Author: Eliot

1332 Articles

Technics 1200 Pitch Lock Removal

June 24, 2005 by 8 Comments

pitch mod

Yes, even the venerable Technics 1200 turntable can be improved. This simple, completely reversible, modification removes the automatic pitch lock from the mk2 model. If your decks have seen a lot of use the true zero point has probably drifted from the one marked on the scale. This is easy to tell by observing the strobe. If the large dots aren’t stationary when the zero is locked, you’re out of adjustment. The other nuisance is that you can’t do minor pitch adjustments when you are close to zero because it constantly wants to lock. Even if you don’t want to mod your turntables this article does show you where to go to move the zero pitch back to the actual zero.

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Staff Of Doom

June 23, 2005 by 8 Comments

walking stick

Yeah, I nearly labeled it “Staff of doomed social life”. John, a Penn state undergrad, whipped together this glowing walking stick. Okay “whipped’ is an understatement; he bothered to model it in Rhino before assembly. So, if you’re bored with building lightsabers or you’re just tired of the balrogs in your basement this is the project for you. Keep up the good work John and for your sake I hope I don’t see “gandalfkid.wmv” in my inbox anytime soon.

[thanks Deepomega]

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Master Lock “picking”

June 22, 2005 by 107 Comments

combination lock

Here’s any easy method for backing out the combination of a Master Lock. In a perfect world there would be 64,000 possible lock combinations (403). The construction of the lock prevents this from happening: sloppiness in the dial and the numbers are not mathematically independent. First step is to determine the last number in the sequence. You can then use that number to determine the other possible numbers in the combination. You will end up with about 100 combinations to try, but that’s far better than having to throw the lock out which I’m sure would happen if you had to try 64,000.

UPDATE: x04d sent in a video demo (DivX) (dead link) of how to open a lock in 2 sec. using a padlock shim.

UPDATE: The linked video above has long been dead. Check out our more recent Master lock post for an embedded shimming video

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Cheap GPS Receiver

June 21, 2005 by 193 Comments

gps

Here’s a short guide for converting a Palm III GPS sled into a normal serial GPS receiver. The Palm III is old tech so its accessories can be picked up cheap and modified for other purposes. The GPS receiver needs to be separated from the Palm specific board and a few components need to be transfered between the two. Once that’s done you should have a standard serial GPS receiver. Here’s a cache in case the “Read” link fails.

[thanks nevamore, who has done this hack with success]

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Nintendo DS Linux Keyboard

June 20, 2005 by 14 Comments

ds keyboard

Development of DSLinux continues to progress. The work of developer Pepsiman has really helped move things along. They’ve got a working Sash shell and framebuffer support. Just yesterday a touchscreen keyboard was added to ease use. It’s still in early development; The shift, alt, and ctrl keys don’t work and the repeat rate is a little quick. I’m sure they’ll get the bugs ironed out soon enough. I look forward to seeing some unique homebrew user interfaces that take full advantage of the dual screens.

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PSP ITrip

June 19, 2005 by 22 Comments

dpsp itrip

The iTrip is an FM transmitter designed for the iPod. This little hack nestles the transmitter into the PSP case so you can listen to your music through a car stereo. The broadcast frequency is set by playing special audio files, so you don’t need any external adjustments. The transmitter is turned on by plugging in a dummy headphone plug. I’m amazed they were able to cram this into the PSP case.

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