Here’s a nice mod that seems relatively easy to pull off. It’s a headphone amp inside an old CD-ROM drive and it even uses the drive’s headphones jack. Creator Gio Militano provides detailed instructions if you’re itching to build your own. Just make sure you’ve got a pair of proper cans to go along with it. If you don’t, make a pair.
The long-awaited upgrade from a 20GB to 60GB hard drive for the Xbox 360 Pro could be announced at the company’s E3 keynote next month says TrustedReviews. A source says there’s a release scheduled for August before the 10th. If you’ve got a 20GB hard drive on your 360 and your kicking yourself for not holding out for the 60GB, no worries. You can always buy a separate 120GB drive, though dealing with the transfer can be a bitch.
Sources also say that Microsoft is desperately deciding to make “Wii-style avatars” which I assume means “Mii-style avatars.” Either way, lame idea Microsoft. Get your own avatars and while you’re at it, make Xbox Live free.
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Have you ever wanted to add a floppy drive to your Nintendo Game Boy in order to read ROM files for all of your games? Neither have I, considering you can just download an emulator. Regardless, a French author has posted everything (even circuit diagrams) you’ll need to turn your portable gaming system into a cumbersome mess of wires. Sure, no one uses diskettes anymore but the dedication this author has put into this hack instead of just going out and buying a flash device is note worthy.
If you like playing music with useless hardware and you’ve got no time to go to the Tashi station to pick up some power converters, then check this YouTube video out.
Some geek hacked his old 3.5-inch floppy disk drive to play the Star Wars “Imperial” tune. Unfortunately, no documentation was made to show you how to build one yourself, so you’ll just have to suffer. Hey, it beats being taken to the Dune Sea, cast into the pit of Carkoon: the nesting place of the all-powerful Sarlaac, where you’ll be slowly digested over a thousand years.
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They’ve made thumb drives out of pretty much everything; even Luke Skywalker comes in USB form. Now, snobby wine connoisseurs everywhere can confuse their dozens of wine corks lying around the house for this 1GB USB flash drive.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t double as a wine stopper, it just looks like one, so if you happen to mix it up and try to use it as one, you can kiss your data goodbye. Look on the bright side: you can always drink the pain away.
Whether you be a corporate type just trying to find an easy way to share data with employees or really want to pirate loads of Radiohead’s USB albums, the Giant USB Duplicator offers the chance to copy data to 20 USB drives all at once in one illegal shot.
I also wonder if some hardware hacker can mod this device to just be one gigantic USB port, allowing you to plug in 20 different peripherals. Why you’d need that many connections at once is beyond me, but it would be pretty bad ass. — Andrew Dobrow
Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger. That’s the title of an amazing Daft Punk song, but they should have included lighter in there. That’s the way trends are leaning right now. If your device weighs any more than your competitor’s, just forget about it.
Transcend doesn’t have to worry about this right now. Their new line of JetFlash T2K USB keys only weigh 2 grams! Don’t go rushing to think that they only come in 32 and 64MB capacities; try something more like 1/2/4GB! If you happen to wind up purchasing one of these tiny devices, make sure not to drop it into any couch or car seat cracks. No doubt that you will never see it again. –Nik Gomez
The USB Jetflash T2K key with 4GB weighing only 2g [via Akihabaranews]
How badly have you Mac users wanted to have your very own Blu-ray burner? No matter, you can do it now. MCE Technologies has released a $699 Blu-ray Internal Recordable Drive so that you can use a disc instead of an external hard drive. One nice thing is that if you happen to want the Blu-ray burner but you think that you’d also like to have a regualar CD and DVD burner, this drive is backwards compatible. For every drive you buy, you also recieve a copy of Toast 8 Titanium as well as a 25GB Blu-ray (BD-RE) rewritable disc. And just look at the picture, it looks cool too! Still, $700 is a killing…
When you wake up from a coma 28 days after a car accident, it might be a little difficult to remember all the details for your insurance claim. Did the raging drunken teenager hit or did you hit the innocent high schooler? Those little details could really change the amount of insurance money you receive. That’s where the Roadbox Accident Recorder comes in.
This video camera is mounted near your rearview mirror, just like those cameras in the funny cop videos (this doesn’t allow you to drive like a cop now). The built-in speed and acceleration monitors determine when there has been an accident and store the 14 seconds prior to the “accidentâ€? and 6 seconds after. Now you have 20 seconds of video footage of the front of your car. What happens if you got side-swiped or rear-ended? Well than your Roadbox investment was worthless. You could of course buy 4 of these for all sides of your car, but then you’d look like an over-cautious wuss, and that doesn’t help when you’re trying to improve your “geekyâ€? image. This is a pretty cool idea, but if you saw that you were the one at fault on the tape, would you show the insurance agents? — Nick Rice
PLK to showcase driving recorder RoadBox [AVING USA, via OhGizmo!]
With a capacity like this, that’s a crap load of pirated movies you could fit on this thing! The announcement of Fujitsu’s 300GB 2.5″ hard drive, notebook owners can soon have as much storage space as most desktops on the market. There’s no estimated price in the press release, but we are guessing it’s going to be something like $2000, plus your first born son.
Fujitsu has been on the leading end of the stick where high-capacity products are concerned. With their mastering of Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR), Fujitsu has kept ahead of the crowd with small and high storage equipment. Less then a year ago, Fujitsu announced their release of a 200GB 2.5″ drive. The 300GB is another small step for man, but a very giant leap for gearhead kind. — Andrew Dobrow
Fujitsu Announces World’s First 300GB 2.5″ Hard Disk Drive [PR Newswire]