the 90º wavelan hack

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no updates for a while eh?

Well here's a simple little hack... getting an Orinoco Wavelan Silver to fit in a G4 Quicksilver. If you've ever tried - the wavelan card works nicely as a natively supported Airport card in the OS... but the way the G4's motherboard is laid out, the antenna end of the card gets in the way of the case closing!

So after using the machine for a while with its side flipped down, I tried to find an answer...

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Remote control lights

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So this week I did another little hack around the home - its a remote controlled light. Basically its just this kit for a 2 channel wireless remote, and the receiver has two little relays to switch a circuit, and its just switching the lights on and off. Nothing super special.

A couple cool things is that the receiver runs off the same 12V that the lights do, which is very convenient - it doesn't need a separate power supply. And well the remote looks kinda cool too - I made it into something that looks not unlike an explosives detonator or perhaps a freight elevator button or something.

Thats pretty much it.

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frankenstein light switch

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So for a little home-improvement hacking this time, I installed a sweet knife switch to turn on/off the ikea lights i put up in my kitchen.

You can use a switch that has bare contacts like a knife switch as long as the power that is running through the circuit is SAFE - 12 volts or so - and even then, don't short the contacts with a fork or what have you, because it will still make a big spark and scare the children.

Anyhow if you click the button above for the photo gallery, or watch the video below you'll see how I did it - though I didn't explain too clearly exactly how the switch is wired up - all you gotta do is make it so that the switch connects and disconnects the power from the lights. And if you're not familiar enough to do that, DONT TRY, because you probably also won't know if the power you're using is 12 volts or not :P

By the way, did I mention how you should NOT use this kind of switch on anything but a safe voltage like 12 volts? TWELVE VOLTS OR LESS PLEASE.



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chocolatey os X

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I recently got a LG Chocolate (vx 8500) with Telus, and phew... I like this phone. Out of the box it has no connectivity with OS X through iSync, and I couldn't find any third party application that provides elegant support for the vx8500. Anyhow... after searching around the net a bit I found out how to (somewhat inelegantly) connect with my iBook over Bluetooth and back up the contact list files from the phone, as well as upload mp3 ringtones, and otherwise fiddle with the filesystem.

I have made you a fancy graphical tutorial.

The software to connect to the phone is called BitPim (0.9.11 to be specific) - the version I used is from Appleology and is here.

A note on making ringtones... I used Audacity to:
1. crop the files to 15 seconds
2. fade out the end of the sound file
3. amplify the clip to make it loud enough
4. use the equalizer to cut out the lower frequencies to keep the phone's little speaker from going clunk clunk clunk.

So yea, so far I found the following folders on the filesystem:

/pim (seems to be phonebook information and call log)
/brew/16452/ms (my sounds - midi files)
/brew/16452/mp (my pictures)
/brew/16452/mds (mp3 ringtones)
/mmc1 (the microSD card (if installed?))

update: I got a USB cable off ebay (appears to be a simple straight through cable, labeled as a cable for the LG KG800 - guess its the same plug.) Anyhow its much faster than bluetooth, which is good when transferring mp3 files. To use the USB cable instead, in bitpim prefs click the "browse..." button beside the com port field, and select the entry for the chocolate. (click for screenshot.)

oh and here is a:

disclaimer!!!
this information is provided without guarantee nor warranty nor confidence that it will not kill your cat. if you mess up your phone and it blinks black and white and makes crying noises when you sleep, or anything else unpleasant happens, i take no responsibility for it.

Now if only OS X would support A2DP so that my sweet ass BT headphones would work satisfactorily for music.

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dvorak iBook

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I did it quite a while ago - but I switched around the keys on my iBook to dvorak... I didn't think it was that interesting, but a dvorak thinkpad made it as a feature on hackaday... so whatever, thought I'd post about it.

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bluetooth to rca

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Tired of looking like you're talking to yourself walking while down the street? Turn your bluetooth headset into a wireless audio interface!

I had this bluetooth headset from goodwill for $5 which had a dead battery (see bluetooth starset project below) and I had nothing better to do with it than make it connect to my hi-fi for some wireless audio fun...

Though the single-channel (mono) and very low sample rate (8kHz) makes for far from audiophile quality sound... the thing does work and I might find it useful some day. Maybe with skype/gizmo or something. Possible other cool things about it can be using it as a speakerphone with a bluetooth cell phone, or pocket pc... Any other ideas?

Update:
now it has a switch for pairing and on/off, as well as a 3.5mm jack and access to the LEDs...

