Kindle Terminal With Secret Key-press Activation

December 10, 2010 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

[Luigi Rizzo] has been working on some hacks for his 3rd generation Kindle. There is already a Python based terminal emulator called AjaxTerm but he wanted a lightweight standalone so he reimplemented the program in C. The 100k binary monitors the keyboard, launching the terminal emulator when it detects a Shift-T sequence. It also uses alternative key mapping to fill in for some of the keys the Kindle’s keyboard is missing.

We haven’t seen a whole lot of Kindle hacking since it was hacked to run Ubuntu. Seems like this terminal emulator is a useful and unobtrusive hack to try out on the beloved reader.

MeggyCade: When Handheld Pixel Gaming Isn’t Enough

November 24, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[Bomber Punk] built his own arcade cabinet, but you won’t find any MAME games here. He made the enclosure to house a Meggy Jr. 8×8 pixel graphics game console. Proper coin-op buttons and a joystick replace the stock tactile switches that come with the kit. [Bomber Punk] has also added a lighted coin slot. A three-cell battery pack powers the beast, with a programming port to one side so that different games can be loaded from a PC. We’d like to see a processor upgrade that would allow multiple games to be stored on a stand-alone system.

Take a look at the video after the break, it’ll bring a smile to your face.

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GameBoy Advance Rapid Fire Hack

October 1, 2010 by Greg R. Jacobs 11 Comments

Ever find yourself in the middle of a Game Boy game and your hand cramps up? Save that sore wrist for something else because now you can hack the Game Boy Advance to add Rapid Fire for the B button. [William] has developed a way to do this by creating a simple circuit that generates a square wave on the B button when it is pressed. To do this hack all that was needed was a short shopping list of:

A Couple NAND Gate ICs
2n2222 NPN Transistor
0.1uF ceramic capacitor
A Switch
1M ohm resistor
Some Thin Wire

After that you’re off to the races as [William] documents how he goes about transforming the Game Boy Advance and includes a ton of great pictures and a schematic. This operation ends with [William] placing the switch for Rapid Fire excellence next to the Right Bumper where it is inconspicuous and yet easy enough to access.

Via [HackedGadgets]

USB Host Comes To Zipit

September 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

This USB to Zipit Dock adapter and a special kernel makes USB host mode for the Zipit possible. Previously, the cheap and hackable wireless client needed a hardware modification to enable USB support. The new kernel bootloader, called U-Boot, makes the internal alterations unnecessary (see the demo after the break). Now the only caveat is one of voltage. Zipit only supplies 3.3V when running on battery so your choices are to only use USB when the Zipit is plugged into a charger, or use a powered USB hub. But if you’re already building a hub adapter it shouldn’t be too much trouble to add in the option for a battery-powered hub.

So can we play our NES games using a USB controller now?

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Indestructible TI-89

August 23, 2010 by James Munns 63 Comments

Sometimes, expensive calculators hit the floor. It’s happened to almost anyone with a graphing calculator from TI or HP. Sadly, they don’t always bounce. After this happened to [Howard C.], an Industrial Engineering student from U. of Iowa, he decided to spend $50 on milling his own replacement case out of aluminum rather than trashing the device over a broken battery compartment. [Howard] chose to send us the story rather than write his own blog, so we’ve included all the great pictures he sent us after the break.

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GBA Emulator Ported To Didj

August 12, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Tired of messing with the hardware of the Didj you picked up? Now you can use it for gaming on that last road trip of the summer. A Game Boy Advanced emulator has been ported for use on both the Didj and the Explorer. You’ll have to dig up a copy of the original bios for a GBA as well as some ROMs, but the rest seems pretty straight forward. We are still holding out hope for Doom or Quake on the Didj, but this will help us wait a bit longer.

[Thanks Nirvous via Rosincore]

Open Graphing Calculator: Beagleboard + R

August 6, 2010 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

It looks like we missed the boat on this one but just in case you missed it everywhere else on the Internet, last Saturday [Matt Stack] introduced the world to a completely open source calculator. This marries two heartily tested open source projects; the R Project for Statistical Computing and the Beagleboard. The hardware side of things is very similar to that Linux tablet from back in June. It uses a stock Beagleboard with the BeagleTouch module.

Why do we care? First off, don’t forget what’s under the hood. That ARM processor kicks the 6 MHz Z80 processor found in TI’s calculators to the curb. The R language is a boon as well, offering plots of almost limitless quality and allowing extensibility that can’t be equaled with the current non-open offerings. But mostly because it’s a hack. We like seeing software run on hardware it wasn’t intended for.