Customer Reviews

Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While this book might not have helped Kevin Mitnick evade the FBI (contrary to the brazen front cover citation), it will help you to earn the respect of your techie and non-technical friends alike.

Hardware Hacking is an inspiring handbook of hardware modifications. It's pages are filled with step-by-step photos, labeled illustrations and reference material (there's even an intro-to-programming section in the back!) You'll learn how to change the battery in your IPOD (and save yourself the costly service charge), to get stereo sound from your old Atari 2600 and to upgrade the memory on your palm. It's a great repository of handy hardware projects for experimenters of all levels.

Chapter three (page 47), for instance, describes how to "declaw" a CueCat. For those in the know, a CueCat is a special barcode scanner Radio Shack used to give away (to motivate signing up for a paid-service.) Some time later, the CueCat company folded and hackers discovered how to modify the scanner to scan ordinary barcodes. I sent off a few emails to friends until I rounded up a couple old CueCats (eBay sells them for a couple of dollars.) A few cuts with an Exacto knife and a little soldering later, I was the proud owner of an unencrypted output barcode scanner. I then used Amazon's API to barcode enable the open-source software program OpenBiblio. Now, when I get a new book, I simply swipe the CueCat across the bar code and instantly OpenBiblio retrieves all of the book details such as the name, title, summary, author and even a photo of the cover. That information is then stored away nicely into a searchable database. It's been a great way to manage my growing library of books - all thanks to a hacked CueCat.

If you are interested in "going under the hood" of your electronic equipment, then this book might well be up your alley. It's light reading, and the explanations are very clear. Have fun hacking!

The subtitle about voiding your warranty is only half joking, if even that. Most of the projects/hacks described will probably do just that.

To the tinkerer in you, perhaps the best allure of the book is the chance of serendipity. Surely some hacks will not be of interest, or not relevant to you. The latter may be in part because the authors provide hacks for a wide range of hardware; from a recent Playstation 2 to the venerable Atari 5200 (which dates from 1982) to 802.11 to an iPod and others. So if you lack an iPod, say, and have no intention of getting one, then the chapter on it may be purely theoretical. But the sheer range of hardware increases the odds that there will be somethings to pique your fancy.

The final chapter sticks out. It is not a hack but the modicum of programming. A minimal walkthrough to let you get the gist. But if you find that this chapter is new to you, perhaps you should either pick a hack that does not require it, or consult a programming book for more comprehensive coverage.

The 8 (!) authors and presumably you seem to be hardware fanatics.

I received this book today and can only say "Wow!" This book embodies the true meaning of hacking, a term that has been used and abused for so long it's TRUE meaning has been completely distorted.

Joe Grand, and the other authors, have taken many everyday items that many of us have laying around the house and demonstrated ways to modify and improve them...this is hacking.

Moreover, after reading this book and trying some or all of the hacks out, you will want to start investigating other items you have that could possibly be modified and improved.

A book that both informs AND stimulates thought? Absolutely. Finally, authors that understand what hacking is, and aren't afraid to admit it...in fact, they embrace it.

Five stars, an absolutley fantastic read.

The title explains it all: how to get your hardware to do things it wasn't designed to do. This is a really cool book, a very interesting read, and a primer in basic electronics. It covers topics as varied as how to install a bigger hard drive in your iPod, how to add more memory to your PalmPilot, and how to build your own media center PC. But the book gets into some really interesting modifications, like re-housing your old Macintosh into an entirely Lego case, updating the audio and video outputs of your Atari 2600 system, and how to make your Atari 7800 play 2600 games.

Since you're dealing with sensitive electronics, which damage very easily, the theme carried through this book is "do not have fear". Once you overcome any fear about damaging any of your equipment, these hacks become very entertaining and a good way to pass the time. Moreover, if your hack is actually successful, you've got something to brag about to your buddies. What's more, the various hacks covered will provide the skill to move to increasingly complex projects.

The book begins with a very useful introduction to basic electronics. You learn the difference between capacitors, transistors, resistors, etc. The chapter then proceeds to discuss the basics of soldering and other electronics basics.

This is a very fun book to read, and it contains a lot of fun projects. If you like taking things apart and have no fear, this is a book you certainly want to get your hands on.

When I ordered this book, I planned to give it to my little brother in the hopes of interesting him in the delightful world of hardware hacking. I didn't expect it to contain anything I hadn't picked up doing E&M research for MIT, or engineering research for the Air Force. However, the things in the book were surprisingly advanced, even for people with experience. There are many excellent ways to kill time in here, and they can even turn out to be useful. They are explained clearly and presented without being intimidating, which makes it perfect for the motivated beginner as well. If you have the basic equipment and the drive, this book is great for you!