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wall player

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I dropped my cheapo mp3 cd player and broke the hinge and volume button etc... so I tore it all apart and figured i'd make something with it.

The hi-fi I have in my bedroom lacks mp3 playback... so if I hooked it up there it would be of some use.

Now how to house the unit... hmmm. Maybe I'll use the house! hahah... you'll get the homonymic joke when you see the pictures.

Looks kinda like something from B&O in my humble opinion.

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shower button

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Don't you just hate it when you're rocking out in the shower with your itunes on shuffle and then that track you hate comes on and you have to just wait for it to end because you're too wet to go out to your computer? I know I did...

Anyhow I made this button that solves the problem. Its really easy to make with stuff you probably have lying around. (an old mouse, wire, couple little boxes, a switch...)

Click here to see it

Just to note, for the wire that runs from the box to the switch, I used a cheap 20' audio cable which i split into the two cables and cut off the ends... it looks neat and tidy especially when its stapled to the wall, and won't look twisted because both wires are in one tube.

oh yea and its mac/win/linux compatible :)

oh and a bit of a warning - though the voltage through the circuit couldn't exceed 5v during normal circumstances... its possible for lighting to find its way through your computer and into into your shower and shock you to death... so thats not my fault if you make something like this and you die or get hurt in any way. because i warned you.

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bluetooth starset (stalled)

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I just found this old plantronics starset headset that I had away in my closet - I always wanted to use it for skype or something like that.

About a week ago I picked up this bluetooth headset but the battery in it was dead. Its hard to find another lithium polymer cell for it, so for this thing it's just powered by three AA cells.

Anyhow I hooked up the headset to the bluetooth headset - and so far only the speaker works. The mic isn't doing anything - I think because the bluetooth thing had a condenser mic, and this one in the headpeice might be something different. If anyone has an idea about it, about a preamp or something for, let me know. But for now its on the backburner... and I can only dream of those cool headsets with the microphone tubes.

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282 240 000 pixels

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update: It seems the gallery page got slashdotted or something... I came home and I was getting like 10 hits a second - was at over 12000 when I killed the page. Anyhow I didn't want it to be a broad public thing, so I took it offline for the sake of the guys I made it for. Thanks for the interest, though :D

update: Yea I got digged. I didn't sign an NDA about the job or anything, but I really wouldn't want to get sued... so I took the gallery down. Again, thanks for your interest

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Singing in the shower

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Haven't done any real special hacks - but thought y'all might like my A/V system I just did up at my flat. I always wanted to have good sound when I'm in the shower, so I put a speaker in the bathroom. I figure it doesn't get _that_ humid in there, and the speaker I'm using has plastic and aluminum drivers with rubber seals, so its not going to deteriorate like a paper one would. And since I had another I put it in the kitchen - which helps keep the sound quality consistent as one roams the apartment.

I have two amps hooked up to the one computer which plays the music. One amp drives the two speakers on either side of the monitor as well as the subwoofer under the shelf - and then the other amp is daisy chained to the first amp, and goes to the speaker in the bathroom and kitchen.

So yea, all it takes is some long wire, couple shelf brackets and a staple gun to run the wire and keep it neat

The next thing I'm planning is a security system... But we'll see.

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emate clock

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So yea a while back I bought a bunch of emates on ebay, and fixed them up etc. I have a box of parts left over - and I realized they'd make a very quick and sweet little computer-on-the-wall like my afterdark machine. So I made one into a nice big clock, which is nice because I wanted a big clock too. This time I spent no time mounting the parts in a case, I just have one screw holding the screen to the board, and tape holds the rest of the weight of the screen. And then there's two screws into the wall to hold it up. You can see it all in the gallery.

The software that is drawing the big digital clock is Sean Luke's BigCountdown which draws a very spiffy big timeometer. (mad props to Sean)

Oh yea and because the thing has a battery pack, I can unplug it without loosing the time right away -- unlike those damn clock radios!!! w000.

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the after dark machine

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So I found my boxmac sitting in a box - and thought I should do something with it. Also, I found a copy of AfterDark at a used book store for $2 and wanted to make some dedicated box that would run flying toasters all teh time. I was thinking of using a Mac SE or something, but the boxmac does it in color. So yea now its on my wall doing flying toasters - I might make a nicer mounting for it, but probably not. Check out the movie I made of it, too.



update: I like how its silent. Makes it kinda creepy.

update: I removed the tape that held the box in place - I made it mount better, now it has a hole in the back of the box which hooks onto the screw in the wall. And I updated the gallery with the much nicer box.

update: Hasn't crashed once in the last 5 months - and my friend Jon took a new really nice picture of it.

