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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?
The paper-clip CD extractor. I keep one in my desk at all times.
Back in the '80s, I was in Highschool. We had Commodore PETs that we used for our computer class, and being a geek/nerd, I was regularly abused by the cool kids. Well...one year, I got back at them. They were taking the computer class I was in. Commodore gear was "smart" - each peripheral had a small CPU and could be programmed. So...I hacked the code for the floppy disk drives (in assembler) and when it saw a file coming across it would look at the user. If it was me or someone I chose, it would work normally. However, for those unlucky few individuals whom I had decided to take revenge, it appeared to be working, but actually it was formatting the floppy disk. Those bullies lost their year end projects and all their work. I have to admit that I felt no guilt about this incident.
You made a time machine and still didn't get first post? Hmm.