Things you have fixed/modded recently

[SylverReZ]

 

[AncientBoi]

For a minute there, I thought it was a corset

 

[emcintosh]

Pioneer's abysmal (and discontinued) MixTrax software, for preparing music on USB sticks for use with speed control on the Steez boombox in dance classes. Copying the database from an existing stick lets new ones work.


MixTrax (which was last updated in ?2015 and is now only available from third-party app finding sites) installs but refuses to load on macOS 13 Ventura, but still opens on my mother's old computer, which is running 10.11 El Capitan. When you plug a USB drive in, it gets detected, with a dialog box asking for a name for the drive and the mysterious commands of 'Yes' or 'No' (presumably for confirming or cancelling the change of name from 'Removable Disk 2' or whatever the default is?). But it doesn't show up in the sidebar to sync music to.
Drives you've already used will show up in the sidebar. But this isn't ideal, as the only way of adding music to one is to overwrite all the current music with whatever playlists you tick. We're afraid of messing up the process and losing access to the sticks we already have set up.

MixTrax creates a folder on the root of the drive with its database of music files (still usable elsewhere but named as four-digit numbers) and the extra data it uses for speeding up and slowing down tracks independent of pitch. In desperation I tried duplicating a known working drive's contents, and it turns out that this is enough to 'bless' the drive so it is syncable. Even if the new drive is a different capacity. So now we have a mini-playlist we can prime additional USB drives with.

Over a decade after its release, I would not recommend this boombox to anyone - a tablet with Amazing Slow Downer paired with a bluetooth speaker will almost certainly work better in class, and will involve significantly less headache in setting up. It does meet my mother's particular use case for playing music at dance classes - the remote is compact but has buttons for FF/RW & volume control & speed control & track skipping, which I'm struggling to replicate with a keyboard-in-disguise media remote, and it's bulky enough that at public performances it's less likely someone will just walk off with your tech. If you absolutely need a boombox, it would be better to stick to the previous popular option of getting Portogram's hacked JVC CD boombox with a physical speed knob (even though this does change the pitch at the same time). That still has an headphone jack input you can plug your iPad into for your digital collection.

 

[rcpd]

Steam Deck now has a 2Tb SSD and a 1Tb SD card to hold stuff for EmuDeck and other stuff. I partitioned the SSD for both SteamOS and Windows.

I admit that I’m only installing Windows because I’m lazy and it’s the faster way to get my games setup. As soon as SteamOS is setup and running my games and emulators the way I’d like, Windows can go away in favor of only Steam. Or in favor of some other linux distribution.

 

[gisel213]

Did 4 RGH3 mods on some e-series Corona's for a friend with alternate dashboard of course Good ole Aurora with On Twitch Skin takes the 360 up a Notch!!! Example below

 

[DragonMals]

Chad profile picture. I have a modded Family Ed. 3ds and a modded new og 3ds.

and I don't know what to do with them.

 

[rcpd]

I acquired an Xbox One S from someone without a power cord or a controller. I'm not much into Xbox, so I went down to Walmart and got a controller and replacement power cord. It booted up just fine and it had no account associated with it. I factory restored it anyway and then updated it. Then I created an Xbox account and had to pick a gamertag.

I opened it up after looking at a few tutorials for doing such a thing. I cleaned it up a bit and reapplied thermal paste everywhere iFixit said I should. Then I reassembled it. Still works just fine. I got Dev Mode up and running, got the Dev Portal working, managed to install Retroarch, Dolphin UWP, XBSX2, Flycast UWP, Xenia Canary, and PPSSPP. I even got them configured properly and playing games!

I'm a bit disappointed with Dolphin's performance. I regularly see sub 25fps in games that I shouldn't but otherwise I'm pretty impressed with how well everything else runs. Another thing I struggled with was DurangoFTP. It seems to be pulled from retail but I found the UWP for Dev Mode and managed to install it. I can't connect though. I've tried my Xbox account username/password, I've tried the Dev Portal username/password, I've tried guest account. Nothing at all gets me to use DurangoFTP. It ended up not mattering anyway because everything for Dev Mode resides on an external hard drive because it has to. Thanks, Microsoft. So I eneded up just unplugging the drive and plugging it into my PC and moving everything over that way, which to be honest was probably faster.

 

[SylverReZ]

Tweaked the Cerbios configuration to add my custom Vergil Xbox boot animation on startup.

