Posted May 14th 2008 12:03AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks, misc hacks, daily
[ladyada]
ran across this excellent hack by [phillip]. Apparently there's a clock, data, 5v and ground connection available in most modern video connections. (He even notes HDMI cable pins) He wrote some drivers and can now control i2c hardware directly from the
PC Mac. [Ladyada] notes that most laptops use an i2c bus for extra sensors as well. For now,
the code only works on Mac OS X.
Posted Apr 26th 2008 11:03PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks, misc hacks
Certain OS installers cough*osx*cough don't like the on-board displays on some machines. [Ziddan]
posted a paperclip based work around for them on the eeeuser forums (originally posted by [mugan] on insanelymac). Apparently by shorting the pins, the video card will report that there is an unknown external display attached.
Posted Apr 15th 2008 12:58PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks, macs hacks, misc hacks
I may hit my limit on DIY laptops soon, but [Ben Heck] has been extra quiet for a while. Now we know why. Just after the release of his
PS3 laptop comes his
Apple IIGS laptop. Thanks to [Ed] for the tip. It features original Apple hardware and even uses the original keyboard PC board. A CF drive adapter replaces the hard drive and a 15 inch screen shows off the true power of 8 bit computing.
Posted Apr 14th 2008 5:10AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks, macs hacks, pcs hacks
[Phyro-Mane] sent in
his home built iMac mini. He based it on an old laptop with an install of
OSX86 XP with a mac theme. The forum is in German, but the photos in the thread speak for themselves.
Posted Mar 19th 2008 10:56PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: handhelds hacks, laptops hacks, misc hacks
[Jim] sent in
this interesting laptop modding project. He started with a Spectrum ZX and a Toshiba Libretto 110. The libretto kept its brains, but the lower case and keyboard was replaced with the ZX hardware. Since both machines use matrix style keyboards (but different matrix layouts) he was able to create a passive adapter circuit to match things up.
Posted Nov 20th 2007 10:14PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks
There isn't anything hacked into it yet, but [tnkgrl] spent some time
hunting around her
Eee PC for some handy hackable extras. I'd been ignoring them, but now I want one. Oh yes, I do. Hit the writeup for details, but [tnkgrl] identified some semi un-used USB connections, an accessible 5v supply and a spare mini-pcie slot that seems to disable the SSD when it's in use. The currently unusable mini-pci slot is actually pretty intriguing.
Posted Sep 20th 2007 4:47PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks, macs hacks
Ever had a USB cable sticking out of your laptop bag? I've done it many time while I've been traveling. James built a
simple right angle USB cable so he could keep things tucked away and damage free. He epoxied a connector to some proto board, then soldered things back together.
Posted Sep 10th 2007 1:20PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks
[Robert]
opened up his old alienware laptop and installed an Intel Pro 100 mini-pci ethernet card. Then He replaced the modem port with the second ethernet jack. The hardware side is pretty simple, but getting the port soldered to a new custom cable and fitted to the case was the hard part.
Posted Sep 1st 2007 11:16PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks, pcs hacks, peripherals hacks
[ThoughtFix] sent in our
first ever UMPC hack. It's along the lines of laptop mods we've seen before, but he deserves credit for opening up the already tightly packed inside of his UMPC, tapping the USB interface on his bluetooth card, adding a hub and an internal usb flash drive to provide
readyboost to speed up Vista.
Posted Jul 19th 2007 11:45PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks
This little hack was sent in by [andrew], he built it specifically for the long flight from Australia to the US. The idea is simple, but I wouldn't have considered it given the cost of decent D Cells these days. H put together a 20 D-cell power pack, a regulator to keep it at 24v, and an eighth inch plug to power up his old ibook.
Update: I goofed and left out [andrew]'s name.
Posted Jun 27th 2007 3:26PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks
I get an email asking for
this almost monthly, and [PUNiSH3R]'s take on this covers everything pretty well. He uses some interesting tricks with WINE to get enough performance to play a DVD on the remote display. Yes, the cheapest way is to turn it into a remote desktop display over a network. Personally, I use
synergy2 to share my keyboard and mouse, run multiple OS's and keep my sanity.
Posted Jun 18th 2007 11:46PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks
This one reminds me of [sprite_tm]s
keyboard light mod. [Jeff]
modded a usb bluetooth module and mounted it internally on his tablet. He connected a small circuit to two the the stock buttons to buffer/de-bounce them to allow simultaneous pressing to activate/deactivate the module. (To add a delicious taste of irony, my bluetooth module was flaking on and off while I read and wrote this up.)
Posted Jun 6th 2007 11:56PM by Eliot Phillips
Filed under: laptops hacks
Reader [
Brien Schultz] didn't like his laptop suspending every time he closed the lid to move around the house or to a different work area, so he turned that feature off. Of course that just led to him forgetting to put the thing to sleep when he really needed to, like when he was walking around all day with it in his backpack. To solve his self inflicted problem (common cause of many hacks) he wrote a .NET program to monitor the laptop's accelerometer. The accelerometer is usually used to park the hard drive heads in case the laptop is falling (it's also used for
hilarity). If
BedTime detects that the laptop is in motion, but is not being used it starts a countdown and eventually puts the laptop to sleep. Brien isn't using the "sleep after X minutes" option because it would put the machine to sleep while it was open and he was just distracted for a few moments. Demo video after the break.
Continue reading Suspend in motion
Posted May 22nd 2007 3:25PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks, xbox hacks
[Ben] finally got
part 3 of his XBox 360 laptop how-to finished up. This is the final piece of the series. He spends it covering wiring up the ports, buttons, keyboard and final assembly. There are plenty of shops that handle special order laser cutting - so don't begin to think that this sort of project is out of your class. If you've ever built a model car and can handle a soldering iron, you can definitely build one of these on your own.
I was just checking for this final piece this morning - but props to [Tony] for noticing it first.
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