QuackMasterDan

Sure, I'd be glad to give advice.
As far as CCFLs, just try sticking two in a computer. Or another fun mod I do, is installing them inside furniture. At my house, I got some microphone inverters, and stuck blue CCFLs underneath my coffee table with zip-ties. We also installed some behind the wall-mounted LCD TV (red on the left, blue on the right). Whenever there is bass, like an explosion in a movie, or I'm playing some hard electronic music on the home-theater, they light up. That will give you some experience with soldering and how they work at least, and is a good way to get familiar with CCFLs.


As far as modding goes, do things the way whatever works easiest, and what things are supposed to be used for does not matter. Almost all of the parts I find or end up using, though some is internet research, is I walk up and down all the isles at Home Depot or Lowes, looking for any random part that fits a need. Everything from flower pots to door frames to electrical boxes, anything that could be cut apart to work. Note though, you can't ask for advice (except from the old guys, since they have been carpenters or welders for years and now work at Lowes since they're broke), since most workers are only stock-boys and cashiers.

For instance, my most recent guide, was originally going to be a light stand made out of wood for the base where all the inverters and junk would be stored. I tried cutting it, and realized the cuts were too hard. Then it became PVC pipe for the base (think like a tall vertical-lampstand, except the pole itself is the light). Then the plan was to make the lampstands hang from the ceiling with wire, ala hanging aircraft in a museum. Eventually, I chose clear acrylic, and U-clamps to stick to the wall. I planned that pole out for about two weeks, thinking about it every day and waiting for random creative thoughts as I waited for the acrylic to arrive in the mail.


Also for modding, let your fear make you cautious, but not to the point of giving up. The first time I modded my 360, I flashed the firmware to play copied DVDs. I read flashing guides for two days. When I did the hack, I was super paranoid and kept making small errors due to lack of knowledge and it took me eight hours... Now I can do them in five minutes, and I learned that 360s are almost indestructable systems that are easy to tinker with. That being said, I have also broken some Xbox 360s when trying to JTAG them (which is much more complex), and learned how to fix them as a result (also dangerous to them).

I made a full JTAG guide on my YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/user/QuackMasterDan

That YouTube channel is more for entertaining media than anything, but the JTAG guide is educational.

Take whatever you have in your life right now. A Nintendo Wii, a 360, a desk, a controller, a bicycle, a kitchen cabinet, a blank wall in a cramped room, whatever you use right now, and decide how to hack the hell out of it for either something cool, or something you need (like an easier to ride bicycle or a shelf for a cramped room, or a rapid-fire controll). Right now, I obtained a crappy $40 road bike from a yard sale. Now I'm going to be putting a weed-whacker engine on it, for a motorized bicycle. Next up is a shoulder mounted potato-launcher. Then, of course, I must cover them all in pretty lights. So, to condense it, research and read a lot, ask a lot of annoying questions in IRC and forums, take whatever stuff you use all the time or looks fun, and decide to make it either make it yourself from scratch, or more awesome. Good luck.

I have no experience whatsoever with PSP modding. Google is your friend. I would also suggest looking up some PSP modding IRC channels and asking in there.

Nothing has really come up that has needing answering. I've been spending a lot of time in Xbox 360 hacking channels (#freeboot and #fw), and created a 50 minute YouTube series on how to completely JTAG an Xbox 360 from stock.

I've also spent some time running through about 20 J-Core albums (Hardcore Syndrome 4 has rocked my socks off the most), and going to some celebrations.

In fact, I'm going on a boat ride with water-skiing and innertubing today =) The YouTube series is here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C17CB030EDDFF0C5

Hardcore Syndrome 4 is a *very* niche album style (hardstyle, gabber, and happy hardcore). I'd say the best album I've heard in the last year is Cristierra by Shiki,which is completely different kind of album (It's melodic piano, violin, and pad/synthesizer trance. The track Pure Ruby = mindblowingly beautiful).

There are a couple of reasons I focus on the Xbox. 1) There is a massive modding community for the Xbox and 360, so many sources and chat channels and forums, there is a lot of knowledge out there. 2) The systems tend to be for a more hardcore audience than the Wii or PS3, the kind of people who are more likely to rip apart their $250 system to do weird things to it. 3) I don't like the Wii, and thus do not own one, and I find the PS3 exceedingly boring with nothing I can do to it besides paint it. The first true hack for the PS3 actually came out two weeks ago, after four years of waiting! If it turns out to spawn a ton of modders, electrical diagrams, and spare knowledge, I'll begin doing PS3 guides.

