Canon’s first consumer printer capable of printing directly on CDs was released in 2003. Unfortunately for anyone in the US, this feature wasn’t included. Canon just put a plate over the CD tray slot. A community has sprung up to assist people in activating this feature. You need to remove the cover first. Then you can install the CD tray which you either purchased or constructed following their plans. The final step is to set a registry key so that the CD printing menu appears.
[via Digg]
The official Xbox 360 hard drive connector combines a SATA connector and a power connector into one plug. Even though it is proprietary, some clever hackers have found a really easy way to interface with it. Since it is slot based you can just etch contact pads onto a circuit board and plug it in. The hard drive inside uses standard connectors, but this adapter will keep you from opening the case, voiding your warranty. It will also be much quicker to use daily. You can use Xplorer360 to get full read/write access to the drive. They’re selling the adapter in kit form for $17 and assembled for $20, but the high res pics show how easy this is if you just want to build it yourself.
[via xbox-scene]
Related: Xbox 360 Hacks, Xbox Hacks
Spark Fun Electronics has made a name for themselves recently by selling interesting parts like this $20 color LCD. Hack-A-Day reader [Refik Hadzialic] decided to buy one and see how easy it was to use. It is a 128×128 display and should be a clone of the one you would fine in a Nokia 6100. He wired it up to an ATMega32L-PI8 microcontroller. He grabbed source code from a couple different places and eventually got something to work. In the end, the actual control commands seem pretty simple. Refik has been posting a lot of quick projects and info on his site, e-dsp. Have a look.
Yesterday LEGO announced that they had picked their 100 beta testers. They represent a broad cross section of blah, blah, blah. I’m not sure if I should be annoyed that I didn’t get picked or feel sorry for our buddy Jason Striegel who seems to be the only person that was officially denied. Oh well, time to go spend this extra $150 on Mega Bloks.
[via the excellent Nextbrick]
Continue reading “LEGO Announces NXT Beta Testers… Officially”
Here’s a hack that’s been around since the very start of the hot rod movement. Car exhaust flame throwers work by interrupting the spark to the engine. This dumps raw fuel into the exhaust system. The fuel is ignited by a coil and spark plug placed right before the exhaust tip. Doing this will shorten the life of your engine (and pedestrians). The raw fuel strips the oil off the cylinder walls and contaminates the oil causing more wear and tear. Also, this mod can’t be used on a fuel injected car. It would foul the O2 sensors and catalytic converter. Never the less, our fascination with electricity will live on.
[thanks matticus66]
While most users aren’t going to attempt to replace a single failed chip on a motherboard, [joeboy] felt that it’s definitely something the Hack-A-Day audience would try. Project Oxcart details the process he and his coworkers went through to replace the Firewire chip in a laptop. It had failed during a power surge and Dell wanted $1100 for a replacement motherboard. They opted to buy the $5 chip from Digikey and install it. The write up details the many steps involved in the replacement of the chip, which took the entire day.
Researchers at Secure Science Corporation have managed to break the ExpressPay system used at FedEx Kinko’s stores which is provided by enTrac. The cards are write protected using a 3 byte security code. You can sniff this data using a logic analyzer and then use the code to write any data you want to the card since it is unencrypted. The security code is the same across all cards. FedEx Kinko’s stated that the article is inaccurate, so Lance James and Strom Carlson made a video of themselves doing the hack in the store: They put $1.00 on a card at the kiosk and then use it to log into a computer and show the balance of $1.00. They logout and use a separate laptop and card reader/writer to change the balance to $50.00 and modify the serial number. Next they use the card to log back into a computer and show the balance of $50.00. They let one minute pass so that $0.20 is charge to the card. Finally they logout and use the self-service kiosk to print out a receipt showing their balance of $49.80 with the fake serial number. At this point the attacker can take the card to the service counter and ask for the balance in cash.
[thanks Sith from Midnight Research Labs]
[fix: I had originally stated they bought a new card at the kiosk]
[photo: caribb]