The book contains 15 amazing projects that range from the truly useful to the legendary and wacky. You'll learn how to connect toasters and coffeemakers to a network; upgrade radio-controlled cars and talking toys such as the Furby; and build car-mounted periscopes and home video arcades. You'll see how to turn a classic Mac machine into an aquarium and harness ordinary batteries to power your laptop. You'll learn how to build an intruder-detection system for your office cubicle and how to track remote objects as they move around. There's even a project for hacking a 12-story building to use its windows as elements of a huge display screen.

Each project includes step-by-step instructions that even a novice hacker can follow, while also providing the necessary detail to satisfy an experienced hacker. The knowledge gained by building each project can easily be applied to your own projects. If you are unfamiliar with basic electronics, you'll find sections that teach you how to use the tools of the trade; you'll also learn how to read schematics and do basic soldering.

So, whether you're an electronics hobbyist who likes to learn by doing, a software hacker who wants to learn how the other half lives, or a neophyte who has only dreamed of hacking, "Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks" will inspire you to tinker with all kinds of gadgets and gizmos, and will serve as a jumping-off point for new and clever hacks.

If you're the hard-core type that likes to take things apart and "fix" them, you'll like Hardware Hacking: Having Fun While Voiding Your Warranty by Joe Grand (Syngress). Your discarded toys will never be quite the same again.

Chapter list: Tools of the Warranty Voiding Trade; Electrical Engineering Basics; Declawing Your CueCat; Case Modification: Building a Custom Terabyte FireWire Hard Drive; Macintosh; Home Theater PCs; Hack Your Atari 2600 and 7800; Hack Your Atari 5200 and 8-Bit Computer; Hacking the PlayStation 2; Wireless 802.11 Hacks; Hacking the iPod; Can You Hear Me Now? Nokia 6210 Mobile Phone Modifications; Upgrading Memory on Palm Devices; Operating Systems Overview; Coding 101; Index

The first thing to know about this book is that it isn't a beginner's volume. There is some serious hardware modifications going on here. You should be comfortable with electrical theory, devices such as resistors and capacitors, and tools like soldering irons. Also, I'd recommend that you don't try these things on primary devices. I'd say there's a decent chance you could damage it trying some of these tricks. But having said all that, you'll enjoy the book if you meet the above qualifications.

Since I'm not a major hardware geek, I don't know that I could do many of these mods. One of the mods that would be useful even to non-geeks is the chapter on the iPod. You will learn how to replace the battery and how to upgrade the hard drive on your earlier generation iPods, and you don't even need to be that handy. That tip alone would probably pay for the cost of the book. Each hack is very well illustrated with excellent photos and instructions, so you don't feel like you're reading assembly instructions written by something that was run through an automatic translator.

So if you have some old video game consoles gathering dust in the basement, pull them out and see what you can do with them using this book. You'll end up being the envy of all your geeky friends. :-)

I bought this book for the "Electrical Engineering Basics" chapter and the HTPC chapter. The other ones, like modifying the NES controller for use on an Atari, I do find interesting but could just as easily find online. The HTPC chapter is the main reason I purchased the book and one of the two chapters I have read so far: it does however have one rather important omission. If you have a cable provider that requires a cable box (or satellite) you will need an "IR Blaster" (a device that sits under your cable box/receiver directly in line of the remote receiver, relaying any and all buttons pushes like channel changes and volume adjustments) to change channels at a particular time to record for instance. As it stands the HTPC described wouldn't do a whole lot of good for the desired purpose.

To clarify a post by a prior reviewer the hack in this book is not to make the Atari 7800 backwards compatible with the 2600 (the 7800 already is) but rather to make a few select games which for various reasons don't work on the 7800 compatible (there's a rather concise explanation explaining this in the chapter).

I was so [mad] at Apple for their iPod battery replacement policy, that I decided to replace it myself. You can get the batteries cheap from lots of different places. I'm pretty good at tinkering with things but I was worried that I might really do damage to my iPod. I was totally psyched when i saw this book covered how to replace the battery on your own. I had found a couple of pretty cheesy things on the internet, but nothing like this. The photos are really detailed and professional looking and the instructions are incredibly clear. I got the book just for the battery thing, but there's lots of other very cool stuff for the iPod in there. I've also now build my own home theater PC system using a lot of the info. from this book.

The title is somewhat misleading since theres a fair amount of console repairing information here. The actual hacking information ranges from simple controller rewiring to completely gutting a pc. The chapters done by the main author are very indepth and maybe out of reach of some but the author knows his subject. The chapters concerning the Atari systems though are quite the opposite. All the information presented has already been published by others before or has been available online for free for years, and the author seems more concerned about promoting his website and selling homemade games. Overall there isn't much information here that is new to justify the price but it's a nice compilation with plenty of nice pictures.