I'll always consider projects suggested to me by other people. However one thing I've learned, if you want something done and done well, you have to have a passion for it. If it isn't a project I have any personal use for, or interest in, I would suggest the person who loves that idea pursue it themselves. Anybody can accomplish any project, with enough time, research, and hard work =)

I'm still interested in what you have to say, link me to your video or tell me what to search for. Or just feel free to explain it here. Also, your LED bar turned out very nicely, a design I was not expecting, but am nonetheless impressed by. Your diffuser worked out very well.

Thanks a bunch for that first instructable link, I'm going to go build that circuit. I've long been interested in getting sound-reactive LEDs, but I've always been under the impression that anything nice required programming software to accept input from a RS232 cable. I never considered using pass-filters to change outputs, all analog sounds right up my alley =)

I'm interested in building something like that, though I'm not specifically sure what to make.  An ideal goal for me would be something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSqn1_EDx1c which is custom-home lighting made with RGB Luxeon stars hooked into an arduino (which requires programming it). Maybe it's time for me to learn arduino...

Anyways, thanks for the links, they appear interesting. As far as a guide you would like me to make, specifically which one would you prefer? That first instructable link has a very basic schematic, and looks very achievable with little work, a stepping stone if you will. Also, link1 gives me an error in firefox, about a failed redirect. Could you possibly fix the link? Thanks.

I am always here, what do you need? I won't be building the project for a couple weeks at least, it generally takes two or four weeks for me to come up with fun ways to implement a guide through random thinking, and eventually when I hit a creative spark I spend a couple days straight just building (no food or rest =P), and then the writing of a guide, which I edit for maybe another week before publishing.

I'm actually in the process of making a new instructable, of something I'm calling a light-stick. Pictures attached, one is of them installed of my room, the other is what I consider to be the coolest picture of them I've taken.

The purpose of the CCFL Light Sticks is home lighting. By using red, green, and blue cold cathodes, the majority of the room is lit a rich white color. However, the walls and area close to the light sticks has a matching glowing color, and it can produce some weird and cool effects. For instance, reading a book can something be annoying, because one page is yellow (green+red) and another is teal (green+blue). Get all three visible, and it's nice and white. Paper is outdated anyways, reading on the LCD all the way.

As far as the PS3 hacking, there are a couple uses. Mind you, PS3 firmware hacks released to the public just came out a few weeks ago, so it's brand new and there is barely any software or tools available yet. In the long run though, I perceive the following being possible:

1) A custom media center, a PS3 playing everything from h.264 mkvs to DivX, Quicktime movie file and Windos Media Files. With streaming from computers are the house of course (Probably running ffMPEG, which VLC uses and as a result it plays pretty much anything).

2) Finally, a system with enough power to emulate an N64 with plenty of speed, at 1080p with anti-aliasing and other goodies, along with emulating many other systems.

3) The ability to play copied discs, along with discs saved to an internal or USB hard drive.

4) The ability to run a custom operating system (Likely Linux, since that's what the PS3 already runs, to an extent) with full control. Essentially a powerful desktop in a tiny box.

5) Able to run any number of custom-written programs, which could be anything from homemade games to brute-force password crackers to pretty screen savers.

Then again, none of those except the first part of #3 currently exist, and that is impractical because just a few BD 50s cost about $15. Time will tell, I hope the homebrew scene can get together and accomplish some great work.

Actually, I need to revise that last statement. Upon checking, blackcats shut down open sign-ups either yesterday or the day before. Your only chance of getting into BCG or Bitgamer is to go hang out in their IRC channels, and be a friend. Chat, make jokes, hang out for 30-45 minutes, and maybe someone will be nice and send you an invite (don't explicitly ask for one or you're banned, they only hand out invites to users who want to be a part of a community). In a few months or so, when PS3 jailbreaking becomes more common, I expect PS3 games will spill over to the commoner bittorrent sites, namely ThePirateBay and Demonoid.

Though I'm glad to supply advice to users interested in making projects or creating something neat (Including modding 360s), I'm not much of a fan of spoon-feeding every single step of the process of disc piracy to a user, there is already plenty of those guides around). Anyone can learn how to do anything with some time spent on google and a willingness to learn.

If he doesn't know what BitTorrent is (What all of these file-sharing sites run on), he could google, "Bittorrent for beginners". If he is interested in duplicating PS3 discs, google, "how copy ps3 games". If he wants to get into Bitgamer, google, "bitgamer how invite". Bitgamer and Blackcats are considered mid-tier trackers, meaning you have to know how to properly manage an account to give back and not just take everything (a leech). I don't invite people that don't already know what they are doing. Almost everything I have learned about 360 modding and working with electronics and lights has come from information I learned from googling.

If he wants to chat with me, he can find me on the IRC server irc.efnet.net and the channel named #freeboot. Just private message the user QuackMast. If he doesn't know what IRC is, google, "how irc beginner tutorial".

