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their success is entirely dependent on the purchase of their works.

Nonsense, it is perfectly possible to make money without having to charge for copies of your work. In fact not charging seems to generate more income for many musicians and authors. How do you think artists made money before copyright, before the printing press or the gramophone?

I give all my creations away for nothing and still made money on them. Here, take some, source code, binaries, schematics, PCB artwork and all.

You can do it if you use the skill to address a gap in the market. I did that and accidentally turned it into a little side business.

A few years back a friend wanted to connect some old Spectrum/Atari/Amiga joysticks to his PC. We mucked about with some adapter plans we found on the internet but eventually I just made my own USB one using my knowledge of electronics and microcontroller programming. I started getting lots of emails about it so made a few for people, had some PCBs done in China (Seeed Studio) and ended up selling a fair few. The whole lot is open source too.

Don't just learn a skill and hope, figure how where there is an actual opportunity or job and aim for it.

I made a device that lets you use N64 controllers, as well as many others, with a PC via USB. Works well with emulators and the whole project (software and hardware) is open source: http://denki.world3.net/retro_v2.html

I should also point out that I do sell these things, but you are of course able to make your own with the downloads available on the site. I even do kits at pretty much cost price if anyone is interested.

I also converted a BBC Master Compact keyboard to USB, but almost any old computer could be modified this way. The BBC used for this hack was dead already so nothing was lost. I also added a little audio amp to run sound from a soundcard to the internal speaker. I wanted to re-use the sound IC but it would be a major project. http://denki.world3.net/beebkb.html

You can't beat the original controllers.

I made a device that lets you use N64 controllers, as well as many others, with a PC via USB. Works well with emulators and the whole project (software and hardware) is open source: http://denki.world3.net/retro_v2.html

I should also point out that I do sell these things, but you are of course able to make your own with the downloads available on the site. I even do kits at pretty much cost price if anyone is interested.

I also converted a BBC Master Compact keyboard to USB, but almost any old computer could be modified this way. The BBC used for this hack was dead already so nothing was lost. I also added a little audio amp to run sound from a soundcard to the internal speaker. I wanted to re-use the sound IC but it would be a major project. http://denki.world3.net/beebkb.html

You can't beat the original controllers.

The problem is that iTunes goes to great lengths to look exactly the same on Windows as it does on MacOS. To that end it uses its own fonts and font rendering code, its own networking features like Bonjour, its own widgets and window decoration, its own media codes (Quicktime) etc.

All that adds a massive amount of bloat and prevents iTunes from integrating with the OS like a normal app does. Normally when an app opens a windows the OS does most of the work and uses the same resources (fonts, graphical elements) it uses for all other windows thus saving memory and eliminating loading them from disk. It also does all the rendering, including when they change colour as the mouse moves over them or slide out when clicked on. Since the Windows 7 is fairly well optimised and can make the best use of the available graphics hardware it is nice and quick, but iTunes ignores all of that. You end up effectively running half of MacOS just because Apple insist it looks a certain way and breaks the standard UI.

I made a list of stuff installed by iTunes 9 installs: http://blog.world3.net/2009/09/list-of-things-installed-by-itunes-9/

        * iTunes itself
        * Quicktime
        * Apple Mobile Device service
        * Bonjour Service
        * iPod Service
        * iTunesHelper startup task
        * QTTask startup task
        * Firefox plugin
        * iPod Classic drivers
        * iPhone drivers
        * Apple Software Update

Grand Total: 276MB

Devices based on V-USB (software only USB implementation for AVR microcontrollers) are probably worth a look because designs you can copy are so numerous.

This is one of the most versatile. I doesn't support the Apple IIc yet but the BBC joysticks had a similar capability so the only difference is likely to be in the adapter lead:

http://denki.world3.net/retro_v2.html

Perhaps you don't want to make your own circuit board. If so, I had a quick look at the retro's schematic and reckon you should be able to get the retro firmware running on an off the shelf board such as the one adafruit sell.

http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=16&products_id=174

I've got one of these and its a great little board. I built a temperature logger using one and I got it running (hardware and software) in about four hours. That said I did spend another three building the programmer!

