Post your "Ghetto Mod" pics

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So I sold my car and kept the stereo stuff. To big to fit in my truck so I decided I needed a bigger and better sub for my home. Yes I do have a DC converter, but it outputs only 3 amps. I have a couple old PC PSUs laying around and they output more power. So this came into being. 12" pioneer sub and an Orion Cobalt 230 amp bridged. PSU came out of an old Dell.





Works pretty good. Have it plugged into a power strip so I can turn it on/off. Gonna hunt around for my crossover to have cleaner sounding bass. Yes that's for automotive stereos as well. I am going to have to build an enclosure for it sometime. There is a rattle somewhere during lower frequencies when I turn up the volume.
 
putting my old 580 in the wifes computer... it's an htpc case so I had to do a few mods to get it to fit. one of which is this:

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there wasn't enough room for the panel to go back on with the card plugs being on the side. so i just took each individual wire, removed it from the connector and placed it on the appropriate pin taping each in place.
 
OK, this is worthy of some food stamps because you used electrical tape and disassembled a perfectly good connector. $$$ food stamps for you.
 
putting my old 580 in the wifes computer... it's an htpc case so I had to do a few mods to get it to fit. one of which is this:

there wasn't enough room for the panel to go back on with the card plugs being on the side. so i just took each individual wire, removed it from the connector and placed it on the appropriate pin taping each in place.

That is horrifying and may actually cause a fire. Great work! I give you 3 food stamps! :p
 
Friend gave me a Compaq Notebook 100... free. Which is about what it's worth. AMD K6-2/475ACK CPU, 96mb PC100 RAM (32 on mobo + 64 on a stick) and an NiMH battery (not kidding!). Just barely new enough to allow booting from CD...

Also the prior owner was very very desperate indeed because the Win98 SE install that it has a key for on the back... got replaced at some point with XP Pro!

Why am I bringing this relic up? Because I had a pair of Infineon PC133 256mb RAM sticks... a little research indicated that this laptop uses a VIA Apollo MVP4 chipset... which can run PC133, but only at 100MHz. So I went to stick one of the sticks in there, and discovered why Compaq had used a low-profile PC100 stick... it didn't /quite/ fit... there were a pair of screw posts in the way. So I used an X-Acto to shave a few mm off the posts so that I could shoehorn the RAM in. It worked -- but I was very lucky that I didn't sever a mobo trace in the process!

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that is taking ghetto to a whole new...dangerous...level

yes, it makes me nervous... considering hot glue as a possible replacement for electrical tape but i think it might make its way inside the connector causing it to lose connection with the pin.

i'm open to any suggestions less dangerous than electrical tape!

edit: perhaps i could cut the shroud a bit to make room for wires, remove the connector from the card, cut the pins so they are straight, solder each wire to the pins, then cover in hot glue to avoid contact with each other....
 
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An individually sleeved extension cables may be flexible enough for your use case.

Otherwise I suppose you could replace the headers on the video card with vertical variants, assuming that your soldering skills are up to the task. (Do note, the PCIe power headers have thick pins, these will require more than your basic irons to desolder.)

You could also modify connector housings to make cables such as shown in the link above. (It looks like that is all that seller did.) Parts for this are readily available. (Unfortunately, I am unable to find a right angle connector housing to do this without modification.)

Lastly, hot glue is used liberally in electronics to keep things in place. I'd not be overly worried about the glue preventing an electrical connection, especially with the crimp ends in place on the wires. (You didn't remove the crimp ends, right?) There also exists liquid electrical "tape" which may work better than the standard tape for protecting the ends. All this being said, you are still talking about a sketchy workaround.
 
Maybe this? I know it's more than zero dollars, but... yea... 'lectrical fires... not good times.

the plastic housing is what's sticking out too far. that doesn't seem to offer a shorter housing at all, only sideways wires...
 
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putting my old 580 in the wifes computer... it's an htpc case so I had to do a few mods to get it to fit. one of which is this:

snip...

there wasn't enough room for the panel to go back on with the card plugs being on the side. so i just took each individual wire, removed it from the connector and placed it on the appropriate pin taping each in place.

Okay, that's really ghetto and quite possibly dangerous. It looks like that card has a back plate. Take it off and desolder the connector. then solder the wires directly into it.

Don't use it like that. I actually fear for your life. 580's were not exactly nice to power connectors anyways...
 
Maybe this? I know it's more than zero dollars, but... yea... 'lectrical fires... not good times.

looks like they cut a hole in the standard connector and then sharply bent the cables.
ghetto yes, but sold for $$ on an auction site :rolleyes:

edit:
ghetto modding sold for $$ :(

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looks like they cut a hole in the standard connector and then sharply bent the cables.
ghetto yes, but sold for $$ on an auction site :rolleyes:

edit:
ghetto modding sold for $$ :(

Yea... However, if you're not gonna do it "the right way" yourself, then someone else's relatively clean ghetto mod might not be a bad idea. I'm very leery of things that involve high voltage with the possibility of shorts in combination with expensive components, etc. Not a good idea at all.
 
12V is not "high" the danger is the ability of the supply to deliver significant current into a short there

that ebay deal is awesome, ghettomod as a cottage industry
 
i'm just going to take out the tape and use heat shrink on each wire instead... seems the simplest solution....
 
Did my first mobo cap repair the other day. Learned that Dell uses high temp solder. "Fuck you, Dell!" (I've said /that/ before...) At some point I tugged a little too hard on one cap, and it came out with the legs in the board.

Wound up drilling them out.

