Here is a simple and incredibly fun USB hack where you turn an old CPU into a hot plate for your coffee, tea or some liquid fragrance [in a dish].

This very useful USB hack can be done in 4 steps.

• Step 1) Tools and Materials

1. A dead CPU. (Ofcourse you can use a working one but it won’t be feasible.) 2. A USB cable 3. A Fan grill with screws. 4. Any box (I used a wooden tie box cover) 5. A rotary Tool (the best tool ever invented) 6. Epoxy 7. A creative artistic mind…[continute]

• Step 2) The Idea

A CPU will still have some working electronic circuits even if it stopped functioning probably. And this project will use the heat generated by running some Volts in the CPU through a USB cable.  First things first. Be Very Careful. Connecting a malfunctioning CPU to your computer may and will damage your computer’s ports or even worse. If you don’t have enough…[continue]

• Step 3) The Steps

First, prepare the base. You have to find a thin box or a box cover to use as the base of the plate. I used a tie box cover made of wood because it has the same thickness as my laptop. Now put the CPU over the base you picked and mark a square to drill with your rotary device. The square must be a little bit bigger than the CPU. The reason behind the bigger hole…[continue]

• Step 4) Preparing the hot plate

locate the ground pins in your CPU and that can be done by reviewing the CPU data sheet or simply by the devastating trial and error. Cut the USB wire and pass it through the hole you made previously in the base. Strip the USB cable and locate the black and red weirs (black wire = ground, Red wire = +5V). You can cut out the white and green data weirs for more space…[continue]

Clearly this tutorial is from Instructables…Thanks Eric!

MSN did a nice article today about 9 new tech gadgets you can make with the stash of old stuff you probably have laying around.  One which fits into the USB category, is this USB fan.

Retro and cool looking, you can put together a nice desk fan with just an old tower or power supply fan along with solder and USB connector.

Other new tech gear from old gadgets include a stone age cell phone tricked into a portable safe.  Scanner table where you can display items under the glass cover of the scanner and a USB mouse turned up-side-down and carved out for a plant holder.

Not the most impressive conversion, but a fun article to read on your break or lunch hour.

MSN 9 Uses for Dead Tech Gear…

iBin is a portable application designed for USB stick so users can restore files which have been accidentally deleted.  Since Windows does not redirect a deleted file off the OS into the Recycle Bin, once a user clicks delete, it’s gone forever [well unless you use restore tools to get it back], but iBin resolves that problem.

iBin puts your deleted files in a container on the USB drive itself and sits quietly until your custom flash drive gets to capacity, then you’ll need to do a bit of house cleaning.

iBin includes a collection of management features to set the preferences of the iBin.  Items such as confirmation of where to put the “deleted” file, iBin size, how to erase and when to dump the iBin data.

All in all, this is an excellent application for users to add one additional layer of safety for the delete button.

This is a Windows based product and runs on all OS’ from Microsoft, including Windows 7. (more…)

How To: Turn off USB Autoplay in Windows 7

Windows 7 is much like XP in accessing the feature to turn off the USB auto play function.  We don’t have a Window’s 7 machine, but I did find a great tutorial from DemoGeek.  Here is the info you need to turn off USB Auto Play in Windows 7.

Go to:  START > SEARCH > type “group policy”

From there Windows 7 will narrow down your options, select the “Edit group policy” option.  Should be the first one listed.

From here, it’s virtually the same as Windows XP.

Go to:
> COMPUTER CONFIGURATION
> ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES
> WINDOWS COMPONENTS
> AUTOPLAY POLICIES

With having “AutoPlay Policies” highlighted, you will see on the right side of the dialogue box, “Turn off Autoplay” option.  Click That!

On the dialogue box which pops up, select the “Disable” radial button to (more…)

How to turn off autoplay XP home edition for USB flash drives.

Windows XP Home edition requires a different method to turn off the USB autoplay function than XP Professional [which we reported on earlier].

It’s not difficult to turn off the USB autoplay, just a couple easy steps.

Note:  We are going into the Registry so be careful not to do anything other than what we suggest.

Got to>  START > RUN > type “regedit“

Navegate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER
+ software
+ Microsoft
+ Windows
+ CurrentVersion
+ Policies
+ Explorer

**The “+” are the registry hives you must expand.

Now click the + Explorer directory just once so it is blue.  On the right side you will see “NoDriveTrypeAutoRun“

Right click that and Select “Modify“

Here you most likely have b5 listed in the “Value data” field.  Simply replace that value with 95.

Click OK.

Close out of the Registry and reboot your machine.  Done!

Last week we posted an article for Windows 7 users to download a utility to make a bootable USB recovery stick.  Well, looks like that feature is [temporarily] gone.

So what gives?

It appears Microsoft lifted some GPL code to make their ImageMaster tool for bootable USBs.  Interesting.

We posted how you could make your own nt60 USB recovery stick.  Check it out.

From eWeek here is a bit of detail: (more…)

USB Tutorial:  How to create a bootable USB stick with the specific nt60 book sector required for Microsoft Vista.

Before we begin the USB tutorial on nt60 boot sector you’ll need to review the check list of items needed before you start.  Chances are, if you find yourself searching for this tutorial, you already have everything needed to make a USB bootable with nt60 boot sector.

• 4GB flash drive will do the trick
• Your Vista installation disk
• Set BIOS to boot from a USB device

When selecting your flash drive be sure there is nothing you need on the device as this process to create a nt60 boot sector will clean the drive of all data.

1. Put your Vista disk into the optical drive, if the autorun starts, close it all down and exit without performing any tasks.
2. Plug in your USB stick which you want to make bootable with nt60.
3. Open into the Command prompt.  [you will need Admin rights]
4. Type ‘diskpart‘ and press Enter
   
5. Now type ‘list disk‘ and press Enter  All the storage devices connected to your computer will be displayed, make sure the size of the Disk you plan to select is the USB flash drive you intend to use!
   
6. Now type ‘select disk [number here]‘  In this example I typed

(more…)