You thought that the Ultimate Reset Button was exaggeration. You thought that the Cheapest Wireless Desktop was not cheap and was a joke. You even thought that bunnies try to commit suicide. And you were right! Now wait till you see this!

It’s not revolutionary and it’s not something that doesn’t work. It is also not something that you can save bunnies with. And it’s definitely not a joke! It actually works as it’s supposed to. Yeehaaw! It’s another computer mod with which you will be The Man at LAN parties. You can even drive other geeks mad with this device…or cause them temporary blindness. Interested?

First, there were plain ordinary red LEDs to show you the HDD activity. There’s nothing special about it – a boring red LED that flashes irregularly. Time to change that in a mad scientist way: here’s a video of the insane LEDs at work:

Unfortunately, my IDE controller decided to go into early retirement the day after this video was taken (and no, it has nothing to do with this device…second hard drive stopped working and the controller with it). Go figure…

Circuit is very simple and uses only 11 parts of which 10 are LEDs in the color of your choice (we used 5x white and 5x blue). The “brain” is a HCF4017 (CD4017, etc.) IC which is a decade counter. Schematic is here:

As you can see for yourself, wiring is extremely simple and entire circuit can be assembled without the printed circuit board. That’s why you won’t find a PCB layout here, at least not from us. There are no current limiting resistors for LEDs because the IC limits the output current but make sure that you connect the LEDs correctly or else they won’t work. Here’s a photo of the test circuit on a protoboard:

(ignore the crystal oscillator and the wires to the right - they are from another project and I was lazy to remove them)

How it works ?

As said before, HCF4017 is a decade counter IC with 10 decoded outputs. This counter is advanced one count at positive clock signal which means that every time a HDD is accessed, another LED lights up in the “running lights” effect fashion. However, you can achieve random looking effect by either connecting or placing the LEDs differently (i.e. LED1 to output 6, LED2 to output 9, etc.).

Connecting it

You can get the required 5V supply from the power cable that goes to CD / DVD / HDD / floppy. Red wire is 5V, yellow wire is 12V and black wires are ground. If you don’t feel like messing with factory wiring, then buy a power Y-cable, cut off the male power connector (leaving wires at least 1″ long) and connect the circuit to that connector. If you are like us, then peel of the wire insulation a bit (0.1″ is enough) and twist the wires together like this:

As for the HDD activity wire, use the one that goes to the original HDD LED. If it doesn’t work on one wire it will work on another one (the test circuit actually worked fine with both wires, but the original LED was left connected!).

Don’t forget to isolate all connections with a tape!

Use your imagination for placing the LEDs. I will drill a few holes (arranged in a circle) on the cover of empty 5,25” bay and hot-glue them so that they don’t run away.

And for the end…

…if it doesn’t work, it’s not our fault! If you somehow manage to blow up your PC, it’s not our fault. Whatever goes wrong, it’s not our fault so don’t even think on blaming us! We accept no responsibility whatsoever. You do this on your own risk.

Feel free to ask any questions! You can also send us your pictures of a working circuit and we will gladly put them here.

Happy modding!

There are those days when you get really annoyed by all the wires surrounding your workspace and limiting your freedom. Therefore, engineers invented wireless desktops (keyboard and mouse) which are genius inventions but often not so cheap. Beside that, they have some inherit flaws of which most annoying is the need for batteries and somewhat limited range.Moneyless and genius as we are (and humble, too ), we invented brand new wireless desktop that doesn’t need batteries at all! As with all new technologies, there are some glitches at the moment but we are working on fixing them. In fact, our wireless desktop is so cheap and simple to make that you will hate yourself for not inventing this before we did. Luckily for you, we will give you a full tutorial on how to make your own wireless desktop for free! Are you ready?

Ingredients

Here’s what you need:

1. Wire cutters
2. Wired keyboard and mouse
3. 5 minutes of your free time
4. Tablespoon of patience
5. Teaspoon of luck

Wire cutters (can be any color, not necessarily yellow):

Our keyboard and mouse:

(Bear) Time:

Mouse transformation:

Take the mouse in your right hand. Take the wire cutters in your left hand and place them as close to the mouse as possible, like in the picture below, and do the magic:

Keyboard transformation:

Leave the keyboard alone. Take the wire cutters in your right hand and place them approximately 9.29133 inches from the keyboard, and repeat the magic from the first step:

To get it working you need some form of power, and as we all know there’s no greater power than the power of love. So, how do you harvest this power? Simply! Use the excess wire to create a heart-shaped antenna:

You might ask yourself “why is mouse lacking this antenna?” and we have the answer: since the mouse has less buttons it requires less power to work and it doesn’t need the love amplifier as the keyboard does.