Wound up building a drill to get them out... 1/32" bit (a little large -- but a 1/64 would be a bit small, I think -- anyone got a 3/128" bit around somewhere? that'd be just about perfect... :p )

Drill image here --> http://i.imgur.com/R14DtIz.jpg

That's a Craftsman motor/gearbox/chuck assembly. From a mid Nineties 6v rechargeable drill. You know the one. Black, five pretty lousy NiCDs inside. Wall wart for charging, that's almost certainly to be an unregulated example. Cheap as dirt. (FWIW, it also came in a 7.2v version...) The wire is speaker wire. The batteries are well labeled, and their holders are Radio Shack -- as is the "flip switch". (@ Radio Shack -- a toggle switch with a plastic toggle is still a toggle switch. Go home, Radio Shack, you're drunk.) Food container is "Great Value" from Wal*Mart. (Great Value is neither. Trust me.)

Johnson Electric makes some good shit. The batteries blew up and leaked all over the guts of that drill. There was literally nothing salvageable except for the motor/gearbox/chuck assembly. Even the WIRES were shot...
 
Easiest way to change caps is to yank them off and solder the new ones onto the legs of the old ones :D
 
I'm not that good. Besides, Dell uses caps with short ass legs.

Besides besides, how am I supposed to get to the front side of the legs, from the back side of the board?!

Nope, sorry, doesn't work for me.

Also, fuck Dell and their weird ass stupid shit.
 
So, this is a little ghetto. A friend of mine has a Dell XPS laptop that the fan died on. After a little research, we discovered that the fan header on the motherboard has gone bad. Not wanting to spend any money, we decided to power the fan off of one of the USB ports in the laptop. Here are the results.

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So, this is a little ghetto. A friend of mine has a Dell XPS laptop that the fan died on. After a little research, we discovered that the fan header on the motherboard has gone bad. Not wanting to spend any money, we decided to power the fan off of one of the USB ports in the laptop. Here are the results.
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That's pretty impressive actually. Only thing better would be soldering into a 12v line somewhere (possibly right off the psu connection), but then it'd probably be noisy...
 
this is my modded Zalman Z1 mic with my Panasonic DJ 100 headphones , i was suffering using the USB headset " in the team speak i had a lot of issues on them " the static noises also issue in the sound so i decide to buy a new Mic and use the old head set that i have , also using my Asus xonar d1 sound card , i play and record events also stream on the twitch with out any problem.

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I see you used a piece of wire, ty-raps and tape. I give you 4.5 food stamps.
 
4.5 food stamps => its hard for you to be - means its cards hard cards now ;)
 
@waseem I love it! Top work there

By the way here is my failed ghetto mod for today. I wanted to make a variable speed controller for my drill and other tools using a dim switch.
http://i1.minus.com/ibgru4mj7V6Jfm.JPG
http://i4.minus.com/i1mNBGiWOGjRC.jpg
Unfortunately the damn thing didn't work as I hoped for. It either stalls the motor or still rotates too fast in a inconsistent manner. So from the get go it wont spin, but once it spins you can then slow it down after it builds momentum. Either way it's no better than me using the trigger so I will see if I can just buy a voltage regulator and see if the current can be smoothed out nicely. Hopefully there is something out there that doesn't cost more than 30$ and it can provide a smooth consistent power, rather than jumping up and down on a fully pressed button.

Sucks really as I got lots of holes to drill and I'm wearing out holding it with one hand while the other is operating the button.
 
An off brand variable speed dremmel might do well. I'm not sure what they go for used, but that might be do-able for about $30
 
Additional food stamps because the mod wasn't even really necessary?

That Zalman mic is designed to clip right to the headphone cable. He literally could have just press-fit it onto the existing wire >_>
 
I receive this embarrassment of a laptop for spares as it had power problem. Switch it on and after 2-3 seconds shuts down. Started to dissassemble the whole thing to see if I can pin point the problem and I found it's the motherboard. Without stripping any major components just for a laugh I chucked it in the oven at 200c and the black smoke started coming out. After 10min of baking took it off, noticed the 3v battery is missing and the PCMCIA? has melted.
http://i.imgur.com/8Bk6fBq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tvmNcih.jpg
Found out half of the battery but the rest is mystery
http://i.imgur.com/xVKGjmh.jpg
Never the less I decided to reconnect it all together and power it on. Unbelievable, it didn't shut down and Windows booted normally
http://i.imgur.com/KBqle7M.jpg
Next step was to take the hammer and make that PCMCIA slot presentable as the melted plastic jammed it shut. Turns out it's bolted so after 4 screws everything looked good.

See you in next episode!
 
I receive this embarrassment of a laptop for spares as it had power problem. Switch it on and after 2-3 seconds shuts down. Started to dissassemble the whole thing to see if I can pin point the problem and I found it's the motherboard. Without stripping any major components just for a laugh I chucked it in the oven at 200c and the black smoke started coming out. After 10min of baking took it off, noticed the 3v battery is missing and the PCMCIA? has melted.
http://i.imgur.com/8Bk6fBq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tvmNcih.jpg
Found out half of the battery but the rest is mystery
http://i.imgur.com/xVKGjmh.jpg
Never the less I decided to reconnect it all together and power it on. Unbelievable, it didn't shut down and Windows booted normally
http://i.imgur.com/KBqle7M.jpg
Next step was to take the hammer and make that PCMCIA slot presentable as the melted plastic jammed it shut. Turns out it's bolted so after 4 screws everything looked good.

See you in next episode!

I was beginning to wonder what was ghetto till I got to the part about the battery. I've baked 4 video cards and an xbox 360 in my oven. Good times. Welcome to the baking club, we hold sales every so often.
 
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