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fastest CLI evar

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I have only ever paid for two shareware programs -

The first one I bought was called Barkeep; A little program for Newton that lets you customize the button bar to make it smaller and stuff - fit more icons, etc.

And just recently I paid for GLterm: a terminal application for OS X that renders in OpenGL. Why is that good? You should try it to see why, but basically - its many times faster than OS X's built in term, and the other terminal I tried iTerm. Why does the speed of a text interface matter? It doesn't really matter a whole lot but I sure like it. Also, the fact that I am using extremely advanced graphic processing hardware to render text... is just - well - so awesome.

If you want to see what I mean by faster - go download GLterm. Then in your default OS X terminal, run the command

cat /dev/random

and then do the same thing in GLterm.

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Hack the planet

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I haven't updated in a while because I just recently got a job and moved out. I'm still hacking the planet, but yea, only from 9-5. :)

I'm managing racks of servers at a webhost at 151 Front st. So if you need some colocation or dedicated hosting, give me a ring.

Anyhow an upshot is I gots me a sweet server set up. Its not doing much right now, but it my Dual P3 866 on a 100Mb net link.

But I'll be needing to hack together some cool stuff for my apartment... I'll definitely blog it up.

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In-Case sound

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I got really tired of not having sound coming from my PC when it didnt have any headphones plugged in, so I put a small audio amp and speaker inside the case.

I tried running it off the 12V line off the ATX powersupply, but for some reason the sound output would be all noisy with ticks and buzzes from the hard drive and motherboard and stuff... I don't know much about audio electronics so I don't know what I can do about it. So instead its running off a powersupply thats outside the case... much less elegant but it works. If anyone knows why it isn't working with the ATX power supply, let me know.

The next step is to make a front panel volume knob, as well as a plate in the back of the case with a jack that will pass through the line out if I plug in headphones instead.

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Ethernet LED

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I found this freaking cool package yesterday called tleds which blinks the keyboard LED's when there's ethernet traffic. It blinks the Num lock for traffic down, and the Scroll lock for traffic up. Anyhow, I like this thing a whole lot... but I thought... what about the resources! This package is taking a whole like .03% of my CPU at least! So I needed a hardware solution...

It costs a whole $.25: All you need is a pair of wires (a twisted pair from a cat 5 cable works nicely), and a piece of 1 row pin header (click for an example of what that is). And some shrink tube if you're feeling professional. Oh and soldering skill... and a soldering iron +1.

I took pictures so you could see how you do it, but basically, wire the led on your ethernet card to the pins, and plug the pins into the Turbo LED plug. And some pointers: The ethernet card will have one LED that tells you that it's plugged in at all, and the other one blinks when there's some data going through... You'd want to use the one that blinks, because its far more interesting than just a solid light. Polarity isn't a big deal, if it doesn't work when plugged in one way, just turn the plug around and it should work. Oh yes... and a disclaimer:

Disclaimer: This information is provided with NO WARRANTY. The author takes no responsibility for the actions of other persons who may attempt to execute the described actions. So if you misinterpret Turbo LED for 220v power line and ethernet card for mom, and hurt your mom, or hurt anything else including your self, or feel sad because you broke your ethernet card, or burn yourself soldering, or whatever else that you might want to blame me for, It is not my fault.

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On teh air

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I set up my internet radio broadcast down at Linux Caffe. They were lacking in 8bit musical goodness, so I had to fill the void with Creative Commons (a license for media that makes it free to distribute) music from the 8 bit peoples. But people got tired of the 8 bit real fast so I eventually killed the broadcast and played my normal playlist (the Hackers soundtrack).

The setup allowed people to tune in over the internet using winamp, or itunes, or xmms (linux mp3 player), and listen. As well there was an amp and speakers so people in the cafe could hear. I drew a diagram so you can see the setup. The way it worked was that I had my iBook playing the music with iTunes, and it was hooked up to a normal audio mixer. Also into the mixer was a microphone, and I've also had an acoustic pickup attached to my model M keyboard so that you could hear the clicking of typing in the background. Then the mixer was plugged into both the audio amplifier, so people could listen in the cafe, and also went into the line in of the audio card on the linux box. And the linux box would encode (encode means to translate data... in this case it would encode the normal audio data into mp3) the audio from the sound card into mp3, and then broadcast the mp3 stream. It was then broadcast to my buddy Troy's server, and he was rebroadcasting to all the listeners, so we wouldn't use up the cafe's bandwidth.

