HDD Grinder
As [unicorn] described it, “this is no big thing.” We would agree, but a grinder made from a hard disk drive at least deserves to be in a [HAD] links post. Here’s the original source.
The No-Video Game
What do you get when take [Sub Hunt] and take away the ability to see what you’re playing with? The No-Video Game is what [Sean] at [Hive76] came up with. Thanks [Kyle] for writing in to tell us about it!
SD Card Hack ‘N Slash
[Paul] wrote in to tell us about his friend [Ahmad’s] discovery that you can cut a standard SD card in two and still have it function. Sure, some people know this, but we’d be willing to bet most don’t. In the pictures provided, it makes for a nice upgrade to the Raspberry Pi’s form factor.
FM Transmitter for FPGA
[Hamster] wrote in to tell us about how he added an FM tranmitter to his field programmable gate array project. Check out the wiki for the code to do this with, or this Youtube video to see it in action!
Brute Force Hack a Garmin GPS
Although there’s only a Youtube video to describe this hack, it’s really worth seeing. Some people might go with a pure electrical method to open up their Garmin GPS, but why do that when you can “just” create an array of fingers to do it for you! Thanks [David] for the tip!
Hmmmm, I want to try the SD card trick but I don’t really want to risk it! Maybe if I can find a small one
I thought the same thing, did a quick search and found this http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1345089/inside_of_an_sd_memory_card/
I would suggest anyone who wants to try it cut off the end and first see what they are actually chopping off.
Not all SD cards have all the electronic gubbins just under the connection pads, I used to have an 8gb SDHC card which accidentally got snapped in half and was ruined because the circuit covered the entire area.
I guess it’s probably the older ones which aren’t half empty, so you might even have better luck opening big ones.
Although of course I’m also hesitating to try that on a 64GB card of mine. :-)
Like the 30MB one used in the pictures? :)
Are SD cards that small even available anymore?
My mistake, I saw the 30MB/s and not the 32GB on the discarded part.
I’ve had some luck in the past using a spudger to pry open the “shell” of the SD card. This is usually easiest if you try it from the side opposite the pin connections. The worst thing that could happen is you’d have to use some super glue or some very small dabs of hot glue to get it back together again.
Looking at a few SD cards I have lying around here, you might even get away with just a finger nail and I’m a biter!
HDD Grinder from 2006 – http://metku.net/index.html?sect=view&path=mods/hdd_grinder/index_eng
the sd trick doesn’t work with all cards. But its usually pretty easy to open them before, see what you can cut out, glue it together and then cut it.
Does anyone still have RS-MMC cards? I got a 2GB version, bought for an ancient mobil phone. It is basically a shortened SD-card with some extra conctacts. Perfect for the RPI, but unfortunately not available with higher capacities.
Tried this with an old 1GB MMC from my Nokia770 – The rPi wouldn’t boot off it :(
I like the no video video game, now that Tommy guy has something to play besides pinball.
So is Sub Hunt playable by sense of smell?
re: cutting SD cards
Wow, I can’t imagine what I’ll do with all those saved 2 cm’s.
No really, I don’t get what such a tiny amount of saved space brings to the project.
If space is really tight, use a micro-sd card.
It saves space with the mounting of an SD card on an RPi. Instead of etending the whole base out another ~1.25 inches, buy snipping it, it all fits on the same footprint.
for the sd card i used to do this allot but wow they have gotten far smaller than what they used to!!!
and for the GPS password thing … you can do the “secret” reset or crack her open and dump the eeprom XD or erase the eeprom! … its stored in plain text! (ascii)
FPGA are the new SDR!
The GPS thing reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK_6yB45__k
I know for a fact that the SanDisk Extreme Pro cards *cannot* simply be cut in half.
As you can see from the translucent nature of them, the memory chips pretty much fill the thing.