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Archive: Computers
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January 16, 2007
3D modeling with your hands...
A MAKE reader sent in a video of this interesting looking 3D modelling program (called InDex by Digital ArtForms) that lets you sculpt with your hands, anyone ever try it? - Link & more.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 16, 2007 03:42 PM
Computers, News from the Future |
Permalink
| Comments (7)
Digi-Key updates - ordering parts is a little easier
Ordering parts is sometimes the hardest part when doing projects, Digi-Key recently updated their site making searching for things a little easier... Eventually we'll do a screencast of a parts ordering session to show how "fun" it can be looking for the best and cheapest parts. [via] - Link.
Related parts:
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 16, 2007 03:11 AM
Computers, Electronics, Online |
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| Comments (3)
WordPress Ultimate gamer's pack
Here's how to server up your site for all the game systems, Harper writes -
"The WordPress Ultimate Gamer's Pack is an essential set of plugins that automatically renders an optimized version of your posts and pages when visitors come to your blog on a Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS-Lite, or Sony PSP. Each device is automatically detected, there is no configuration needed. The theme used by each plugin optimizes your blogs layout and fonts for each device. For example, the Wii Edition plugin uses the "Wii" font at sizes that provide for easy reading on TV screens." [via] Thansk Brian! - Link.
Pictured here, MAKE on a Wii...
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 16, 2007 01:10 AM
Computers, Gaming, Online |
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| Comments (0)
January 15, 2007
Programming the ENIAC
Columbia University Computing History Timeline and archives has a great overview and photos of programming the ENIAC, one of the first large scale "super-computers" - [via] - Link.
Related:
- History of super computers - Link.
- Off-the-Shelf Parts, Off-the-Wall Ideas. MAKE 06, page 190. Looking for the dawn of the digital universe? Check in the basement, next to the lavatory. Subscribers--read this article now in your digital edition.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 15, 2007 09:51 AM
Computers, Retro |
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| Comments (1)
The Ultimate Dell 8IK keyboard fix
Tom was having problems with his Dell laptop, so he installed a Logitech Playstaion keyboard-
"The Dell Latitude CPx line of laptop is notorious for having keyboards go bad and mine was no different. Not all the keys would stop working, just the 8, I and K keys. Various fixes have been posted and I’ve tried them all but to no avail. Cleaning the contacts, removing parts of the metal keyboard tray that was supposedly shorting, etc. They would work for a few days then it would be back to typing with the onscreen keyboard. If I pounded my fist in just the right place I could get it to work but only until I moved the laptop again. This was getting irritating." - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 15, 2007 03:31 AM
Computers, DIY Projects |
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| Comments (0)
January 12, 2007
Teeny Tiny Commodore 64
At first glance, I thought this was a hacked Game Boy Advance... I was wrong.
Here are a few pics of my own DTV Hummer project. I had an old PSOne LCD screen lying around and I thought I'd make a C64 laptop. Actually, it's more like a C64 PDA! It measures 6.5 x 6 x 1.5 inches (15.5 x 16.5 x 4 cm) when closed. It can run from an AC wall adapter or 6 NiMH AA batteries. The keyboard is hacked from a portable folding keyboard for a Jornada PDA which outputs RS-232. I'm using a PIC 16F88 to decode the signals and re-encode them to PS/2 (that was an ordeal to figure out). The PIC checks to see if an external PS/2 keyboard is connected on power up.
Here are some of the innards. It was originally a Hummer. I cut the power supply part of the PCB off and supplied my own regulated 3.3V. [via]- Link
Posted by Bre Pettis |
Jan 12, 2007 10:29 AM
Computers, Electronics, Gaming |
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| Comments (4)
January 8, 2007
HOW TO - Make a PCMCIA slot memory card carrier
Chieh writes -
"I now switch among several notebooks for work, travel, and home. Having all of my data on one notebook is no longer an option. And as flash memory gets bigger and bigger in smaller packages, my ability to carry all my data with me becomes more convenient. I still like to use flash memory cards, such as SD Cards over flash drive. For one, they are smaller than flash drives. Second, I have a lot of them because I have cameras and PDA's that use them. Third, my notebooks have built-in memory card readers. Fourth, having a flash drive sticking out of an USB port while the laptop is not stable on a desk is just asking for trouble.
