Recently I started to run low on space so I decided to buy a new hard drive and although the speed increase from the faster drive was a nice bonus I still felt like something was missing, oh thats right an HD ACTIVITY LIGHT APPLE! I can see Steve Jobs making this call while saying something along the lines of it distracting from the cleanliness of the design and he probably called it an obsolete feature stating most disks are constantly active with modern search indexing and background tasks blah blah, I obviously don’t agree with this and many others don’t agree either. Even if I didn’t find this useful in OSX I do dual boot Windows and sometimes I find myself saying “what the hell is this thing doing”, its nice to know if it is doing something or if the OS is hung up on a task. Anyway enough ranting let’s get into the mod. I wanted to keep everything stock looking so I needed a place to put the LED where it
iMac 2006 Core Duo to Core 2 Duo, Memory, Hard Drive Upgrade
Yes you can upgrade a weak old Core Duo iMac into a decent performing modern machine that will support the latest Mac OS and if your interested, allow you to program for the iPhone and iPad. Note: this isn’t for the faint hearted and later when I have more time I will revise this posting with more detail and I will break out the images from the gallery or add captions to the gallery photos to give a better understanding of what is going on in each photo. The first thing you need to do it open up the iMac, I really wish I would have read how to do this before attempting it on my own because there are two metal levers inside of the front bezel which you need to press to allow the bezel to release. I thought it was just being stubborn and since the metal is so thin I ended up bending it and eventually had to remove the metal framework to get the bezel to fit flush. This is the
Asus RT-N16 MMM pt.1 Fan Mod
The Asus RT N16, I found this router when I was looking for something to replace my D-Link DGL-4500 Gamer Lounge. Although the router was very expensive when I bought it and the flashy LCD sure looks nice it doesn’t actually perform all that well and if I disconnect my Sonicwall and try to use the router by itself it chokes out and locks up under heavy bit torrent load. I decided I would shop for something else and when I read the specs on this unit and the fact it could run DD-WRT I thought it sounded like a great deal. One problem is that it gets hot, very hot. In fact its underclocked to help it run cooler so there is hidden potential there that is being lost out on due to the heat issues. I decided I would mod the hell out of this thing through a series of articles and start with a simple fan mod. At first I thought I’d go with a super slim fan and hide it inside
Upgrade ZT MS-16362 to 4GB of RAM
This is a quick litle guide on upgrading a ZT model MS-16362 to 4GB of DDR-II Memory A.K.A. Ram. The laptop comes with 1-2GB of DDR depending on model but is capable of up to 4GB. How do we unlock this potential you ask? Simple, we upgrade the BIOS. Now hold your horses there little lassy, Before you go hoping over to the beautifully craptified and outdated ZT website I must worn you that just like the website, the BIOS is very outdated. So what do we do now? Well if you read my other post found here you will see a ZT MS-16362 is nothing more than an MSI 1636 (EX600). This is good because unlike ZT it appears MSI has kept their BIOS’s up to date. If you read this article I posted a while back you will see how I came to the conclusion that the ZT MS-16362 was capable of a 4GB memory upgrade. So how do we perform this black art voodoo magic you ask? Well its no voodoo or magic
Gas Grill Cooking Utensil / Utility Mod
We just purchased a new gas grill, The first one we ever purchased in fact. Believe it or not it was actually my wife who wanted it and it was her birthday gift to herself with the help of some money she received for her birthday, birthdays are great eh? So of course I came along and we checked all the local places like Meijer, Walmart, Home Depot, etc… We decided we really liked 2 different models at home depot. Originally she set a total budget of $300 which had to include accessories and propane. The propane was going to cost a bit more since we needed the tank as well and we wanted a new tank instead of a used one like most places sell / rent. So we found two we really liked but one of them was $250 and the other was $300 which would push us over our budget. The $250 was a Char-Broil 4 burner with a side burner, The $300 grill was a NexGrill which I never heard of
Upgrade your OEM Laptop or Desktop
You have an HP, Compaq, Dell, or a less known brand like ZT and your starting to envy your co-worker with that brand new laptop, the neighbor that just got the newest Dell deal for half of what you paid for your PC, yet it takes less power to run multiple apps then your PC does to run solitaire. Some computers are just as simple as logging on to the website and finding out what can be upgraded and how much. DavidOrlo.com isn’t another how to for dummies so let’s get into the more difficult upgrades. First and foremost we need to know what motherboard we are working with in that meager monster waiting to be unleashed. Sometimes this can be as simple as opening the case, other times we need to resort to a piece of software designed to give us such info. I myself almost always rely on the software, I can not count how many times I have opened a Compaq, E-machine, Nobilis and several others to find an Asus motherboard tucked
