[The Fifth Horseman]

I'd say you'd better either use that HDD as your secondary, or mount it in a mobile rack (provided you have a compatibile one in your main PC) to use as a mobile data transfer unit.

I've dug up a bunch of CPU fans in the spare parts storage we have in the office - since we'll be getting funds for better equipment soon, the boss felt generous lately and allowed me to take any and all parts I'd need.
I've greased and cleaned all the fans, then connected them to the power supply. I kept the least noisy one and returned all the others back to the office.
Mounted the larger heatsink on the CPU again (since the fan is 100% compatibile with that), removed the old thermal grease and applied new. Works well enough for me.

My speaker-to-soundcard experiment has failed, no effect at all. Duh. I'll have to see what was wrong and possibly re-do it all over.

PS2/COM connector has failed as well - not sure why, maybe I have screwed something up when I was building it. Either way, I've found a proper pre-made adapter here in the parts storage.

The IDE cables have been modded, as were those for floppy and LPT. Now they are sitting pretty well inside the case, without any criss-cross problems like I had before.

Bought the parts I need for the case fan assembly, the fan itself coming from a broken PSU (we have a few of these here in the office).

Bought an electronic thermometer. I'll dismantle it and assemble inside the computer case so that I can use it to monitor the CPU temperature.

Will get that USB hub tomorrow.

My speaker has broken off its wires, but that's fixable - I just need a few minutes with a soldering iron.

This sunday I'm going to a computer market - will be on lookout for extra parts, including an 8 MB PCI video card and a HOT-433 motherboard (a beautiful piece of kit, that - I just _need_ to have a working one).

Tried starting a few games on my machine. Robocop 1 and X-Com Apocalypse work nicely, Battletech:Crescent Hawks Inception doesn't.