 

[PizzaTimeJoshua]

Recently modded my GBA with Custom Shell, backlight as well as ability to connect to the TV with composite cables. Using an emulator is probably easier but something about holding the console makes it feel different.

 

[Ryccardo]

I opened and powered on a seagate rosewood ST2000LM015 disk, putting on the topmost platter in this order:

• perfume
• Zippo kerosene
• a selection of screwdrivers
• a screw held in place with my fingers
• piss

and the existing scratch didn't get worse until I tried with a sticker, which ought to mean something about this expensive piece of shit that lasted 9 months

 

[Mayo1990]

Modded my GBA (with backlit and rechargeable battery) so it could look like its younger sister!!

 

[skawo]

A crapload of Famicoms

 

[emcintosh]

Updated the internal clock on my Kindle DX from The Beginning of Time (1st January 1970) so I can read manga again (as well as the actual purpose for which I got this obsolete device - taking past exam papers to my students electronically rather than going to the library to print them).

Since Amazon cut off the 3G service for transferring books to older Kindles, it is also no longer possible to use the 'whispernet' to synchronise the internal clock. And the date can be lost if the battery runs out. This is not usually a problem, but the KUAL launcher utility won't open if its creation date is in the future. So this weekend I was unable to open the improved PDF reader Librerator to read the Twilight Princess manga (illicit PDF copy - I have bought all the volumes of the ebook version that have been released in the UK, but prefer the flexibility of the homebrew viewer).

This was quite an involved process. I had already re-enabled USB Networking on the Kindle, but had never used it. This makes the reader show up to a computer as a remote computer rather than USB storage. I know enough about command line tools to be dangerous, but not enough to be confident of not doing something silly. And Apple in their infinite wisdom have stopped including the telnet command with macOS since 2017 (even though they have retained it in the list of remote connection methods), and to get that, I needed the brew command, which in turn needed a download of Xcode's command line tools. Once I had all that set up, it only took two lines of commands to set the date to now.

 

[SylverReZ]

View attachment 398263

Did you make this artwork?

 

[emcintosh]

Did you make this artwork?

Yes, but.

Carefully cobbled together from a diagram in the Kindle DX manual, some clip art and a panel from the TP manga. I had to threshold the manga, diagram and error text separately and scale the 'I have hands…?' down less than the rest of the image so it would be legible.

 

[Hayato213]

Nvidia Shield TV Pro 2TB Internal

 

[tech3475]

Not sure if this counts, but I managed to get one of those old cheap Intel Atom tablets with 32bit UEFI to fully boot a 64bit copy of Linux Mint.

Basically, by default 64 bit installs need a 64bit uefi, there are old guides listing workarounds for 32bit UEFI but they no longer seem to work with the Ubuntu based distros I tried and you have to go through several hoops to get 32bit grub installed on the internal storage.

 

[emcintosh]

Restored left-ear support to Sennheiser headphones when connected with a cable.

For several weeks only the right speaker worked when using a headphone cable, unless I pulled the cable at a particular angle. Both worked over Bluetooth, so I assumed I had damaged the cable. A new cable also didn't work, so I went on IFixit to check how to open the case. My multimeter confirmed the pins connecting the socket to the circuit board had continuity to the tip, ring and sleeve of the far end of the connected cable, so I desoldered the socket to investigate further. The problem was that the pad for the tip had pulled off the board. Fortunately I was able to extend the solder blob a few mm to the test point. I now get continuity from the cable to other points on the board labelled 'left', and stereo service is resumed.

 

[skawo]

Got this WiiU GamePad that was completely dead. Replaced the charging chip and it sprung back to life~

 

[Hanafuda]

Low key success story, but when my stepson was home on leave from the Air Force about 6 years ago, he gave me this old red 3DS XL. As far as he was concerned it was trash - circle pad felt like it was gunked with dried soda and the top screen was badly scratched. Sat in a drawer for years. Now it has a new OEM circle pad (complete assembly, not just the thumb pad), glass top screen lens, a nice "grip", and cfw of course. It's my new GBA go-to. I've got a regular sized New 3DS which is great for 3DS games but GBA is too tiny on it at original res.

I've got about $19 in it lol.

Post automatically merged: Nov 16, 2023

The Beginning of Time (1st January 1970)

Hey, @AncientBoi, I guess that means we're from The Land Before Time.