homemade supercomputer

So, right now I'm interning at IBM, learning COBOL, hopefully eventually going to be working on mainframes, and they have a bunch of labtops that they are planning on destroying. I asked if I could have some, and they agreed. Is there a way of composing a mini-mainframe by piecing together computers manually? If yes, how would I go about stringing these labtops together?

It would technically be possible, but no one has documented a way of going about it. I remember there was one person who had made a supercomputer out of 100 PS2's ( http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/26/technology/26XSUPE.html ) and you may be able to contact them about it, if you wish. I've also heard rumors that the U.S. Air Force built a supercomputer out of PS3's ( http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion/30/us-air-force-builds-supercomputer-using-ps3s/469171/ )

Unfortunately, these both cost an extreme amount of money. I think your best bet is to contact one of those centers and ask them for tips and information on how they did it, and ask them if it would be possible to make a smaller-scale version of that,  using only a few laptops and such.