When they’re not trying to bless the Viliv S5 with HSDPA, the guys at UMPC Fever are dissecting the UMID M1 ‘mbook’ to try to do something similar. If you thought the S5 was a challenge – soldering in a new mini PCIe connector, changing the storage – then prepare for what the UMID folks have set up for hapless modders: a combination of very little space and missing controller chips.
Some HSDPA mods are straightforward: open the casing up of whatever gadget you’ve decided will get internal 3G, slot in a Mini-PCI card or maybe even squeeze in a USB modem, install the software and off you go. Other times – like with the Viliv S5 MID – it’s a whole lot more complicated. Over at UMPC Fever, modder SKY is performing delicate electronic surgery inside his S5, soldering in a PCI-E slot in his attempts to get a WWAN-enabled MID.
While many people are still arguing over Apple’s decision to go with complicated headphones for the new iPod shuffle 3G, others are bemoaning the obvious lack of color in Apple’s life. Silver and black are all well and good, but the iPod shuffle 3G certainly benefits from a blast of new paint; that’s what Computer Choppers think, anyway, and so they’re offering the rainbow of shuffles you see here.
Apple-lovers, brace yourselves – this is arguably the Mac hack of the year (and it’s only March, I know). Unhappy with the amount of attention being paid to the Apple logo on his MacBook, Eddie Zarick turned the dinky fruit into a fully-working LCD display.
Video demo after the cut
You might remember the Steampunk Frankenstein case mod from last month: an 8ft behemoth of brass, ominous lighting, tricked-out gages and water-cooling. Creator D.Mattocks has been in touch to let us know the huge PC is now finished, complete with some much-welcome Steampunk tweaking to the drives (which previously were left bare plastic).
The original Acer Aspire One has proved a willing and able subject for modders, and the most recent hack makes the 8.9-inch netbook all the more data-friendly with the addition of an eSATA port. Piggy-backing over the Storage Expansion SD slot, modder tnkgrl used the netbook’s SATA port to wire things up.
This casemod probably won’t be mistaken for official Apple hardware, but then it cost a whole lot less than it would to boil a Mac Pro tower down to 5.5-inches high. The handiwork of modder Widefault, it’s a compact low-power Hackintosh running OS X on salvaged components.
As insane Steampunk PC case mods go, this Frankenstein machine by D. Mattocks will take some beating. Standing almost eight feet tall, and bristling with copper piping, vintage gauges and glass indicator lights from an old navy ship, it’s not so much a computer as a tribute to H.G. Wells, Dr Frankenstein and the sort of coffin Isambard Kingdom Brunel would’ve probably liked to be buried in.
The vent was salvaged from an old church, and now acts as the air inlet for the water-cooling system. Meanwhile everything is backlight with green cold-cathode tubes, which manage to make the Frankenstein Computer look even more ominous. Happily one of the gauges does actually show the computer temperature, though there’s probably not a steam blow-off valve.
If the Eee PC touchscreen tutorial left you envious and disgustedly eyeing your Acer Aspire One, never fear; there’s now a new tutorial for turning the best-selling netbook into a finger-friendly marvel. The guide uses one of the commonly available 8.9-inch touchscreen panels, easily found on eBay, which come with just about everything you need bar a screwdriver.
Take one Nintendo DS, a handful of solar panels, some spare time and this Instructable, and you could end up with this: a solar-powered DS that you never have to plug into the mains again. By strapping four 60 x 60mm panels – each capable of a maximum 3 volts at 40 ma power output – to the top and bottom outside casings of the DS, you can actually create a trickle-charger potent enough to avoid ever needing mains power.
SlashGear Japan
