Graphics_workstation_SGI_Indigo_(c._1991)_and_Espresso_machine_'SGI_Espressigo'_built_as_a_marketing_gag_(cropped_to_machine).jpg" rel="nofollow">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:SGI_Espressigo#/...</a>
On a similar note, the Vax bar: <a href="http://toyvax.glendale.ca.us/~vance/vaxbar.html" rel="nofollow">http://toyvax.glendale.ca.us/~vance/vaxbar.html</a><p>It pains me a little to see nice old pieces of equipment turned into something... lesser... but it's harmless fun and in the moment when they're surplus and valueless, well, we can't keep <i>all</i> of them up and running.
> I never imagined fiber cable being used for something other than data<p>Interesting side note is that Compaq ProLiant servers of roughly the same vintage as C7600 actually use optical fibers for system status LEDs. (And using fiber instead of rigid lightpipes is not that uncommon in HDD trays)
Why would you go through all of that, if you can get a better, complete solution from a different vendor?<p><a href="https://www.lightreading.com/routing-switching/iskratel-s-broadband-masterstroke" rel="nofollow">https://www.lightreading.com/routing-switching/iskratel-s-br...</a>