Anyway, I wanted to carry several SD Cards with my notebook, without losing track of them. After all, they contain precious data. Having several cards means I can't just leave the card in the built-in memory card reader. So I thought maybe I can turn the PCMCIA slot protectors that I have into a memory card carrier tray.
I have quite a few of these protectors from my collection of old laptops, PDA's, handheld PC's, and other electronic devices. I even have CompactFlash, SD Card, and miniSD Card slot protectors (see photo below). I have never thought of a good use for these cards. Now they will serve a noble purpose. " - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 8, 2007 02:16 PM
Computers, DIY Projects |
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| Comments (0)
Water cooling computers with a swimming pool
Eric shows that you can cool computers with pool water, and heat the pool at the same time!
"Cooler, quieter computers and [possibly] warmer pool water with very little extra cost and added energy savings. All of the materials; PVC, ABS, other hard plastics, stainless steel on the pump housing, copper on the manifold and waterblocks, and gold plating on the waterblocks will all likely react with the chlorine to some extent - but not to any degree that will cause problems in the near future. These materials are all prevalent in swimming pool equipment already." [via] - Link.
Related:
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 8, 2007 12:12 AM
Computers, DIY Projects |
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| Comments (1)
January 5, 2007
CueCatLibraryThing & CueCats - Catalog your books
John writes -
"LibraryThing lets you catalog your books, but the coolest part, to me, is that they have a feature that lets you repurpose the CueCat, a late-ninties barcode scanner which was hitherto useless dot com schwag. Now you can use it to scan your books into their system! Very cool." - Link.
Related:
- PalmOne Zire + CueCat = Barcode scanner? - Link.
- C.R.T. Cat - Link.
- Dialing from a picture frame - Link.
- LEGO barcode reader - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 5, 2007 07:41 AM
Computers, Gadgets, Online |
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| Comments (3)
January 4, 2007
HOW TO - Improve the range of a very cheap RF mouse
Nico shows you how to boost the RF of a cheap wireless mouse -
"While shopping at Microcenter, I found a "bargain" wireless mouse and keyboard combination on sale for $12.99. I wanted to add something like this to my media center and the price was really low so I decided to give it a try. The first attempt at using this proved that you really do get what you pay for. Both the mouse and keyboard work fine if they are only a foot or two from the receiver, however, the mouse stops working intermittently as the range is increased. I opened the receiver up and noticed that it was an inductively coupled system running at around 27MHz." [via] - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 4, 2007 01:19 PM
Computers, DIY Projects, Electronics |
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| Comments (0)
January 2, 2007
DIY Obsolete ibook Repair
Mark had a problem, he had a broken ibook out of warranty and so he decided to fix it with fire!
Here's his great disclaimer: Now, to make things sure, this is NOT A HOW TO. If you set your house on fire because of this, don't come complain to me, okay? If you do attempt this, this is all AT YOUR OWN RISK. This really is the last thing you want to do to your iBook and the chance this operation succeeds is very little. [Video] - Link
Posted by Bre Pettis |
Jan 2, 2007 04:35 PM
Computers, DIY Projects |
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| Comments (2)
December 27, 2006
Shake control your music - Wii remote + Linux
Walter sent is this fun way to control your music, he writes -
"Today I hacked my christmas present. A Wii remote controls my xmms mp3 player in linux now. Shake the remote and it switches to a new song.
To get this working in ubunto linux you need the following packages: WMD driver 0.1.2 xmms control python files written by myself. Read the README's in the .tar.gz's for install instructions " - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Dec 27, 2006 12:26 PM
Computers, DIY Projects, Electronics, Home Entertainment |
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| Comments (1)
December 15, 2006
Hardware vs Software!
Philip Greenspun has a really funny story on EE vs CS... Ok, hardware vs. software makers! Duke it out in the comments!
"Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"
One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype...." - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Dec 15, 2006 12:52 AM
Computers |
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| Comments (3)
December 9, 2006
RARE Working Vintage 1975 IBM 5100 portable computer
Gnomic writes -
"On eBay - An original PC! The 5100 was the first IBM 'portable.' I learned APL on one of these babies. Alas, too much for my modest budget" - Link.
