computer hacks

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computer hacks

Lab Power Supply

May 11, 2005 by 27 Comments

powersupplyfinal
Here is a great power supply project. No, it isn’t just some simple case mod with binding posts. A lot of thought was put into this, plus a lot of disclaimers. I wouldn’t be too scared though, Andy Batts has got a lot of information covering most everything you need to know: Dell’s weird wiring, expected current, using a sandbar load, and not poking around inside while the thing is plugged in. I’m going to do this to a couple power supplys because it is sure to make future projects a lot easier.

[thanks momotarosan]

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Fully Submerged Cooling

May 9, 2005 by 82 Comments

oil bath computer
Markus Leonhardt has taken the shortest route possible to liquid cooling.

  1. throw motherboard in fish tank

  2. cover in vegetable oil

  3. there is no step 3

Markus has been using this system for over a year. it is quiet and is cooled by the still functional fans circulating the oil. he has swapped components and even successfully used pulled hardware in other pcs. the pages are in the process of being translated to english, but the english forum is already up with links to other projects. I’ve got some extra hardware and fish tanks are cheap, so I’ll give this a try some time. I doubt my roommate will feel this is an improvement over my plan of just nailing the motherboards to the wall.

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The $1 Infrared Solution For Your Pc

April 9, 2005 by 46 Comments

IR Transmitter

infrared comes on a lot of cool devices, but not everyone has a transmitter/reciever to take advantage of it. well now you can and for about a buck. just make sure your pc has room for an IR port. if it does, you’ll need to pick up the following to get going:
+An infrared LED, an infrared photo-diode
+Two BC548 transistors
+A 10 nF capacitor
+A 4K7 resistor, a 47 K resistor, a 15K resistor, a 22 ohm resistor and a 1 K resistor (all of them 1/8 W)

That’s it aside from your trusty soldering gun and a lil’ solder. Wire it up, connect it, and start waving your cellphone, palmone, or whatever it is with IR around to have windows recognize it!

thanks [captain]

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Diy Dual Conversion Ups

February 7, 2005 by 29 Comments

diy ups

for a while now, i’ve been grabbing cheap used ups boxes to run my home servers off of.  problem is, they are just about useless.  i can run an old p2 (no monitor!) off of one for about 5 minutes before it fails.  even if i were to chain a few of them together, the puny sla batteries in them typically go dead a month or two after i buy them anyway.  consequently, i’ve been going through them like candy.

searching for a solution, i came across this article for building a diy ups.  with an inverter, a power supply or charger, and a car battery you can have yourself a pretty solid dual conversion ups that is expandable to meet your downtime needs.  it’s worth a read even if you just want to know how a proper ups works.

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Do It Yourself Lcd Projector

February 6, 2005 by 37 Comments

diy lcd projector

do your friends really want to watch the game on that puny tv of yours?  wouldn’t they rather spend the afternoon helping you make a 6 foot xga projection system?  i figured so, and so did sine~language, who sent us this link last night to a tom’s hardware article on building a sweet video system out of an lcd monitor and an overhead projector.

more recently, tom’s posted a follow-up with recommendations on flat panel monitors to use for such a project.  also worth checking out is an alternative lcd projector design we talked about earlier.

these projectors seemed really large to me at first glance, but they take up much less space than a normal 32 inch tube.  that, and you can’t easily roll a tv of reasonable size into a closet and reclaim your room.  i guess you know what i’ll be doing instead of watching the super bowl.

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Control An R/c Car From Your Pc

February 1, 2005 by 19 Comments

parralel port rc car

“This program was written so i could control a tiny $10 remote control car (and to procrastinate homework).  The lpt port pins (6,7,8,9) are used to control Forward, Reverse, Left and Right in the controller. In addition to this program, I had to build a simple circuit to bypass the buttons on the remote control.”

those r/c cars are just chock full of hackability.

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