Author: Eliot

1332 Articles

How-to: VMware Player Modification

October 24, 2005 by 121 Comments

VMware
Last week the free VMware player was released. It lets you run virtual machines, but not create them. [Faileas] contributed today’s how-to for creating your own virtual machines.

Programs required to carry out hack:

  1. Copy of VMware Player

  2. Browser appliance or another virtual machine(browser appliance is the smallest one, by size, and thus I am using that)

  3. Notepad or other text editor

  4. ISO image or CD/floppy of FreeDOS (I’m using the ripcord distribution) or MSDOS 7.1 would work as well, but i haven’t tried it yet.

  5. Replacement OS (must have SCSI HDD support)

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CVS Camcorder Follow-up

October 23, 2005 by 17 Comments

cvs camcorder

It’s been a couple months since the CVS camcorder downloading alpha release. [Matt Gilbert] thought it would be a good idea if we checked up on the community. There has been a lot progress made: from low level stuff like unearthing USB commands to upping the resolution and record length. Modding for macro work and building helmet mounts has also been done. A great overview of how all of this came about is the “credit where credit is due” post. Recently they’ve been dealing with new firmware versions that make the cameras harder to play with (sound familiar?). No worries though, if the solutions maintain the simplicity of jumping one wire there’s a bright future ahead. Congratulations to everyone involved in this project; you’ve done some incredible work.

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Hackaday Links

October 23, 2005 by 20 Comments

I’ve been getting a ton mail on the tip line saying “You should make the iPod photo do video”. The iPod Linux team pulled this off already.

Another one that comes up from time-to-time is “You should let me plug my PSP into my iPod so I can use all of that storage space”. The reason this can’t work is because USB needs a host. In the case of a PSP, iPod, keyboard, mouse, PDA… a computer is the host device. USB devices can have other devices plugged into them if they feature a hub, but they still require a host device for control. Unless a device is specifically designed for “USB host mode” attaching peripherals won’t work. This is why the iPod photo needs the camera adapter. It isn’t just a gender changer; it performs the USB host magic that is missing from the iPod.

Harald has started a the OpenEZX project to gather information about Motorola’s EZX Linux based phone platform.

I grew up on a dairy farm, but we didn’t have Linux powered robotic cow-milkers. Somehow I still ended up with this job.

From the bored folks who brought you the dancing bug we get the frog racer. [brian]

I think the flash based eBay auction mapper that [Gary] built is really slick.

Making beer with a coffee pot

The tip line

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USB Bluetooth Without Sacrificing A Port

October 22, 2005 by 13 Comments

bluetooth

Myriam a.k.a. [tnkgrl] decided that the the Averatec 1050 laptop was sorely in need of some Bluetooth and was tired of losing a port to a USB dongle. The AV1050 reports 3 usb ports in the device manager, but only features two external ports. She disassembled the laptop and went looking for the third port. The end result is 2 fully functioning USB ports and internal Bluetooth. There’s enough detail in the post you should be able to pull this off with other laptops as well.

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Porting Firefox Extensions To Flock

October 22, 2005 by 11 Comments

flock

Flock is the new “social” web browser based on Mozilla’s Firefox source code. They recently released a “developer preview” for those of us that must try every piece of bleeding edge software. Flock’s claim to fame is its ability to integrate with web services like Flickr, del.icio.us, and blogging software. Most people aren’t willing to jump ship without their Firefox extensions though. You can force an extension to install by unpacking the .xpi and replacing the version checking code. Whether the extension works or not is still up in the air. Geoff has all of the details you need to port extensions to Flock.

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Vegetable Oil Benz

October 21, 2005 by 50 Comments

biodiesel tank

Biodiesel has moved into the spotlight recently due to rising gas prices. It’s an attractive solution because of the minimal modifications needed for the conversion and the abundance of fuel. The original Diesel engine was designed to run on vegetable oil, but fossil fuels proved much cheaper.

This particular conversion is on a 1980 Mercedes Benz. It uses a second fuel tank mounted in the trunk to store the filtered waste vegetable oil. Vegetable oil can gel and even solidify when the outdoor temperature drops so the tank has a built in heat exchanger to warm the oil with engine coolant.  The fuel supply line is bundled in with the warm water lines as it travels to the engine compartment.  The car is started using the normal fuel tank and then switched over to the vegetable oil after it has properly warmed up. It is important to switch back to regular diesel before turning off the engine to make sure the oil is flushed out of the injectors and supply lines.

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