Month: December 2005

Powerbook Compact Flash Drive

December 10, 2005 by 27 Comments

powerbook

This Powerbook 150 was purchased as a simple media reader. Once the hard drive failed the owner decided to replace it with a compact flash card since IDE adapters were available. There was a problem: the ATA device driver would probe the device and then immediately shutdown because the “identify device” bit wasn’t the expected value. The device driver had been written before more recent changes to the ATA spec. Greg solved the problem by constructing a daughter card that plugs into the adapter board’s 40-pin header and then flips the identifying bit when the device is initially probed.

[thanks iamdigitalman]

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Lumenlab Projector Build

December 9, 2005 by 38 Comments

projector

A couple days ago we mentioned that Lumenlab had released their top secret plans for building an LCD based projector. Hack-A-Day reader [Brad O’Connor] sent along his experiences using the Lumenlab plans. Like most people, he says that the $20 price of admission is worth it. The system uses a 400Watt metal halide lamp as a light source. A fresnel lens straightens the light before it passes through a consumer LCD panel. A second fresnel lens directs the light to the final focusing lens. You can grab a torrent of the plans here. Brad is currently working on motorizing his 120″ screen.

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Rotary Pinhole Camera

December 8, 2005 by 10 Comments

rotary pinhole camera

Pinhole cameras use a tiny pinhole as their aperture instead of a lens. Fran?s Besson designed this camera to take a 240 degree panoramic picture. The camera aperture slot rotates on one axis while the film rotates on a separate axis. The 8×20″ film is attached to a large drum mounted to the second spindle. The exposure length can be 18, 6, or 3 minutes depending on the voltage supplied to the drive motor.

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Hack-A-Day Extra

December 7, 2005 by 11 Comments

mushkin

I’ve got my new box up and running. I assembled it on Monday afternoon and started looking into OSx86 since I wanted to triple boot the box with XP MCE and Linux. After walking into several dead ends I decided to quit for the day. Tuesday came and I decided instead of messing with OSx86 and getting a MCE bootleg I would take the easy route: install Gentoo. First, I grabbed a tarball from the Jackass! Project which offers optimized toolkits  (I’ve built them by hand before). I had laid out my partition scheme the night before, so most of the install preparation was done. I made sure to leave two 20GB primary partitions for OSx86 and XP if I decide to install them in the future. The only change I made from the Jackass default was using the “-march=nocona” compiler flag for Pentium 4 EM64T. After the base install, I installed X.org, fluxbox, and firefox. Then I immediately began folding!

Team Hack-A-Day continues to improve: Lazy_Folder started on Dec. 1st and has already moved into the top 10 for daily production. The forum is growing as well: yesterday we saw a woman.

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Excel Based Drum Machine

December 7, 2005 by 22 Comments

drumpad

[Thomas] just wanted a simple, free drum machine to play with. He decided to build one himself using MS Excel. To get it up and running you need to download a .zip file that contains the .xls and .dll files. Grab some drum samples and you are ready to go. Each drum is mapped to a key and can be used with a game pad. Don’t worry he’s got some simple, Meg White, patterns to get you started. Not impressed? Well, tear it down and build your own machine.

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SuperCap 9V Battery

December 6, 2005 by 94 Comments

9V batteries are often found in devices that aren’t used very often. If you use a NiCd rechargeable battery you may find it completely discharged by the time you need it. Capacitors on the other hand can maintain their charge for years. This circuit uses a 10F cap with a switching voltage regulator to increase the voltage from 2.3V to 9V. With a light load the cap will last up to 3 hours and once discharged it can be recharged in less than 20 seconds. Warning: PDF link.

[thanks nullset]

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6502 Driven Nixie Tube Clock

December 5, 2005 by 20 Comments

nixie clock

I love Cold War chic like [ryan brooks]’s great looking nixie tube clock. There have been other microcontroller based nixie tube clocks so Ryan decided to base his on the venerable MOS Technology 6502. The 6502 is the same 8-bit processor used in the Apple II and Commodore 64. He’s got a couple interesting notes from the construction:

Be very organized with your digit wiring; use lots of cable ties or something. 6 digits is 120 solder joints on 60 wires.

Don’t be afraid to make your own Nixie sockets. I stood my tubes up on my flatbed scanner, arranged them with a ruler and then scanned. Imported to Photoshop, did a levels to make the pins contrasty and printed the output 1:1. Glued the paper onto my plexi, drilled all the holes, dropped in pin-sockets w/CA glue and bam! Instant Nixie Tube Clock Socket!

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