A good place for easy-to-access PS3 homebrew news is http://www.ps3-hacks.com/

The firmware hack that was released is called PS Groove, and as of firmware 3.42 has been patched by Sony. It is highly likely that the crackers will find another loophole into the PS3, this appears to be following the path of PSP modding: a hack comes out one week, a security patch the next, repeat infinitely.

Also, PS3 games are generally $60-70, 360 games are generally $60. Not 20x ;-D

I can't predict the future, but I can analyze how popular PS3 modding can be. It is by far the most powerful of the consoles out today, runs linux (which homebrew authors and crackers love), is fairly cheap ($300 for a computer with 7 processors!), and already has lots of legit development on it. When another hack comes out (when, not if), and homebrew really has a chance to take off, I expect a great deal of development. That said, expect to wait a year or two.

One neat practice running for PS3 games is removing "dummy data". So a BD (Blu-Ray Disc) is normally 25GiB or 50GiB, which would take forever to transfer via the internet. Luckily, most games are far smaller, anywhere from 3GiB-10GiB, and just padded with junk data to fill up the disc. There are tools which remove the dummy data, and now torrenting PS3 games is just as easy as 360 discs.

I am currently in the process of making absolutely nothing, and doing no work whatsoever. I simply play video games, watch anime, and listen to music all day, while going to my graduate classes and studying until the work is completed. Escapism at its best.

The PS3 just got jailbroken about two weeks ago. Very few places hold ripped PS3 games, and for the most part they're very difficult to get into without already being "in". At this point in time, torrents are your only hope.

You're extremely lucky that Blackcats-Games.net is having open signups for a short period right now, something they have not done in over a year (Membership dropped from 25k to 20k, once the slots are filled, it's locked again. I give it two more weeks of signups). Get an account, and don't mess it up (share back what you take). Note that PS3 games are around 20-40GiB. Your other option is Bitgamer, which I doubt you'll be able to get into.

I can't think of many mods to the system that you can do without dismantling it. Even painting the case requires removing the shell, though I suppose you could paint the faceplate since it pops off.

It's hard, very hard, to truly screw up a Xbox 360, unless you step on it or toss it into a bathtub. RRoD aside, the system is a tank, you could roll it down a flight of stairs, submerge it in boiling lava, and it would likely run fine. As far as soldering, just don't go nuts and intentionally remove components and the system will be o.k.

It's your system, you do what you want with it. A soldering iron costs $15, and feel free to buy some perfboard ($4) to practice making connections on if you're really worried. Even a complete newbie should do fine.

It can be done. If you have two inverters, you'll need to shield them from one another. The inverters send out a high frequency noise that the Xbox circuitry is vulnerable to. If you have two unshielded inverters in the same box, the varying frequencies can cause your Xbox to freeze. The easiest way to isolate your inverters is to wrap them in aluminum foil a couple times. There are different ways to do it, I would suggest: Break off the blue box covering. Gently wrap the inverter entirely in electrical tape, except for your connectors. Cover the inverter in aluminum foil (again, spare the connectors), electrical tape one more time so the aluminum foil doesn't touch any circuitry within the xbox. If you want to mount a switch on your xbox, don't use the junk red on/off switches that come with them. Go to any electronics store, get a button push switch (or whatever you think works best). Drill a hole in the external case, put in the button, solder the positive lead through the switch, press on or off from the outside. Sometimes you aren't going to want that much light while gaming at 3am. Good luck.

Heya Nick, I'm glad you enjoy my instructables, I have a ton of fun making them and hope you make good use of them. I almost always purchase my LEDs from eBay, usually the sellers HKJE LED Store and Light of Victory (search on google) You can only buy them in backs of around 50x, 100x, or higher, so for 50 it can cost anywhere from $8 (w/shipiing) to $700, depending on what kind of leds you want. For these light bars, expect around $12 per 50 LEDs. Casings are called cable channels, available at Lowes or Home Depot for around $6 each. I'm making a light bar 2.0 guide soon (within a month), but good luck.

You are correct that they turn on either way. I think you are talking about the Xbox 360 ring of light instructable. Let me explain why I tilt them sideways. The stock LEDs for the 360 ring of light point sideways, and their light is received by the diffusion clip (white clip over the wireless board) that refracts the light outward towards the front of the console. The 0603 SMD LEDs used for this guide point in a different direction (installing them flat points them directly into plastic, instead of into the diffusion clips lenses). The wireless controller however we are using the exact same LEDs Microsoft uses, and they should be installed flat. Quite simply, for the ring of light on the front of the console, installing the LEDs sideways makes it look brighter. On the controllers just install them flat.

