Hardware Hacking: Having Fun While Voiding Your Warranty (April 25th, 2004)

Hardware Hacking: Have Fun while Voiding Your Warranty

I got this book about a month ago, and have had time to digest it.

I was impressed by the the depth that was gone into with the Electrical Engineering Basics - which is basically electronics. But it's a good brief overview in a way that an interested person can get a good background on electronic devices (resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors and integrated circuits) - that alone makes it worth having on a bookshelf for an aspiring tinkerer. It's also got a good C/Assembly language primer at the end of the book.

The projects themselves were interesting - I had no idea that the Atari 2600 Game consoles were actually designed to have speakers built in (I tore up my old Atari 2600 back in the 1980s, trying to find parts to beef up a Vic-20. I obviously didn't find anything...).

I do wish I had a CueCat for the hack mentioned in this book. For those of you who can't remember, the CueCat was given away by Radio Shack, Forbes magazine and

Wired magazine - it is basically an optical scanner which has a PS/2 connector. It was used to read bar codes. With the popularity of the Universal Serial Bus, many modern computer motherboards now have PS/2 *and* USB - so this

hack could be useful for simply scanning in bar codes or other information while operating your computer normally.

My favourite hardware hack in the book is the custom Terabyte Firewire hard drive. Of course, you have to find your own terabyte drive, but this is one I've shown my Advanced Computer Repair students at The University of the West Indies School of Continuing Studies, as it's an interesting look at what one can do with some knowledge.

The Home Theater PC (HTPC) hack is also pretty interesting - and has the potential to be pretty expensive. What's more interesting is the great lengths taken to avoid the aspiring tinkerer from reinventing the wheel - there's a lot of good information that is very grounding about this project, and what one really needs. I think it was Compaq that came up with the first HTPC off -the-shelf, but that was a bit too

early (late 90s). Honestly, computer hardware and audio/video have become so well integrated that it's almost impossible not to have an HTPC of some form or another. But how much is enough? Let the chapter on the HTPC be your guide on that. Pretty good stuff. If you get through the chapter and still want to do something like it - you'll be

very well informed. Did I mention that there's a GNU/Linux HTPC hack in the book?

Those are just some of the hacks available in this book. Others in the book are:

• Hacking the PlayStation 2
• Wireless 802.11 Hacks
• iPod hacks (battery replacement, hard drive upgrades, GNU/Linux installation, and Windows)
• Nokia 6210 mobile phone hacks (basically cosmetics; LEDs and such)
• Upgrading memory on Palm Devices

In all, it's a very good book for the aspiring tinkerer. The only problem is that if you don't have the stuff to tinker with, all you get to do is read about it. But that's not too bad. Just reading the hacks is educational in a lot of ways - and it *is* fun, especially for the hardware curious.

Kevin D. Mitnick is quoted on the front cover: If I had this book 10 years ago, the FBI would never have found me!". I don't know about that; it seems like tongue-in-cheek humour (though, perhaps, Mitnick could have used the megablocks around a Mac hack to

disguise himself...).

What I do know is that this book is for someone who is interested in electronics and computers: It's a great gift for the aspiring teenage geek who is constantly tearing things apart (like I did, and still do).

Also see:

A How-To Guide for Hackers (Wired News)

BOOK REVIEW: Hardware Hacking (ITWorld.com)