This isn’t quite a traditional Hackit, but I think you guys will dig it. Here’s the challenge: Given a budget of $600, put together the best hacking workbench you can. Don’t include computers or the actual bench in your budget. Oh, and you have to spend it all.
By the way, the best five submissions will get a chance to win a secret prize that I’ll be announcing around the end of next month.
[C.K.] passed along this impressive writeup on modding an eeePC for just about everything you can think to add. This one’s got two four port USB hubs, internal GPS, bluetooth, 56k modem, FM audio transmitter, 4gb USB flash drive and a 801.11a/b/g/n card with a spare antenna for full 802.11n support. The wiring job looks excellent – very clean and well done. The only thing missing is a touchscreen.
[Forrest] sent in his Hammonator Organ that he resurrected into a guitar amp. He re-used several of the original parts, and designed the amplifier around them. Tubes were chosen to fit the sockets, and the original transformer was adapted to run on the 120V usually found today.
[Shane] put together this funky bluetooth headset hack so he could use his headset with both his PSP and his PS/2. It starts with a Cardo Bluetooth adapter. He added both a PSP headset style connector and a standard 2.5mm plug to a custom pigtail. Then he can use it with either a PSP headset remote or a modified USB PS/2 headset adapter.
[Jared]’s back in action over at Inventgeek. Now he’s got an odd use for an old LCD: creating an ultraviolet light polarizing table. He gutted the LCD and swapped out the CCFL lams for some UV versions. The result isn’t much more than an interesting conversation piece, but it’s nice to see a use for screens that would otherwise end up in the recycle bin.
[Dave] sent in his retro Mac project. Putting new guts into an old mac isn’t really unheard of, but I liked his solution to use the original Mac 512k keyboard and mouse. He used an Atmel AT90USB162 to create his own standard USB HID device. The keyboard and mouse appear as a standard USB device, so the mac (or any modern USB PC) can identify use the keyboard and mouse without any additional software.
[bifferos] just found us, but he sent in his NTP alarm clock. It’s actually a Sweex LB200021 router with a custom display driver to display 24 hour time. Given my love of NTP, I couldn’t resist posting this one.