I mentioned in the guide the solder wont stick well at all. It's because Microsoft is using lead free industrial solder, which needs to be much hotter to cleanly melt, compared to your small electronics solder. It will stick, you just need to hold your iron on there for a long time (15-25 seconds, while for most components you should never go for more than 2). You won't melt the whole thing, just enough for a small connection. It's going to be messy and not look clean, once it is connected, cover it with super glue. If you really want it soldered well, buy a stronger iron, and only use it for that one power pin. I recommend 15 W iron for normal small electronics, for a beast like the power pin try a 35-45 W iron.

You don't need to, just buy regular, electronic silver rosin core solder. It's available at any electronics store (like radio shack) for $3. Normally soldering requires a light touch, for this one pin you should just apply far more heating time and solder than you normally would. Plenty of people have completed this guide using the parts I've suggested (and you likely already have), and your Xbox 360 is not some unique model unable to have the power pins soldered to. The joint will not be a nice clean solder blob, it will be stuck on the outside. If it's hard to detach, but still makes an electrical connection, then it's good enough. Just cover it in hot glue to prevent the pins from grounding to anything else, and to help protect your solder joint so it doesn't break off.

LEDs in the hard drive: You disassemble your 360 hard drive to get the raw casing, and either put on a replacement case (like a crystal case) or cut a window in your own and fill the hole with acrylic glass or polycarbonate. You just solder your LEDs onto the power pins that go to the hard drive, they don't harm anything and just siphon off some extra juice. LEDs in the DVD drive: same process, either cut a hole in your metal one, or buy a replacement casing, most use either a cold cathode fan ring or leds, and just solder the power wires onto the cords that power the rear exhaust fan.

If you are scared of soldering but need to connect two wires together, you can use a tap-splice. I personally would just cut off the sheathing of a power cable for each connection I want and solder all the wires in one bundle, but you could just use multiple tap-splices along the length of the cable.

They are dirt cheap, and any decent electronics store should have some.
I'd suggest buying them somewhere other than Llamma.org for such a simple and common part (they are really expensive), but here is a link for a little kit they offer:

http://secure.llamma.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=515

Hope it all works out

-Dan Kruse

I'd be up for doing the mod for you if you don't feel comfortable soldering yourself. A location to purchase a brand new wireless board would be here: http://secure.llamma.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=73_86&products_id=667

They sell cards for $50, and change the lights for an additional $50. It would be far cheaper just to send me your wireless board via mail, I'll buy the blue 0603 LEDs and solder them on for you, and I'll make sure everything works alright. I have a bad habit of under-charging for any services I provide, tech support, building computers, making light bars, as I enjoy doing the mods so much. You figure out the shipping costs (I live in 93704 Fresno California) and I'll do the mod for $25. Private message me if you are still interested.

You could use an Aurora LED light kit, they are easier to install via just plugging into the fans power adapter. The LEDs will not be nearly as bright as CCFLs (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lights), and are made for the newbie modder. I made a guide on CCFLs for a 360 here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Xbox_360_Cold_Cathode_Lighting/http://www.instructables.com/id/Xbox_360_Cold_Cathode_Lighting/

I'm sure they are good quality and won't break on you, but they wont be high quality LEDs. If you do it yourself you can get some extremely bright LEDs off of eBay, in any color or combination of colors you wish.

Two 4" Cold Cathodes, I suggest either Red, Blue, or Green. You may want to purchase a spare tube in case you crack one (I have). A hacksaw, to remove the cubes on the end of the cold cathodes. Clippers, used to cut around the plastic of the cold cathode casing to get the fragile glass tube itself. Hot glue, hot glue gun, this holds the cathodes in place. Soldering iron, solder, wire strippers/knife, wire (about 1 foot for positive and 1 foot for negative). Torx T10, T8 screwdrivers to let you remove the motherboard from the steel chassis and take apart the 360 (see my disassembly guide). Electrical tape, used to make the CCFL inverter much smaller, and bundle excess wire together. I want to put this Instructable together quickly, however the upcoming Thanksgiving break is causing my university to issue many exams. Hopefully during Thanksgiving break I can write the guide. Also, I'm glad you're excited about the projects I've made, it means a lot to know other people are putting this knowledge to good use.

Xoxide is where I go to purchase my 12" cold cathodes from, as they have awesome prices and a great selection. However for 4" cold cathodes they only have blue and UV, to get other colors I suggest newegg for

4" Red
4" UV
4" Blue

and the Llamma store for 4" Green though watch out, its $10 and around $5-7 for shipping. But I haven't found anywhere else that offers Dual 4" Cold Cathodes with good service.

Hope you find the colors you're looking for, I personally think that Blue looks the best in a house setting, and Green for outdoors settings, as that color tends to be heavily reflected by nature.