Introduction: Turn Your Old Dial-Up Modem Into a USB Hider

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If you have an old broken dial-up modem just sitting around and taking up space, then why not turn it into a USB hub? In this Instructable I will show you how to do it.

Step 1: Materials and Tools Needed:

1. A Phone cord with 4 wires
2. An old Dial-Up modem
3. Isolation tape
4. USB extender with female end
5. USB memory stick
6. A phone jack
7. All your basic tools eg. a screw drier 
8. Tubing / Shrink tubing
9. RJ-45 cord (with 4 wires inside)
10. Time


Step 2: Castrate the Male

First you must cut off the male end of the USB extender. You must keep as much wire on the female side as possible. Then strip the plastic, braided shielding, and foil shielding off the wires. The colors will be Black, White, Green, Red (and sometimes Yellow) .If you have a Yellow wire, cut it off as it is useless.

Step 3: Color to Color and White to Yellow

Standard USB colors are whie, black, green, and red. The standard phone jack colors are yellow, black, green, and red. Because of the similarity of colors, this step should be easy. Just match all the colors, and match the white and yellow. Now take each of the four wires from the female USB, and connect them to the matching colors of the phone jack. 

Step 4: Strip, Connect, Shrink

*Now take the Male end of the USB Cable and strip off the rubber, metal braid, and foil.
*After exposing the four wires, VERY CAREFULLY strip each one, keeping the metal inside as intact as possible.
*Now take the phone cord, and cut off one of the ends leaving about 5 CM (2 Inches) of wire.
*Now strip the outer casing and then each of the four wires.
*Take a piece of shrink tubing slightly larger than the male USB cable, and slide it down to the end of the cord (Make sure you do this first).
*Now take some small shrink tubing and slip it over one of the small phone wires, and twist corresponding USB and phone wires together/ solder them together.
*After the wires ar connected/ soldered, slide the shrink tubing over the joint and shrink it with your lighter (or a heat gun).
*Repeat this for all four wires, matching the colors like you did in Step 3.
*Now just slide the large shrink tubing over the entire joint.

Step 5: Strip the Modem.

*Strip the modem and remove the pc Bord.

Step 6: Fit Into Modem and Your Done!

Now all you have to do is to fit it all into your old Modem and your done! To access your USB Drive, all you do is plug the USB end into your computer and the phone end into your fake phone jack. Then insert your USB Drive into the Female end and it should come up as a USB mass storage device. You can also attach the fake Modem to the wall to hide it or if you have a small enough USB Drive or maybe a Thumb Drive, you can hide it inside the fake Modem. Thanks for reading my Instructable! Comments are appreciated :)