This innocent typewriter was modded to act as a keyboard and typewriter. The idea is to remove the computer interface from the process, giving a user the ability to interact via email but avoid computer frustrations. (The idea came from the creators mothers frustration with computers) Thanks to [BBCmicro] for sending it it.
Month: July 2007
XBox 360 Hacking 101 Extra
[BlueMoon] let me know about a translation of an interview posted over at xbox-scene. The original dutch version is here. It’s a very good overview of XBox 360 security and the exploits needed to take advantage of the hardware.
If you dig EVs, you might want to check out my latest experiment. I’ll be building a EV, but each step of the process will be defined by reader votes. It’s $1/vote, with the idea that the votes will pay for the project.
[Jay] sent in a little info on streaming audio and sometimes video to your Wii.
[Robert] sent in his research on building and testing diy GSM antennas for extending rage range.
GardenMon(itoring Project)
[Ken_S] sent in his GardenMon (coral cache) project. It’s a set of light, humidity, moisture and temperature probes that monitor the surface and below ground conditions in his garden. He’s using several picaxe micro controllers to take readings with a variety of off the shelf and commercial sensors. Once he started collecting the data, he added a programmable servo controlled watering valve with a configuration that he tweaks accordingly.
The site is on geocities, so use the cache.
I had a few requests, and this fits, so I added a home hacks category.
DIY DS Lite RumblePak
This one’s been making the blog rounds, but it really fits us. Nintendo makes one, but this instructables tells you how to make your own for a DS lite. It uses a PIC 12F675 to read the input line and activate a vibration motor from an old nokia cell phone.
Oh, speaking of instructables, I forgot to mention that they finally picked a winner for their laser etching machine. Of course, if you lack the budget, you can make your own for $60.
Game Boy Drum Machine
[Jowan] sent in this excellent gameboy cartridge hack. The cartridge contains 1MB of flash and an 8 bit serial I/O interface. He’s using it to play percussion with some solenoids and a custom rom. If you guys like it, he might be convinced to put together a how-to on hacking the cartridge.
ToorCon 8 Videos
We’ve been waiting with bated breath for our favorite hacker con, ToorCon, to post this year’s site. In the mean time, they’ve posted all of last years videos to Google Video. We had published a few of our own, but now you get to see the whole conference. After the break I’ve embedded one of my favorite talks from last year: Matt Fisher’s Everything About SQL Injection. It covers everything from the basics to some very clever attacks.
XBox 360 DVD Region Hack
[XanTium] sent this in a few days ago, but I thought you guys would dig it. Here are the details straight from his email:
Hackers on the XBH forums managed to change DVD key and Game Region Code in the Xbox 360 ‘Key Vault’ (that stores on flashchip: console certificate(s), per-box private keys, DVD key, however NOT any code-related encryption keys).
However you should know the ‘Key Vault’ is encrypted with the per-xbox360 ‘CPU key’, so that means this hack is only possible on Hypervisor exploitable Xbox360s (kernel 4532 and 4548) for now. You will of course also have to read/flash the Xbox360 flashchip (by desoldering it and read/flash it with programmer or for example use the versatile Infectus dev chip)
You can read up on some more details here or get a login and check out the actual forum thread. The end result: play EU games on your US 360. (It doesn’t sound like the DVD movie region has been successfully changed, but modded DVD players are easy to make.)
