Introduction

Personal computers are ubiquitous. Often there is one or more sitting unusued in a "junk pile" somewhere in ones house. During upgrades I would be the former components used into my scrap pile, eventually I'd look over at the scrap pile and see that there were enough parts to build another computer. Which sometimes I would do and donate to a school or library, but these days even they don't want any old computer so we're kind of stuck with them until the recycling center opens.

Of course these things make excellent robot controllers as well (if a bit of overkill)

Ray Knightly put together some excellent pages on how the PC starts up. I've cached them on my server in case his account goes away (as is often the case with good information on the network)