Now where did I put that shutdown procedure chart??

You have now arrived at my computer stuff page.  Being a computer science kinda person, I can't help but to like all of this stuff.

Hard Drivin'.  I OWN Hard Drivin' jointly with Chris Kennedy!  Since I was very young I have always dreamed of OWNING Hard Drivin', the arcade game.  Finally after waiting since 1989 when it came out, the thing is dirt cheap, so we could buy it.  When we got it, it was in pretty rough condition, but after many many hours of work, it is in nearly perfect condition.   Hard Drivin' is one of my favorite pastimes. 

    Other Arcade Games.  After buying the Hard Drivin' machine, my friends were in the mood to hook up with some additional arcade games.  They went out and picked up Paper Boy, Terra Cresta, and Galaga!!  I guess their electricity bill is gonna be pretty high now, but it's all worth it.  It is simply beyond cool to have all of these arcade games sitting around to go play at any time.... mu hwa hah haahaha.

Here is the latest addition to the arcade game collection:  XYBOTS

STADIUM SEATING!!

One of the coolest computer things I did this semester was the modification of my Xbox.  Unfortunately, I totally forgot my camera the day that we performed the mod, and I only got one picture later when we were swapping out the Xbox hard drive.

And here is Chris getting that teeny tiny 8 gig drive out of there.

Here is a clip directly after I successfully got everything soldered down the the motherboard.

<Clip>

I installed an Xecutor-2 chip and an 80 GB hard drive.  Now, I run my Xbox games off the hard drive, thus avoiding that annoying vibrating sound the DVD drive seems to make with every single disc.  I can also rip raw VOB files from DVD Video discs to store on the HD if I want.   I have also installed emulators for Arcade(MAME), Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Playstation, and N64 on it, so I have somewhat compressed all my old systems into one.  The most useful piece of software I have found is the Xbox Media Player.  It allows me to stream all sorts of media from my PC to my Xbox in the living room.  Movies, music, pictures, etc.  It supports lots of file formats.  It also does shoutcast streams.  Maybe I'll put Linux on it soon and run a web server.

Update:  I have acquired some pictures of the installation.

	First, we had to  remove the Xbox case.  Microsoft tried their best to hide the screws from us, in the end, we prevailed.  You can see my Xecutor-2 chip sitting on the desk beside me, along with assorted bits and pieces.
	The Xbox case and drives have now been removed, and I have made a nice mess of the table.  Time to dive in and yank that mobo.
	OK, I've got the motherboard out.  I had to add a pin header to the solder points near the top (the ones in the little white rectangle).  The Xecutor-2 plugs into that.  It is grounded on the screw hole just to the right of the pin header.  I also had to solder one really small wire on to a  really tiny spot on the motherboard.  You can't even see that spot in this picture.  This was the most difficult part by far.
	Finally, the chip is on the mobo and drives are back in place.  It took two tries, but my Xbox is now modded!