MB-6582 – DIY C64 Based Midi Synth

MB-6582 by [wilba]
It’s been a while since we’ve seen one of these. [vscd] sent in the flikr stream showing off the gorgeous MB-6582, built by [wilba]. It’s a diy midi synth that’s based on the midibox platform. It uses … synth chips to do the dirty work, and some PICs, a little CMOS hardware and a C64 PSU. He even anticipated some future versions of the midibox project to complete the design. This is one of the nicest DIY builds I’ve seen in a while – just beautiful work. Check out the build notes on the wiki page.

How-to: Make Your Own XBox 360 Laptop (Part 3)


[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.

Forced Air Laptop Cooling


We’ve seen some exotic laptop cooling solutions before. This one caught my eye for one reason – I’ve got an e1705 myself. (Complete with chipping media button paint). It’s not the most stylish, but [WhiskeySix] combined some PVC pipe and an adjustable high flow fan to give his dell a major airflow upgrade. I’d like to see one built that mates to the exhaust ports on the rear. Sure, it’s not pretty, but he was able to increase his frame rate by 50%. Thanks to [Wimpinator] for the tip.

Serial Port Power Booster


This one(coral cache) is a bit of a head slapper, but I thought it might come in handy. Laptop (or usb) serial ports are pretty notorious for being stingy on power output. [Roberto] came up with a clever solution. He used a MAX205 (sort of a double+ MAX232) and a singe capacitor to convert the low power serial connection on his laptop to a TTL signal and back again to RS-232. The result is a simple dongle that needs 5v and gives you a high power serial port for those power hungry devices – like [Roberto]’s PIC programmer.