Its easy to set up your own mp3 stream. If your on a Mac, Nicecast is an awesome piece of software, and worth the $$$ if you have it. If you're an a Linux or Win box, you can use Shoutcast. With Shoutcast you need to be running a Shoutcast server, and a Shoutcast source plugin for either Winamp or Xmms.

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Model M

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You and your machine
Command input positive
Affirmative click

Model M at Wikipedia
Model M @ everything2
Type hard or go home: modelm.org
MCA Militia's PS/2 KB page
Model M resistor mod
Model M gang

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Dish Testing

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I've been playing with WiFi lately and one of the things I want to know how to do is improve the range of network. Well there are a few ways to do this. You can get an amplifier... which will make the signal stronger through electronics (like a guitar amp makes a guitar louder.) But amplifiers for WiFi are damn expensive. You can also buy antenna's which will improve range... but they're also expensive. Antennas can also be made... but they're pretty tricky... I've tried a couple and they haven't been effective. Finally, there is a solution that is by far the easiest and cheapest... using a parabolic reflector to focus the signal at a plain old WiFi adaptor. Like a satellite dish. In fact. We used a satellite dish.

(Skip to the next paragraph if you're not a techie.) It started when I picked up a very nice little USB WiFi adaptor, the DWL 122. USB adaptors are ideal for using with reflectors because they can be easily mounted, and the only line you have running any long distance is USB... which has no loss. If instead you used an external antenna connected to a WiFi card or some such, the loss from the coax cable and plugs can be very great (so I've learned from the 2600 radio guys :D ).

So anyhow Jon and I tested out using a satellite dish to extend the range a WiFi connection. Using an iBook on one end, and an Airport base station in the back of a tricycle for the other point, we check the signal of the connection at various distances. First we tried without the dish, then we tried using the dish. And the results were quite suprising! The dish made the long distance connections far stronger... heres a graph of the results.

Now the satellite dish we used (I know there's no good picture of it, sorry :P ) its quite large and not very portable. Could be good for mounting on a roof for a link between buildings, but its not practical for wardriving or the like. So in search of smaller dishes I came across this site on using inexpensive chinese cookware as parabolic reflectors. They seemed to be getting good results from using these things so off to china town it was and I picked up a skimmer thing and made a neat little dish from it. I haven't tested it yet, but next time Jon's around we'll set up the tricycle again.

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Carriage of War

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Back in the day, before the internet provided plenty of computers to talk to; hackers would find find computers to connect to by wardialing. Wardialing is getting your computer with a modem to dial every number... 555 5551, 555 5552, 555 5553, 555 5554 etc. until it would find a computer on the other end to connect to. From there you could try various ways of getting into that system. Now with the internet, theres millions of machines that are an internet address away and theres no need to dial...

But the name and idea of wardialing has been used with the newer form of networking computers - Wireless networking (WiFi). You can find wireless networks by driving down your street with your laptop looking for and logging down all the wireless networks in range. This is wardriving. There's also been warflying is small airplanes etc etc. And also warwalking... just walking down the street with your pocketpc or more awkwardly, a laptop.

So I made the Carriage of War... its a baby-carriage with the payload of
A) my iBook
B) a USB WiFi adaptor
C) a car battery
D) a power inverter (for turning the 12V car battery into a 115V AC supply)
E) a boombox

Now the iBook and the USB WiFi adaptor are for finding networks, but why the car battery, power inverter and boombox? Well because the wifi sniffing software I use called Kismac has an awesome feature that it can play a noise when it finds a network, and it can also speak the info about what network it found using the Macintalk text-to-speech. So car battery and power inverter is for powering the boombox which would amplify Kismac's sound output for all to enjoy :D

So anyhow I brought it to the last midmeet of toronto 2600 and we walked it around the neighborhood which happened to be full of technology and media companies... [Google Map] It was tonnes of fun... there were lots of networks and the sound of Ralph (a mac voice) and the fight club soundtrack in the background got people to stick their heads out of their offices.



The next thing I want to do is rig up my tricycle as the tricycle of war... with like an extra seat in the back and a Yagi on a turret... That would ROCK.

