computer hacks

1422 Articles

computer hacks

Sony Vaio UX 64GB Solid State Upgrade

December 16, 2008 by 26 Comments

sony_upgrade

This Sony Vaio UX50 came with a 30GB hard drive from the factory. This hacker wanted to do an upgrade and move to solid state, so he started hacking away. He ended up with a total of 64GB of solid state storage crammed into the computer.  The hard drive was replaced with a 4GB compact flash drive and the rest is spread through out the device. Apparently any crevice or crack in the Sony UX50 can have memory shoved into it. He managed to somehow get 60GB of storage in there through various USB extensions and adapters. Notice the sticker on the inside of the case. Is this the latest fad? Decorating the inside of the unit where only you know it exists?

[thanks Jorn]

Netbook Comparator

December 6, 2008 by 16 Comments

netbooks

Our recent netbook post got a huge response. They are almost unanimously loved. A few dissenting opinions were present though. A few people mentioned that until this generation arrived, they were buying used subnotebooks for exactly the same reasons.

If you’re in the market for a new machine, Obsessable’s netbook comparator has all of the current models broken down by feature.

Sixaxis In OSX And Vista

November 29, 2008 by 17 Comments

sixaxis

Here are a couple small programs to help you make the most of your Playstation 3 Sixaxis controllers. [netkas] heard that quite a few people were having trouble using the Sixaxis controller in Windows Vista. He solved it for himself and uploaded an exe for you to use. He then did essentially the same thing for OSX. This should make your PC gaming feel at least a little more familiar.

[photo: Kominyetska]

A Basic Stamp Supercomputer

November 24, 2008 by 149 Comments

basic_super

Hobby super computer building isn’t something you hear about every day. This project is even more peculiar due to the fact that it is a supercomputer built with BASIC Stamps. [humanoido] posted some great pictures and detailed info about his project. We’re not completely sure what definition of supercomputer he’s using, but he states that it beats out the others in 10 categories. Those categories are: smaller, lighter, portable, field operable, runs on batteries, has greatest number of input/output, has greatest number of sensors/variety, lowest power consumption, lowest unit cost, and easiest to program. Those sound a little more like features than supercomputing categories to us, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that this is one cool jumble of wires.

You may be wondering what it does. Well, so are we. From what he says, it talks in Chinese and English and has a plethora of other input and output devices. It also displays status of its internal communications. Catch a video after the break.

Continue reading “A Basic Stamp Supercomputer” →

How To Destroy A Filesystem

November 9, 2008 by 29 Comments

rmrf

The G1 ‘execute every command you type‘ bug naturally spawned ‘rm -rf /’ jokes. rm is the Linux command for deleting files. The -r and -f flags will cause it to remove files recursively and ignore confirmation. Executed as root it will annihilate the entire filesystem. Won’t it? [Jon Hohle] decided to test exactly how destructive the command was to *nix systems. How functional would the system be afterwards? He tested it side by side with the Windows equivalent, both ‘format c:’ and ‘del /F /S /Q’. He wanted to see what protections were available and what would be left working. Linux ended up completely broken while Windows, thanks to file locking, actually shutdown cleanly… and never came back. Some OSes, like Solaris, refuse to run the command ‘rm -rf /’ to prevent accidents.

PCjr 25 Years Later

November 8, 2008 by 24 Comments

pcjr

[Trixter], connoisseur of old hardware, is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the PCjr. IBM’s PCjr was killed only 18th months after being revealed and [Trixter] lays out exactly why. Overall, it was designed to be cheap to produce and sell, but many of the choices made it difficult to use. They used the CPU instead of DMA for floppy access; cheaper to make, but you couldn’t do much during disk reads because of it. The video memory scheme left little room for programs that could take advantage of it. It also had compatibility issues that made IBM clones a more attractive choice. [Trixter] ends by pointing out that some good came of it when the Tandy 1000 copyied the good ideas while leaving out the restrictive memory issues. He recommends Mike’s PCjr Page for more information on this classic machine.