From the category archives:
Over on the Benheck forums a user has uploaded some pictures of what he claims to be the worlds first portable SEGA Saturn.
The only information provided about it is that the unit has a 7 inch screen, a joy stick, triggers, memory card slot and the VCD card is also integrated allowing for video CD’s to be played back.
It runs on a 9 volt battery which apparently is good enough to watch a movie and somemore. [click to continue…]
Back in the NES, SNES, Sega Megadrive (Genesis) days there was the occasion to blow in to a cartridge to clean the contacts so that the game would actually load. NES_harmonica, an eBay seller, has decided to convert his old NES carts in to working harmonicas that actually provide music when you blow in to them.
Currently there are several carts on sale which include Dick Tracy, Legend of Zelda and Super Mario 3 each of which has a starting bid of $7.
Each NES Harmonica game cartridge was created by using a Hohner Pocket Pal harmonica making each of them very playable (in a music way, not gaming way as the innards have been carved out). [click to continue…]
It’s the question on everyone’s mind these days… Does a Lava Lamp work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter? Luckily Neil Fraser did all the leg work here and helped answer the question for you putting all our minds at rest.
This amazing experiment comprises of a lava lamp, camera, home-made centrifuge, Google Nexus One and a room large enough to handle a 50 kilo spinning centrifuge.
The centrifuge was built from Meccano and has a diameter of 3 meters. On one side is a holder for a Lava Lamp and Google Nexus One phone (for measuring gravity). On the other side is a camera to record how the lava lamp reacts and in the middle a complex motor system that needs to be oiled and kept running smoothly so it doesn’t spin out of control. The whole unit spins at 42 RPM. [click to continue…]
Think back a good 20 – 25 years to the mid 80’s where computers such as the Sinclair Spectrum 128k+2 existed. You might also remember the Commodore VIC-20 that like the Spectrum +2, also loaded games and software from a cassette deck (or datacorder as Sinclair named it). It also had a 1 MHz CPU. The VIC-20 was kind of classed as a bad C64 due to the C64 selling extremely well.
This particular VIC-20 has been loaded with software called TweetVER which is short for Tweeting from a Vintage CompuTER. The software is about to be connected up to a twitter account found here and on the 20th of this month, the VIC-20 will send a live tweet from it’s speedy 1MHz based computer. Please note that there are 3 or so tweets on that account already, but just ignore them as they were not sent from an old computer. [click to continue…]
Etsy seller randall180 created a unique lamp for an office desk out of the casing of an old iMac G4. The iMac had stopped working a while back, so randall180 decided to put it to good use, carve out the innards and make him self a light for the office.
For those of you who wanted to get your hands on the lamp, it’s actually out of stock now. I assume only the original was available to purchase due to the 1 G4 breaking down. Check out another picture after the jump. [click to continue…]
This steering wheel has to be the most unique idea I have ever seen for an iPhone. It is built of Lego and is capable of rotating left or right an iPhone sat in a Lego dock.
The whole system is built from Lego Technic including the small stand it sits on. No instructions have been provided so you’ll have to watch the video closely to see what is needed to build it yourself. See the video after the jump. [click to continue…]
This is one of the most random gadgets I have seen in the last few years. The device is called the automated turn switch off machine and all it does is switch a toggle switch off every time you try to switch it on. I can’t see any other purpose then perhaps reminding you to switch off all your electronic devices when you are not using them – and that’s really stretching the purpose of it in my opinion.
When switching the toggle switch on the lid opens and a wooden hand type device jumps out and switches the switch off. The device has no micro-controller inside and everything is analogue. Check out the video below. [click to continue…]
Ben Heck is well known for hacking up consoles and making them in to portable units. One of them is a PS3 Slim converted in to a laptop style setup allowing it to be carried around and played on the go. The PS3 Slim Laptop has a 17 inch HD display allowing for crystal clear graphics.
The PS3 Slim Laptop has been listed on eBay now by altfeldtoy who mentions he actually won the PS3 laptop in a local business competition. Currently there are 26 bids on the auction with the latest amount being $3,350.00 USD. [click to continue…]
This USS Enterprise from the famous Star Trek has been hacked and modded in to a fully working RC submarine. The Enterprise model used is the NCC-1701-A and as can be seen in the video below it actually works quite well under water.
The Enterprise Sub was created by a specialist team of modders called aqua modelers who meet up yearly to show of their latest underwater hackery. [click to continue…]
Bacteria is a SEGA fan who has spent about 4 months recently hacking a SEGA DreamCast in to a portable console. The portable SEGA DreamCast is called IntoDream and has stereo speakers, an N64 analogue stick, full rumble features and a built in VMU (visual memory unit).
The system uses a 5 inch LCD screen taken from a PSone and although a chunky portable device, it fully works as a DreamCast would. The IntoDream is powered by a six amp battery that is capable of powering the device for about two hours which isn’t too bad considering the machine it’s powering. [click to continue…]
Check out this custom built chair that was made entirely from Nintendo Super Famicom cartridges. It is unknown at this moment how many old gaming cartridges were used to built it, and where they got all the games from to build it, but for a complete nerd it might be a cool thing to have in your bedroom for when you are playing games.
The 7-foot throne can be found over here where the writer doesn’t really give any information other than saying what it is. [click to continue…]
This old 8-bit NES cartridge was hacked up and converted in to a full working NES games console. The nesP as it’s called, was created using a noname china brand PMP that has the ability of playing NES ROMS. An old NES controller was then attached to the PMP and all fit snugly inside along with a small colour LCD screen.
The nesP has 4GB of internal memory to store games and as it’s a PMP, it also can play videos, MP3’s as well as acting as an FM radio, picture viewer and audio recorder. The system could potentially work as a video and still camera, but those features were disabled to fit it in the case. [click to continue…]
Jesse Vincent has managed to hack the Amazon Kindle 2. His Kindle 2 now runs Ubuntu 9.04 ported to ARM running in a chrooted environment.
To achieve this the Kindle was hacked in to using a USB networking debug mode that Amazon left open on older Kindle 2’s. Full details are below… [click to continue…]
The Master Boy is a hacked together Sega Master System portable built by Sam Thornley in June last year. It’s built from MDF and duct tape and uses a Master System II concole PCB.
The screen runs directly from the RGB VDP chip built on to the PCB giving a pixel perfect image. [click to continue…]
A guy over at prusadjs has hacked up his old MSI Wind 3 cell battery, attached a USB connector and now it is capable of charging an iPhone.
The iPhone takes about 2.5 hours to fully charge and the netbook battery is left with about 50% of it’s charge left meaning a second full charge of the iPhone should be possible. [click to continue…]