Final words

As we said, this technology is still in experimental phase and is experiencing some minor glitches. However, if it doesn’t work for you then you must be a hateful person with lack of love. In that case, consider getting a puppy:

Happy modding!

My girlfriend and I went to a supermarket yesterday to buy something to eat (obviously) and a tiny incident between a kid and his mother reminded me of a commercial I once saw on the TV (in a show where they show you the funniest TV commercials). Luckily for me I managed to find it on YouTube. Maybe you’ve seen it, maybe you haven’t. However, it does have a good point so if you are in doubt, just remember this commercial

UPDATE: Apparently, the video worked just fine in FireFox and didn’t show at all in IE6. This problem has been corrected. Enjoy!

Are you tired of those tiny reset buttons on your PC? If the answer is “Yes!“, then we have a solution for you! In association with Maddy McBlast, our mad scientist, we give you…the ultimate reset button for your PC!

First of all, some introduction is necessary. In the time before Windows, all computers had a normal-sized reset button because, back then, computers required frequent resetting. And it was normal and nothing happened and it all worked well. You could even reset them with the famous “Ctrl+Alt+Del” key combo. Then came the Windows…and the rest is history. Excellent as Windows are (you do sense the irony in this, don’t you?), it is not a good practice to manually reset your computer “due to possible data loss“. I think that mainly because of that, you now get reset buttons sized as the ones on the PocketPC, that you have to push with a toothpick to activate. Both phoenixx and I used up all our toothpicks and realized that it was time for drastic measures! It looks like the more you spend on a computer case, the smaller the reset button is. See here:

The first reset button actually requires a toothpick, while the second one is nicely blended with the case so that you miss it with greater probability. Fortunately, Maddy McBlast has provided a solution for us:

Yes, it looks like a giant mushroom, but it’s not. We already tried eating it, so we know. It’s a button that is used in industry for stopping various machines and most important thing about it is that it can be activated in any direction. All you have to do is to hit it with something (like, a fist). Here’s another photo of it:

Connection is simple, and only two wires are necessary. Simply replace the original reset button on the case. We used three wires just because we could! No, seriously, the third wire is for future improvements (maybe for a LED?):

Looking at the pictures so far, you could have thought that we are just messing with you and that this button is even smaller than those pesky little reset buttons. So, just for you, we took a photo just for you…just for you…and you. What was I talking about? Oh yes, we took a photo just for you to see how it compares against other things:

So there you have it. No more will you need a toothpick or a pencil to reset your PC. No more will you be forced to use the Task Manager or the Start button to reset your PC. And you know what? Windows will even work better knowing that you have a huge reset button and that you could end their miserable virtual life in a second!

A few examples from our everyday lives tells us why exactly “men are from Mars, and women from Venus”. If you and your “better half” plan to spend the rest of your lives (read: until divorce) together there are some facts that you should be aware of. And here they are:

Nicknames

When a woman names all her friends, she uses regular names such as: Lucy, Wendy, Jane, Kate… Man’s friends are called: Fatty, Speedy, Whitey, The Dog…

Payment

When the time comes to pay the bill in the restaurant, guys will automatically throw a $200 on the table, although the actual amount of the bill is three to four times smaller. They all want their change back, but will never admit it. Women, on the other hand, will take out a calculator and calculate the exact change in order to avoid potential problems.

Bathroom

A man has only five items: toothbrush, shower gel, shaving machine (or a razor), soap, and a towel from the hotel he stayed in last summer. A woman has more than hundred items, of which half are totally unknown to the man, such as a peeling crème, revitalizing crème, night crème, daily crème…

Food

As soon as one of the grocery items is missing, a woman will immediately go to the store. Men go to the store only when there are no more eatable items left in the fridge, which are usually an old ketchup bottle and a stinky piece of cheese.

Shoes

A man wears only one pair of shoes all day long. A woman wears sports shoes in the morning. In her office, she pulls out high-heel shoes but takes them off as soon as she sits down, because it is “very painful being in them”.

Dressing up

A woman will dress nicely for every occasion, for grocery shopping, taking out the trash and even for watering the flowers on the balcony. A man will dress nicely only two times a year: family wedding, funeral.

Cats

Women LOVE cats. They absolutely adore them. Men only say that they love them, but they are really torturing them in different ways as soon as the woman is not watching.

Washing clothes

Every few days, a woman will wash some clothes. She will always find something dirty. A man will wash his clothes only after he had worn every single clean piece, including the jeans from high school.

Children

A true mother remembers the first burp, first words, first eaten apple, first tied shoelace… A father only knows that there are some creatures walking and crawling around the house that call him “dad”.

What? You think this is a bunch of bulls***? Maybe so, but when you think about it, you will notice that at least half of it is true