Finally there a gallery of lots of HID devices made using cheap AVR controllers:

http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/prjhid.html

Also look up LUFA and using atmel's true USB line of microcontrollers. I just made something with the at90USB82 AVR chip, and it was super easy. This is only my fourth circuit board and it works great. You need to have a hot air gun for soldering though. Alternatively, you could buy atmels USB dev stick.
-Taylor

You might consider contributing to an existing project. There's no Apple joystick support in the retro adapter yet, and the whole project is open source. The adapters are pretty cheaply available for those who don't want to solder, and plans are available for those who do.

I forgot to add: Their new page is here. I can't find a link to the new page from the old one.

The best joysticks for retrogaming are of course the original ones with a Retro Adapter.

It has support for most original joysticks and gamepads: C64/Amiga, Atari 8-bit computers and consoles, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Saturn, Neo Geo, MSX, BBC Micro, PCE/TGFX, NES, SNES, N64, PSX, PS2, 3DO, CD32, PC Gameport, you name it.

Devices based on V-USB (software only USB implementation for AVR microcontrollers) are probably worth a look because designs you can copy are so numerous.

This is one of the most versatile. I doesn't support the Apple IIc yet but the BBC joysticks had a similar capability so the only difference is likely to be in the adapter lead:

http://denki.world3.net/retro_v2.html

Perhaps you don't want to make your own circuit board. If so, I had a quick look at the retro's schematic and reckon you should be able to get the retro firmware running on an off the shelf board such as the one adafruit sell.

http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=16&products_id=174

I've got one of these and its a great little board. I built a temperature logger using one and I got it running (hardware and software) in about four hours. That said I did spend another three building the programmer!

Finally there a gallery of lots of HID devices made using cheap AVR controllers:

http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/prjhid.html

Actually by hobby electronics standards the Arduino is a tad pricey... You pay for an easy to use platform which can be used by people who don't have electronics skills. You need to be able to code in C, but the Arduino development environment provides libraries to all the hardware access easier.

If you are a Real Coder(TM) you can just get an AVR programmer (£15) and an ATmega8 (£1 or less) and start hacking away. I keep hearing comments from the young 'uns about how 20MHz is really slow and you can't do anything with 1k of RAM and 16k of ROM, but I guess they haven't seen the demos people were making on C64s and Amigas back in the day. AVR assembler is very nice too.

Now, a shameless plug for my own projects: denki.world3.net. All GPL. I sell the Retro Adapters here: retro.world3.net.

Actually by hobby electronics standards the Arduino is a tad pricey... You pay for an easy to use platform which can be used by people who don't have electronics skills. You need to be able to code in C, but the Arduino development environment provides libraries to all the hardware access easier.

If you are a Real Coder(TM) you can just get an AVR programmer (£15) and an ATmega8 (£1 or less) and start hacking away. I keep hearing comments from the young 'uns about how 20MHz is really slow and you can't do anything with 1k of RAM and 16k of ROM, but I guess they haven't seen the demos people were making on C64s and Amigas back in the day. AVR assembler is very nice too.

Now, a shameless plug for my own projects: denki.world3.net. All GPL. I sell the Retro Adapters here: retro.world3.net.

For hackability Windows CE 5 running iGo 8 is your best bet.

There is a lot of information on the net about how to customise iGo 8, and there are lots of skins and voice mods available too. I posted a complete guide to the voice configuration file on my blog (http://blog.world3.net/2009/06/igo-8amiga-voice-commands-csv-format/) which allows you to customise voice prompts any way you like. I changed the default three warnings of every turn to two, for example.

iGo Amigo is out now, but it seems to be a lot less hackable. It's basically a much simpler version of iGo 8 with a slightly clearer display. There is much less information about it at the moment, so if you want to customise I'd stick with V8.

Unfortunately TomTom, Garmin and the rest are mostly locked down and you can't do too much with them.

A word about traffic data - it doesn't work, at least here in the UK. The reception is so poor, even on major motorways and in big cities, that if you ever do manage to get any data it will usually be way to late and there will be no way to avoid the jam.

The player can be found here (http://amimpc.world3.net/)

Quick overview: uses a DSP to decode at up to 256kbps in 18-bit. Has 4MB RAM, of which 1.1MB is used for the OS and software. Has a remote control interface. Takes 8 seconds to boot. Uses 35W of power. Has a custom power supply.

I think that this is much more interesting that the standard PC based one described above!