Do you hack your hardware?

InsaneNutter

InsaneNutter

Resident Nutter
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I was thinking about this the other day and realise a lot of hardware that I buy I do because It can be hacked to make it do a lot more than it originally did out the box, If I didn’t buy it with the intention of hacking it I end up doing so anyway.

The Xbox:
The only reason I own the original Xbox is because it could be hacked to run Xbox Media Centre and all the other nice homebrew applications and emulators, I never bought an Xbox 1 with the intention of playing games on it, It was more of a bonus to me I got to play Halo 2 and Burnout 3 on it.

Here’s a pic of the Xbox from another thread on Digiex:

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(X3 Modchip, 120gig hard drive (was big back in 2004!) and an LCD screen, it gets used every day for watching TV and Movies)

The Router:
Same with our router, the Linksys WRT54g. This router out the box is ok but with custom firmware such as Tomato or DDWRT a massive list of possibilities are added to the router. Our router now acts as an SSH server, can monitor the network bandwidth in real time, can wake any pc up on the lan and much more.

The PSP:
My PSP is hacked with custom firmware that allows it to run homebrew applications and emulators, its very nice been able to play old Sega and Nintendo classics on the go. I can also copy all the games I own to the memory stick so I can play them on the go without having to worry about carrying the games around with me. The only reason I still use the PSP is because of the emulators and homebrew... lets be honest there’s not exactly a lot of new games out for it.

Other Stuff:
I also have a flashcart for my DS which has a couple of emulators, an msn client and some PDA software on, although I wouldn’t really class that as a hack. Same with my N95 a couple of system files have been modified so I can install anything I want on it and I don’t have the problem of it moaning about expired certificates which means having to alter the date back a few years just to install something.

So do you hack / modify your hardware?
 
I've just hacked my PSP and original Xbox. My original Playstation is also modded, but I wasn't the one who did it, nor do I even play it.
 
Start out on something old that’s cheap, then if you mess up it’s not the end of the world.

I used to love the possibilities of hacking your hardware years ago but never had the experience or skills to do so, start out small and learn from there.

I never knew how to build a pc (this is going back about 8 years) but I learned by upgrading bits in my existing one then eventually realised I had practically changed every part expect the motherboard so it really wasn’t as hard as I imagined when I finally built one from scratch :)
 
InsaneNutter said:
I never knew how to build a pc (this is going back about 8 years) but I learned by upgrading bits in my existing one then eventually realised I had practically changed every part expect the motherboard so it really wasn’t as hard as I imagined when I finally built one from scratch :)
Click to expand...

My first PC back in 2002 made by Gateway really helped me learn a lot about computers. I bought it new and could not for the life of me figure out why the hell it would crash/restart within 5 min of playing Medal of Honor: AA. I'd get an error message pertaining to the Nvidia driver each time. Being a noob, naturally I'd assume it was drivers (nope) and even bought a new video card and it still didn't fix the errors. The cause? The morons didn't bother to attach the cpu fan cable to the mobo (it was hidden) and it was overheating really bad. 8-) I bet those goons did it intentionally so it would get returned and they'd get money to "repair" it.

It did however teach me the ins and out of XP at the time, and I had never even touched a PC until then. A year later I built my first PC and it was pretty simple. The scariest part was trying to get the damn cpu in the socket and I was skeeeered trying to put a thumb-sized $250 object in and snap it into place. Not to mention how hard some of those coolers are to lock down as well. Since then I've built at least 10 and it isn't hard at all. I couldn't imagine paying someone money to do it.


Edit: That image you posted never loaded for me the first time I posted in this thread. :O That's pretty cool looking. I was just content throwing a 80GB drive in mine, but that's a pretty cool looking Xbox. (Y) Is that thing on the left for switching the mod chip on/off? Both of mine are soft modded.
 
Lol I know what you mean about the CPU / CPU cooler, I really didn’t enjoy that part of building my first ever pc. I think the most annoying thing is wiring the front audio panel up on rubbish cases that have like 8 little individual wires and no diagram to tell you which wire is which.

As i used to have a job building PC’s I’ve lost track of how many I’ve built, easily 4000+ at an estimate, I would never dream of paying anyone to do anything PC related as you say.

The buttons on the left are for switching to a different bios on the modchip, To turn the modchip off you have to hold the power button in when turning it on, the blue lights at the front will turn red then it will boot the MS dash and allow you to sign in to Xbox Live.
 
I've build my own PC 2 years ago, I have changed all old hardwares with the new ones.
The hard part was to change the motherboard -.- it took me 1 hour or so because the old one didn't want to get out from the box so it was very hard...
After I removed the old motherboard was easy to adjust other hardware's on it.
Now Im thinking to put more cooler's on the box because my CPU overheat and rester very often when I use to play games like GTA 4.
 
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