Ask Slashdot: Your Most Unusual Hardware Hack?

An anonymous reader writes: Another Slashdotter recently asked what kind of things someone can power with an external USB battery. I have a followup along those lines: what kind of modifications have you made to your gadgets to do things that they were never meant to do? Consider old routers, cell phones, monitors, etc. that have absolutely no use or value anymore in their intended form. What can you do with them?

Comments

A Fan of Security

[LinuxSneaker]

I was deployed to Iraq, and we had to download a very large file. Unfortunately, we were working on laptops that would lock the screen after 15 minutes, and then the laptop would loose connection. Considering that the file was going to take 8-10 hours to download, this was not acceptable. I found an oscillating pedestal fan, and I duct-taped a yardstick between the fan and a mouse connected to the laptop. Since the laptop would not lock due to the mouse movement, all I had to do is to place a few books to limit the moment area; the next morning the file was downloaded. I realize this might not be the hack for which you were looking, but since it involved duct-tape I thought it would count.

Re:A Fan of Security

[HornWumpus]

Back in Pentium 66 days Intel shipped a bunch of mother boards that made it impossible to disable power management.

We were shipping a 386 mode extended DOS batch application (long story). To keep the machines from powering down during a run we suggested a workaround. A thermal water cup pecking bird with a paper clip attached to hit the shift key on every peck.

I sent a copy of the 'tech bulletin' to a friend who worked at Intel, thinking they should make it an official workaround. They never did.