Ps3 Laptop Courtesy Of Ben Heck

October 21, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 16 Comments

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[Ben Heck] may be the coolest person ever (take that [Adam Savage]). You would think that after producing so many laptop versions of gaming consoles he would grow tired or we would be bored of them. But no! We love each and every new production – including his latest laptop-ified Ps3. Not too much in the terms of ‘new’ comes from his latest article, but it does reaffirm some things including: why make what you can buy, cheap foam sheet should be purchased by the ton, and use the screws from an overheated Xbox 360 when you lose the Ps3 originals. Oh, and [Adam] we were just kidding, you know we will always love you. Check out a video after the break.

[Via Ps3Mods]

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Guitar Hero Strum Bar As Guitar Kill Switch

September 3, 2009 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

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[Ray] had a Guitar Hero controller for PlayStation 2 sitting around. Because he moved on to playing the game on Xbox 360, he decided to cannibalize the older controller for its parts. He removed the strum bar and fit it inside of a mid-1980’s Peavy Patriot electric guitar. Once wired up, it works as a kill switch; it stops all sound from making it to the amp whenever the strum bar switch is actuated. Don’t miss hearing this effect in the video after the break and keep sending in those Guitar Hero mods. Continue reading “Guitar Hero Strum Bar As Guitar Kill Switch” →

PS3 Slim Axes Linux Support

August 20, 2009 by Matt Schulz 80 Comments

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We may have all been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the PS3 slim, but don’t get too excited yet. According to an official press release from Sony, the PS3’s slimmer counterpart is dropping the ability to install Linux or another operating system. It’s always a shame when new products come packed with less features, but this time, it’s preventing us from doing things like cracking SSL using 200 of the consoles, or running emulators from an Ubuntu install on the console. For those of us that still plan on keeping our “old” PS3s, Yellow Dog Linux has been released on a USB stick and allows you to run without having to do a full installation.

[via Joystiq]

Real Guitar + Guitar Hero

June 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 35 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b_mE4JhF1o]

[Alan] isn’t very good at guitar. He says so himself. He’s not that great at guitar hero either. Was that medium difficulty? Let’s put aside his skill to talk about his controller. He has fused the guitar hero controller with a real guitar. The original guitar has retained its functionality, though the controller bits may get in the way if he jams really hard. With a flip of the switch, it turns into a guitar hero controller. You simply press the strings down at the frets where the buttons should be, while strumming the controller part.

Katamari Controller

May 25, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2164793&dest=-1]

Remember those days, back in the arcade, where games with a unique control scheme also had a controller best suited for them? There were rolling balls, joysticks, dials, all sorts of inputs. Consoles have maily relied on their standard controllers, relegating alternative inputs to be strange collectors items. Some games just need a specialized controller though. For example, Katamari Damacy. [Kellbot] has made one that we think suits the game very well.

Rock Band Kick Pedal

February 3, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

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[Raphael] sent us this nice kick pedal mod for Guitar Hero: World Tour. After breaking his kick pedal repeatedly, he decided to build something a bit more robust. He went to the music store intending to pick up a cheap kick pedal to start with and happened to start a conversation with an employee who had a practice pad to get rid of. [Raphael] relieved him of his practice pad and promptly made a base to hold it in position. After attaching his piezo sensor to the back of it, he had a very robust kick pedal. we can’t imagine him breaking this one any time soon.

PS3 Ubuntu Install For Emulation

January 31, 2009 by Eliot 15 Comments

snes9x

Gizmodo has done us all a favor by wading through many forum posts and condensing them into a handy guide to installing Ubuntu on your Playstation 3. It covers some of the caveats of going this route. You have to backup all of your game data before starting since the system repartitions the drive. Ubuntu installs without any problem, but because the cell processor is a PowerPC architecture it means not everything has been ported to it. There are a few things you need to install to get the Sixaxis controller to be recognized as a joystick. Super Nintendo emulator SNES9X is available and works, mostly. It doesn’t support fullscreen and cries if you reconfigure the buttons.

Supporting developers through alternate operating systems isn’t new to Sony. With the original Playstation, they released Net Yaroze, a consumer grade dev kit. The Playstation 2 was the first time they officially supported Linux on a game console (our first Linux machine). The ground breaking thing about the Playstation 3 was bundling in Linux support with every single console; no specialized hardware needed. Unfortunately they’re not near as open with the PSP.