Fresh off the tips line, [Jake] sent in his portable NES project. We've seen quite a few portables, but we love that the entire thing is built into an old NES cartridge. It's got 99 games and some clever control placement. Three N cells nestled in the former connector slot power the system. You can see more pic over at [Ben Heck]'s forum.

The Nintendo DS homebrew scene is heading into a heavily musical interlude with a few new apps. This is good news for anyone who liked Protein DScratch but wanted more options and functionality. More information after the break.

The people at Division 6 have begun selling Midify, a board that add a MIDI port to an DS and many other Nintendo handhelds. The board has 12 outputs, plus two for power and two for the MIDI port. Configuration and mapping are also very simple. This is the same board that was used to add MIDI control to a microwave.

[via Matrixsynth]

Ben Heck has just wrapped up his latest project, a portable Atari 7800. He had meant to do this a long time ago, but lacking experience, the complex looking circuit board scared him off. It features a seven inch display, rechargeable batteries, combination driving and paddle controllers, plus AV out. The console was built by request and just like his other pojects: he's not shy about showing you how it's put together. Look for a making-of coming soon.

TomToms have been getting pretty cheap. We like 'em because they're nice and hackable. This diy docking station was made from some etched PCBs, a bunch of male pin headers and a bit of hot glue.

[PKM] decided to breathe new life into a Psion 5mx handheld. He slapped linux on it, added a wikipedia dump to a CD card, and voila: pocket wikipedia. It's the closest thing to an actual hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy I've ever seen. So long and thanks for all the fish!

Let the how-to's begin: [Ben Heck] put up the first installment of his how-to series on making your own PS3 laptop. Since this one is all about the tear down, you might dig the PS3 design even if you're not interested in making your own portable.

[bunnie] is one of the main people behind the Chumby, and even he can't resist modding the things. He decided to outfit one with a larger LCD - using a stereo microscope to do the really fine pitch work - and a laser cutter to create a custom bezel for the finished piece. The new LCD is still a touchscreen and allows the Chumby to display 640x480 resolution over the stock 320x240. The mod requires a few parts, but the ultimate difficulty is caused by the surface mount connectors. If you'd rather have some software fun, you might want to check out [bunnie]'s Chumby wifi sniffer.

[Jim] sent in this interesting laptop modding project. He started with a Spectrum ZX and a Toshiba Libretto 110. The libretto kept its brains, but the lower case and keyboard was replaced with the ZX hardware. Since both machines use matrix style keyboards (but different matrix layouts) he was able to create a passive adapter circuit to match things up.

[Dev] sent in an interesting blog series on hacking Amazon's kindle. [Igor] has documented getting a console, the bootloader and more. Even if you don't have a Kindle to hack on, it's a good overview of hacking similar devices. He used a cell phone cable to build his interface, but I suggest getting familiar with the MAX232 family of semiconductors for cheap rs-232 to ttl converters.

[dgoeken] sent in his Magellan 3100 hack. The device runs Windows CE 5.0, and mounts as a standard flash drive. Since everything is easily accessible, it's just a matter of replacing and modifying the appropriate files. According to the GpsPassion message board, some are finding his guide useful for other models of Magellan GPS. So far he's added a file manager, media player and upgraded the Points of Interest file. The site is slightly bandwidth challenged, so I've mirrored his hack process here.

Yesterday, I was standing on a tropical island off the coast of Belize. Vacation rocked with lots of SCUBA diving, spearfishing and snorkeling. I'm back home, shaking off the jet lag and clearing up my inbox. Thanks to [fabienne] for filling in and letting me unplug for a while!

[Darkrom] has set a new standard for Hack-A-Day readers... I haven't seen it in person, but that looks like a legit Hack-A-Day tattoo.

[null] sent in a new use for a frequency generator, a spare car amp, a sub-woofer and a plastic coffee can - brass cartridge polishing.

[LoopyMind] sent in this Game Boy Advanced Movie Player IDE hack. It's pretty much a direct CF to laptop drive cable with an external battery supply.

[Dingolishious] sent in a POE UPS/remote power control solution. Could be handy if you're using many POE devices, or if you're having power issues. He added an inexpensive remote power monitor/switch solution behind his UPS. It senses power outages and kicks out an email - and allows remote power cycling of his POE devices. Of course, if you've got a linux box behind the UPS, it can monitor the output from the UPS and send notifications.

[William] added a preamp stage to his iKEY usb recorder. looks like an interesting toy - it'll record audio directly to a USB flash key. The pre-amp allows him to record in more challenging environments.

[Andrew] noted a simple mod to increase the deadly fire power of the ubiquitous airsoft pellet gun. It's just a matter of reducing some extra space in the spring compression area.

Last but not least, [VIPER] modded his projector to use a 12v halogen headlight bulb. Not a bad idea - at one point I was pondering a 550 watt source four halogen as a possible replacement.

Figuring out the JTAG pinout on a device turns out to be the most time consuming hardware portion of many hacks. [hunz] started a project called JTAG Finder to automatically detect the JTAG pinouts on arbitrary devices using an 8bit AVR ATmega16/32L microcontroller. Check out the slides (PDF) from the talk as they break down how one finds JTAG ports on an arbitrary device, with or without a pinout detection tool. [hunz] is looking for people to pick up the project where he left off.

Once you determine the correct pinout, you will need a JTAG cable: there are two main types, buffered and unbuffered, both of which I have soldered up and tested from these circuit diagrams (image of completed buffered cable here). The software most hardware people use today are the openwince JTAG Tools. To get the JTAG Tools to compile, grab the latest source directly from their CVS repository.

The last time we featured JTAG was with regards to Linksys devices, but the tools listed above can be applied to any device with JTAG.

I wasn't going to post this - it's a freakin phone after all. But I've gotten quite a few tips on it, and I'd like them to end. [George] made a concerted effort to hack the iPhone - and it paid off. After his crazy ebay auction that topped out at 99,999,999.99 last time I checked, he ended up trading his first phone for a Nissan 350z and a few more iPhones.
He documented his process, step by step - if you've got the skills, you can probably do it yourself. The soldering work is damn fine work - probably the hardest thing there is. The write up is a little hard to follow, so plan on taking some time to comprehend everything. (Blogging software isn't the best way to organize how-tos, trust me on this.) My hats off to [George], he did some great work. - So, why didn't I want to post it? All this work yielded one thing: carrier choice for the iPhone.

[krazywhiteguy310] let me know about the announcement of Pandora's battery. It'll cost you a Sony PSP battery to pull off the hack, but once you're done, you can use it to jump start your bricked PSP to load up a memory imaged designed to unbrick the PSP. (I haven't tested it, so I'm taking this on faith) Excellent news if you've bricked your PSP.