laptops hacks

230 Articles

Wooden Case Sega Saturn Laptop

August 8, 2014 by 10 Comments

CNC'ed Wooden Case for Sega Saturn

Remember the Sega Saturn? You know, that short-lived game system of the mid 90’s. Well, [c_mon] is still a fan and decided to make a portable version with a built in screen.

As you can see from the photos, the main case is made from wood, plywood to be exact. Several pieces of the plywood were cut out using a CNC Router and laminated together to achieve the full height needed to enclose the internal electronics. The finished case takes up a little less real estate than the original, however it is slightly taller.

You may recognize the screen as an old PSOne unit. The screen was taken part and housed in it’s own wooden enclosure which is hinged to the main case. The video is supplied to the screen by a composite output from the Saturn. There is no unique CD lid either, the screen functions as one when it is folded down. For sound there are a couple built in powered speakers that tap into the stock audio output.

To ad a little pizzazz, [c_mon] routed in a groove in the top to accept some EL wire. There are also some cool engravings in the wooden case, including the Saturn Automobile Manufacturer logo on the top of the screen lid…. whoops!

CNC'ed Wooden Case for Sega Saturn

 

Repurposed Laptop Batteries With A Twist

August 3, 2014 by 14 Comments

Arduino with lithium ion battery

Lithium ion batteries are becoming more and more common these days, but some of the larger capacity batteries can still carry a pretty hefty price tag. After finding Acer’s motherboard schematics online and doing a little reverse-engineering, [Tiziano] has found a way to reuse batteries from his dead laptop, not only saving the batteries from the landfill but also cutting costs on future projects.

These types of batteries have been used for many things in the past, but what makes this project different is that [Tiziano] is able to monitor the status of the batteries and charge them using I2C with an Arduino and a separate power supply, freeing the batteries from the bonds of the now-useless laptop.

With this level of communication between the microcontroller and the battery pack, there is little chance of the batteries catching on fire when they’re used in another project. Since the Arduino can also monitor the current amount of charge in the batteries, there is also a reduced risk that they will be damaged from under- or over-charging.

This wasn’t just as simple as hooking up the positive and negative leads of a power supply to the battery. [Tiziano] also had to model the internal resistance of the motherboard that the battery expects to see, and get the supply voltage just right so the battery’s safety protocols wouldn’t kick in to prevent them from charging. After a few other hurdles were jumped, [Tiziano] now has a large capacity lithium ion battery at his disposal for any future projects.

A view inside the Novena Open Hardware laptop

Bunnie Talks To Us About Novena Open Hardware Laptop

May 22, 2014 by 16 Comments

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9mjDt-4XIM&w=580]

 

We made a point to stop by the Freescale booth at Maker Faire where [Bunnie Huang] was showing off the Novena laptop. His past accolades (Wikipedia page) and the rabid success of the crowd funding round — which nearly tripled its goal — meant we had to make multiple attempts to speak with him. But the third time’s a charm and it was worth the wait!

Several things struck me about seeing the hardware in person. First off, I like that there’s a little bit of room inside but the case is still reasonably small. This really is a laptop aimed at hardware hacking; I would anticipate that the majority of backers intend to roll their own hardware for it. Second, [Bunnie] showed off several expansion boards as examples which use a standard 80-pin header to get at the onboard components. The example of a man-in-the-middle attack for the flash chip on a thumb drive was extremely tasty. But it was also interesting to hear about an SDR board which will ship to original backers since the campaign made its stretch goals.

If you don’t know much about this project, you can get some background from our post when the crowd funding went live. Open design info is available from the Novena page.

Drilling Into A Laptop: Extreme Hinge Repair

March 22, 2014 by 57 Comments

final-2

What is it with laptop companies spending millions on design and aesthetics… and then using a cheap hinge design that is almost guaranteed to break? After [Peter Zotov] spent hours trying to find a replacement online, he decided to take matters into his own hands with this slightly unorthodox hinge repair.

The problems lies in the design of the hinge mounting to the lid. First, they’re using a non-standard screw sizes, slightly larger than an M2. Second, it’s threaded into cast aluminum — and to make matters worse, it doesn’t even look like there is sufficient thread engagement! A good rule of thumb is about 2 times thread diameter for aluminum — 1-1.5 times for steel. And it’s not just ASUS doing this, we’ve seen numerous laptops of different brands where the hinge goes after a year or two — what happened to cyclic stress tests?

Anyway, [Peter] decided to drill out the existing threads to allow for larger bolts. He threw his precious laptop up onto his CNC mill (a drill press would do just fine), and popped larger holes straight through the lid. This allowed him to put three standard M2 screws in place with a nut and washer. We admit it’s not the most elegant solution, but it’s saved him from getting a new laptop just because of planned corporate obsolescence.

Hacking A Mac Magsafe Jack Into A PC Ultrabook

November 23, 2013 by 34 Comments

zenbookAir

Something’s fishy about the above-pictured ultrabook: it’s an Asus Zenbook that [WarriorRocker] hacked to use a MagSafe power connector typically found on Macbooks. Most of us probably consider it standard procedure to poke around inside our desktop’s tower, but it takes some guts to radically alter such a shiny new ultrabook. It seems, however, that the Zenbook’s tiny power plug causes serious frustrations, and [WarriorRocker] was tired of dealing with them.

Using information he found from an article we featured earlier this summer on a MagSafe teardown, [WarriorRocker] hit up the parts drawer for some connectors and got to work. He had to modify the MagSafe’s housing to fit his Zenbook while still holding on to the magnets, but he managed to avoid modifying the ultrabook’s case—the connector is approximately the same size as a USB port. Deciding he could live with just one USB connection, [WarriorRocker] took to the board with a pair of side cutters and neatly carved out space for the MagSafe next to the audio jack. He then soldered it in place and ran wires from the VCC and Ground pins along a the channel where the WiFi antenna is routed, connecting them to the original power jack’s input pins.

[WarriorRocker] regrets that he fell short of his original goal of getting the MagSafe’s protocol working: he instead had to hack on his own adapter. We’re still rather impressed with how well his hack turned out, and it did manage to solve the charging problems. Hit us up in the comments if you can provide some insight into the MagSafe’s otherwise obscure innerworkings.

Laptop Keyboard EL Panel Backlight

October 17, 2013 by 26 Comments

keyboard-el-panel-backlight

[nullpointr] wanted a backlit keyboard for his Asus Transformer Prime so that it would be a bit easier to use in low-light situations. He considered a few different options and ended up adding electroluminescent panels behind the keys.

Those paying close attention might wonder why we called this a laptop in the title. Well, it’s a tablet with a keyboard dock and that’s a mouthful. This actually really helps to simplify the modifications because the motherboard and other bits are all in the screen portion of the device. EL panels are also a nice choice because you can cut them to size and they still function. With a bit of case work, three panels were made to fit side-by-side.

The part that just isn’t going to make it in the original enclosure is the inverter that drives the panels. It’s the black box to the left. [nullpointr] added a USB-form-factor jack to the side of the case that allows the inverter to be disconnected quite easily. This way the Transformer Prime can still go with him on the road, it just won’t light up unless he also hauls around that add-on.

Way way back we saw someone do this with fiber optics and an LED. Unfortunately that project link seems to be dead so we figure it’s about time someone revisited the concept.