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Desktop iPod

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So firstly I got this first generation iPod and it had a dead hard drive and battery. And since a hard drive for one of these units is costs about as much as a whole other iPod, I decided it must be hacked! Someone figured out that the pinout for the iPod hard drive was exactly the same as standard IDE and hooked up a full size 3.5" drive. The details are here. So I did just that... Many hours of soldering tiny wires later, it worked! Sorta... The thing loads the firmware and starts up like an iPod, and runs the interface fine, which is good because it needs to read the hard drive to do that. But... for some reason it konks out when I try and play an Mp3. otherwise its fine :/

I don't feel like doing anything with it now, but some day I might hack together a box with the iPod and some bigo harddrive and it can be a stereo component.

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its Back up!

So I finally dished out the $$$ and go .mac so the pictures are back.

w00

Also, If you find any link giving you an error, please post a comment or email me.

w00 again

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No pictures.

my trial .mac account expired so all my pictures are not available... i need to find a new host. anyhow, i'll have lots of great stuff when i come back.

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the warbox

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So the thing I'm playing with at the moment is wifi (wireless networking). i had this usb wifi adaptor that i wanted to use with external antennas so i created the warbox. all it is, is the microsoft mn-510 - a usb wifi adaptor, put into a project box and the antenna wired into a jack.

Then to improve the range i made a biquad type directional antenna. you can find the details on how to make one here. Its a pretty simple one to make.

mounted all together and mounted on a tripod it looks like this.

anyhow, i already tore apart the wifi box and i'm putting it into another all metal one because i want it to be better shielded... kind of ironically, im bothered that it's getting too good reception without any antenna attached. so i want to see if it is more predictable in an aluminum case.

Update: So I talked to some radio guys; all the couplers I used, and the fact that the box had an aluminum top was a big no no. So instead of trying to make antennas, I went into testing reflectors. Much better results from that.

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Boxmac Mk2

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So here's what I was hinting at... its my Rev A iBook in an aluminum box.

Its together and working in a sort of temporary setup... I gotta give it final stuff... like a proper power jack, powerbutton, ethernet port... stand... vent... etc. But it has basic functionality now. Oh... it would be nice to give it airport too... could have an external whip antenna coming out the back. Hmmm.

Anyhow.

The specs are that its a G3 running at 400mhz, with a dvd drive and a 30 GB IBM Travelstar... oh and 256Meg ram. It'll be a nice little backup machine once I get it nicely smoothed out.

Update: I posted a gallery of the Boxmac Mk2 Running in OS X. Its looks damn cool when running :D

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the boxmac

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Here's a pillowcase blast from the past... the boxmac. I made this thing way back when-- just stuck all the guts of a Powerbook duo into a cardboard box. The reason I bring it up is because I've got another fun project in the works.

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Ugliest Airport

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Along with a bunch of other stuff to play with (from Leigh, w00), I got a graphite Airport base station's motherboard. If you don't know, an Airport base station is a wireless access point from Apple. This particular one I got was the first Airport. It is actually a single-board 486 machine, with a standard Orinoco Wavelan Silver card. I'm not sure if it didn't really work when I got it, but I redid some flakey looking solder joints on the board, and it seems fine now. Its just missing its wireless card! So it won't be much of a wifi access point 'til I get one. Anyhow. Since most of the original plastic case pieces were thrown out, I stuck it in a generic project box. You can click the thumbnail above for the whole gallery.

I plan to do something similar and put an airport in a pelican case. So then I'd have a very weatherproof access point I can bring to Om fest and throw into a tree.

update: I got a wavelan card off ebay and put it in the airport, and now its working as an access point.

another update: I added indicator lights to the the box.

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Newton Stowaway

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note nov 30 05: weird... the original post was wrong. anyhow I made this cable to connect my Palm V stowaway to my Newton Messagepad 2100. You can click the thumbnail above for the photo log.

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Clie Power

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So my buddy Jon was kind enough to bring me a Sony peg-tj37 Clie but he had the AC adaptor in London. great. So instead of waiting an agonizing week or two whilst he went back to London and came back to visit Tdot, I decided I'm gonna have to do something about it. Holding onto a totally wicked little gadget with no way of using it is just too cruel. Anyhow I hacked together a power source using a sync cable I found at battery plus at eatons center. It was only $25, which wasn't too painful. So I just wired a USB plug to the power pins of the Clie and bingo. Plugged it into the iBook and had a charging battery. When I get the real power adaptor I'll turn this thing into an external battery unit... give a few more hours of battery life. I'm not gonna go into the little details but if you want to do something similar, just email me. (iphoto gallery)

UPDATE Mar 1 - I made it look a lot prettier.

