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Convert a SIM To a MicroSIM, With a Meat Cleaver
An anonymous reader writes "This morning, my shiny new iPad 3G 64GB arrived from the USA! The only problem was, it had an AT&T MicroSIM and as yet there is no such thing in the UK. So what's the solution? Get a chopping board, a meat cleaver, and a pair of scissors — simples!"
Cutting edge technology.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Apologies for the focus issues with my new Canon IXUS 210 - it is going back today!
Why send it back when you have such mad skillz at your disposal? What happened to your DIY attitude? Just fix that lens focusing issue with a sharpie and a plasma cutter!
This works for SD cards going into microSD slots as well--just chop them up. I also heard that if you cut Wii discs in a perfect circle down to GameCube size they will even play in GameCubes. Cutting things up until they fit solves all of life's problems. Steak won't fit in mouth? Cut it up! Square peg not going in round hole? Cut it up! Video too large for e-mail? Cut it up! Loud mouth neighbor too large for freezer? Cut him up!
My work here is dung.
You have violated the TOS you agreed to by opening the packaging. Please relinquish the device post haste. Failure to produce the device will result in you being thrown in the apple shark tank (also known as the limo the lawyers ride in).
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Clipped-SIM in de iPad...
Bork Bork Bork!
(sorry)
I've heard advice from others that a file is actually better, as it works better for removing the controlled amount of material and things like rounding corners.
Test your net with Netalyzr
What exactly is the point of MicroSIM anyway? To make it easier to lose?
The cutting edge of knifewear.
You'll ruin your mighty-fine blade. Rock it on the cutting board, dice up a big 'ol pile of veggies. This is a cleaver.
Boy, Slashdot needs <WP:Cleaver>-style tags.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
iPad won't fit in your pocket, or the iPhone apps don't work well on the larger screen? get your iPhone, and line up the top left corner of the screens ...
*Twitch* *Twitch*
I have to do it. My parents own a kitchen store.
THAT'S NOT A MEAT CLEAVER!
It's most likely an 8" chef's knife. However, a meat cleaver would be better since the front and back edges are closer to parallel, where as the chef's knife is tapered to a point. The parallel edges would give a more precise cut when hammering on the back edge.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31ETG99JSQL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
*sigh*
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I read your comment as so:
I tried your approach with the balls that I couldn't play...
- took me a while to come back into my senses after the cold feelings of horror have gone through my spine column and I forced myself to reread that statement.
You can't handle the truth.
Oops, LoudMusic already pointed that out. Sorry.
Slashdot is not a game, Slashdot is not a game. Crap, I just lost points.
I think that this should start a trend.
Clearly meat cleavers are the best way to deal with all Apple products.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
No, no, no. The point of the MicroSIM is so that you can sneak it across the border in your sinus cavity to evade the authorities.
Oops. I've said too much. :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Whoosh
Cheers, Chris
Just think, the original SIM cards were as big as the piece of plastic you now punch them out of.
The common SIM we use today is properly called Mini-SIM.
SIMs use the same technology as smart cards (which every European credit card now is*), so they were originally the same size... no doubt this was back when mobile phones were the size of bricks or worse.
* We had a French foreign exchange student a few months ago, she tried to use her credit card at a gift shop, and couldn't figure out what she was supposed to do with it as there was no smart card reader. The swipe-and-sign method was completely foreign to her (literally!) just as the chip-and-pin method is foreign (and unavailable) to us. It was enlightening.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
This guy imported a product that's not officially launched anywhere except the USA. So of course there has to be some hacking required. This is like people installing modchips in their consoles and DVD players to bypass countries/regions restrictions.
The actual reason was that back then sim cards (and mobile accounts) were expensive as hell. Namely you (as rich dude) were more likely to have multiple phones than multiple sim cards.
As such, a credit-card sized SIM made sense. It's sized to fit in your wallet with the rest of your cards. You would keep it in your wallet and when needed, whip it out and insert into "phone" of choice.
Back in the 80's/early 90's I remember coming across car stereos wondering why they had credit card slots, then I found out they were for sim cards. You slit the card in there, and the radio became a handsfree mobile phone. You didn't have hands free kits, bluetooth or any kind of connectivity back then short of the actual GSM radio. You actually had a separate physical phone for multiple places and events, so it made sense to have a hard to lose, easy to store and insert/remove SIM card.
Imagine having to switch between the phone in your car, your "mobile" on your person, the phone in the jet, the office phone etc... with all the fumbling around with current SIM cards. Logically, when requirements as above were no longer necessary and people had one headset with wired and wireless accessories attached, the SIM was made smaller as people were less likely to need to insert/remove it 10 times a day.
The linked article was mediocre. We all know how to cut things with scissors and knives, what we need are the measurements. Here is a better writeup, with the micro SIM dimensions. It also links to the micro SIM shop, where you can buy adapters to convert the micro SIM back to a mini SIM.
Your attitude would have stopped every human technological advance from fire through to space travel.
The risk of any experiment is failure. The reward is knowledge either way. I mean come on, he was risking a SIM card, not life and limb here.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
He's not cutting gemstones - It's a SIM card, they're cheap. If he'd trashed it, he would have just gone and gotten another one.
> He made the mistake of presuming that the circuitry inside would
> be no bigger than the effective external contact area.
Not really a presumption considering that some operators actually mark the micro-SIM cutting lines for you:
http://aaisp.net.uk/i/sim.png
I think it was a little more calculated than pure luck. It is pretty much a known certainty that a SIM/Smart card is going to have most of the silicon applied to the back on the contact area, it's just cheaper to make them that way.
Worst case scenario? His "lack of judgement" forces him to call vodafone and request a replacement Sim. They normally arrive next day. Given the choice between no internet and playing the low risk game of butcher the card, I think the butchery would be my preferred option.
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
*shrug* Brando sells sim cutters that do exactly this, and regular-sim sized dual-micro-sim holders that alternate the active sim on every reboot - that is, regular phone to dual-sim phone converters.
:-)
He just decided to not fork out for the tools
What a depressingly stupid machine.