Steel Battalion is an odd beast. For those of you that haven’t run into it before: Steel Battalion was released in the fall of 2003. It is an Xbox game that aims to be a mech simulator (even deleting your save game if you failed to eject). To make the game more immersive it came with a specialized controller with around 40 buttons on it. That piece of hardware drove the cost of the game to $200. At that price you’d figure they could get the controllers to rumble. Well one mech jockey decided to hack in the missing feedback by scavenging the rumblers from another controller. The control for these comes off of the com lights which flash every time you’re hit. There are some additional tweaks on the site too. If I had spent $200 on one game I wouldn’t be getting anywhere near it with a soldering iron, but I do hope this project turns into a full fledge cockpit someday.

[thanks AlphA]

Continue reading “Steel Battalion Controller Mod” →

I know this isn’t new, but today is a special day: the new Xbox is going to be officially revealed tonight on everyone’s favorite music-free music channel. This post is about what to do with your soon to be obsolete Xbox.

Xbox-Linux installs have become fairly easy; You no longer have to crack open the case. You can buy or build a simple usb adapter to upload a 2MB file on to the Xbox by using an exploit in MechAssault.  After that you can boot a live Linux cd.  Even after this your Xbox will still be able to play games. 

What you can do with it is up to you imagination. 

• Use it as a front end for mythtv

• Tuck it in a closet as a headless server

• Install a variety of distros, like Gentoo

• Upgrade the ram, hard disk, and add vga out

• Install OSX as mentioned previously

• You could even build a cluster

The best place to start on this journey is the xbox-linux wiki.

Continue reading “Planning Your Xbox Retirement” →

in response to last week’s basic stamp howto, steve ries sent in a nice looking xbox mod.

I recently made that crazy “light mod” you spoke of at the end of the article, except it was for my xbox.  Check it out and let me know what you think. I even have video links on that web page, as well as the source for the stamp if anyone wants to try it out.

the lightshow he was able to create is pretty fantastic.  someone hack this to start up every time one of the controllers is set to vibrate!

Continue reading “Xbox Landing Lights Mod” →

using an xbox controller, a small lcd screen (found at compusa for under $20) you can control the media center pc, for example–change songs, pause, change volume etc

with xboxes being so cheap, there’s no reason not to get one _just_ to mod. but if you can’t or don’t want to solder stuff, there are a lot of solderless mod chips and a lot of ways to do it. here’s one way