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painted box

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Theres this guy on the toronto 2600 IRC channel (IRC is Internet Relay Chat - at type of internet chat protocol), and I made a deal to sell him a PIII box I dont need... and somehow I thought I should paint it. So I did. Anyhow. Heres some pics of the finished product. And before pics are here. Also some pics of the process. You can see that the graphics on the box are from the file I posted just below... did them in illustrator way back. And um. Yea thats pretty much it. I like the way it turned out... and I think I'm gonna start doing up boxes and seeing if can sell them. Lemme know if you want one.

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Soylent Green is PEOPLE!

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Well I've never actually seent the movie, but I hear that line is pretty key to the plot.
But on the subject of people, I thought I'd give you a taste of what I used to do in graphics design. I did these icon sort of people for the high school I used to go to (called SEE school). I also made some promo, stickers and newspaper ads with the people. Oh yea... and this wicked set of photos of SEE students posing as the various people, and having them posted up along with printouts of the icons. And the pictures were all like pumped up contrast black and white line-art. Man that was dope. Ah well all that is now lost, because the harddrives I had all that stuff on are long since formated and stolen, and the CDs are lost. So thats pretty much all I have left.

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- Access Granted -

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So I was down at MEC today, and on my way back I found a pass card on the ground with one of those zip cordy things. Rather than wander for days around the city looking for the door which it opened, I just cut it open.

As you can see, all there is inside is a coil of wire, and a little board. If you don't know how one of these things works, here--let me tell you. The coil of wire acts as an antenna and as well a power source. How does it power you ask? Well induction of course. Induction is when you pass a magnetic field over a wire, it will actually create an electrical flow in the wire. Like in a generator. Anyhow so box you swipe the card over prolly makes some sort of magnetic or radio wave or something, and the coil makes a bit of power that goes to the board and powers the chip. Then the chip sends out the data or code or whatever, I dont know exactly how it works - but it then transmits back to the box you swipe the card over.

There you go.

Ah yea, and I got this wicked little Leatherman Wave II unit. Its pretty slick. So thats what I got at MEC.

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Barcode Scanner

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Its been a slow last few days... a lot whole lot of nothing because I ran out of stuff to fix. Anyhow I went downtown to check the surplus stores for fodder, and I found a wand type barcode scanner. I picked it up for $5. Anyhow the thing is a little pen with a wire to a box, and the box had two RS-232 (also known as Serial) ports, so I thought I could get it going with my palm... so the first part was getting it to turn on, so i found a 6V power supply and hooked it up and it beeped! some sign of life. Next part was getting it to scan something and then after that, talk to something... With power to the unit the tip on the wand lit up, and theres a little bi-color LED on the box that changes color as I swipe it over things. So I swiped a bunch of different barcodes. The little light would sort of blink red instead of green, so that was promising, but I was still waiting for that satisfying beep that indicates that it accepted what it read - like at library way back when. Remember? The lady at the counter would aggrivatedly say "oh goodness" and repeatedly scribble over the barcode on the book until it beeped. So I tried several different barcodes, and then I tried my library card... Beep! success. The other one that would make it beep was my Rogers card... both seemed to be longer codes than the ones you'd find identifying products. Anyhow, I had the thing plugged into my palm V through the sync cable. The terminal program I had open appeared to just talk through the serial port, so I figured it would hear anything the scanner said. At first nothing showed up, but then I tried plugging into the other serial port on the scanner (one says terminal, the other modem) so I tried the one marked modem, and then the palm was getting the data. It came up with the same number that was printed below the barcodes! w00. So now I hope I can find an application that will allow me to use the scanner to input data like keyboard. Then I can use my palm for inventorying! or something... whatever.

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The story so far

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Alright so this is the deal, I'm fixing shit like a madman and so heres a blog as a sort of portfolio of my work. In the last - its been about a week - I have fixed: An ericsson t39m that kept shutting itself off and was useless-- got it working and reliable, got two fucked up powerbook 1400cs' into one working unit, a palm Vx which wouldnt keep its calibration and was therefore useless-- fixed it and its working, repaired a newton emate with the hinge problem, another newton emate with a hinge problem and a sheared display cable, i rebuilt an ibook battery pack that was totally dead and now has good life to it, oh and repaired a powerbook 2400c that came to me in parts and had the green light of death, and some other little random things. this was since like last week sometime. so i figure i should keep some running record until i get a job or i make a living doing this independantly.

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