Perfect gift for the time traveling John Titors.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Dec 9, 2006 01:41 PM
Computers, Retro |
Permalink
| Comments (8)
December 7, 2006
HOW TO - Junk box flowers
Here's how to make incredible flowers from old computer parts - this one was made with:
- 1 dead hard drive
- 1 floppy drive
- 9 floppy disks
- large gauge copper wire
- thin gauge copper wire
- brass (or any thin metal) sheet
Related:
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Dec 7, 2006 08:52 AM
Computers, DIY Projects |
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| Comments (0)
December 6, 2006
Acceleromouse (DIY Nintendo Wii-like remote for PC's)
Macaba writes -
"Ages ago, I was toying with the idea of making a DIY in-air PC mouse, and had designed it in my mind. A few days ago I saw the Wii-remote bluetooth PC controller hack and thought that it was good time to throw together my own version.
As shown on http://wiihacks.blogspot.com/ the Wii remote has been utilized as a bluetooth remote for the PC/Laptop. My version isn't as good, as it works over PS/2, and is wired (for now!). But I always find the enjoyment is in developing your OWN firmware for devices as long as it works (messing for 2 days and still not getting it working is the ultimate frustration, luckily didn't happen). " - Link.
Related:
- Wiimote for Macs - Link.
- Control games with gestures, speech, and other input devices! - Link.
- HOW TO - Make your own wireless Wii sensor bar - Link.
- Wii gutted and gadget guts roundup - Link.
- Making (Practical) Wii Component Cables - Link.
- WiinRemote a program for moving cursor using Wii Remote on Windows PC (reading 3-axis linear accelerometer's value) - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Dec 6, 2006 09:25 PM
Computers, DIY Projects, Electronics, Gadgets |
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| Comments (5)
Homemade wood "iCurve" stand
Erik writes -
"I created this and a few other iCurve style stands in wood. I experimented with cherry, maple, oak and red oak. No stain was used, only lacquer, so the original beauty of the wood comes out. The trick part was keeping the notebook from sliding down the stand. Two short pieces of solid copper wire are used at the lowest part of the upper rail to provide a "lip" to prevent movement. The lip is lower than the optical drive slot. Now if I could only get a MacBook Pro with wireless power, I could get rid of that last cord ;-)" [via] - Link.
Related laptop and computer stand projects:
- DIY angle bracket laptop stand - Link.
- Letter holder laptop stand - Link.
- Simple Laptop Stand - Link.
- DIY Laptop - GPS Car Stand - Link.
- The DIY exercise office - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Dec 6, 2006 07:34 PM
Computers, DIY Projects |
Permalink
| Comments (1)
HOW TO - Make a typewriter keyboard
Randofo seems to have updated his typewriter to keyboard project, check it out... - Link.
Related:
- HOW TO - Hacking a USB Keyboard (Make a typewriter keyboard) - Link.
- Portable typewriter laptop... - Link.
- The ElectriClerk - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Dec 6, 2006 09:46 AM
Computers, DIY Projects, Electronics, Instructables |
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| Comments (1)
Easily open .docx on a Mac
A few of our Mac toting makers sent in this tip on opening the new Microsoft Office doc format .docx (it doesn't open natively now)...
Alex writes -
"I received one yesterday. Initial tests proved futile- no application wanted anything to do with it. But, after a little trial and error, I was able to retrieve the document and carry on with my day.
The first step is to rename your .docx file. It isn't actually a .docx at the moment- it's a zip file in disguise. Replace the file's ".docx" extension with ".zip".
The second step is pretty obvious, based on the first step. Unzip the file. You'll find a folder with some stuff..." - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Dec 6, 2006 07:06 AM
Computers |
Permalink
| Comments (2)
December 3, 2006
HOW TO - Watercooling a laptop on the cheap
MAKE Flickr photo pool member nearlynormal007 shows you how to watercool a laptop on the cheap!...or pretty much anything - "" - Link & photos.
Related:
- A silent water cooled PC made with parts from Home Depot - Link.
- Ford Festiva radiator water cools PC! - Link.
- Watercooled Xbox 360 - Link.
- Fully internal watercooled Xbox 360 - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Dec 3, 2006 06:48 AM
Computers, DIY Projects, Electronics |
Permalink
| Comments (0)
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