Remembering My RootsI admit it: I'm a hacker. Not necessarily a great hacker but a hacker nevertheless.That admission is pretty recent. Until a year ago I would deny that what I was doing was hacking. Instead I would insist I was simply applying a creative solution to a problem or just improving the design of the object.That all changed last year when I found this book at OKGE:Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your WarrantyWhen I first saw the book, I leafed through it and realized that, not only could I do some of those hacks, I've already done a few of them! (Or, at least, hacks similar to what was printed in the book.) I bought the book and when I started reading it, old memories resurfaced. I remembered doing all sorts of hacks in my youth including hacks on my stereo equipement and computers. It was this book that inspired me, in part, to make the holders I mentioned earlier in this blog for my Namco systems.My First HackMy very first hack was back when I was twelve or thirteen years old. I found this old analog electric alarm clock at a garage sale and I modified it so that, when the alarm goes off, it turns on a radio, a light or whatever I plugged into the unit. The parts were simple: a relay, power socket, a couple switches and, of course, the clock. Except for the clock, all of the parts went into a aluminum box I acquired from a salvage yard. To make it look nicer, I covered the box with wood grain contact paper. The clock was connected to the box by a cable which supplied power to the clock and connected to the alarm trigger.The alarm normally worked like this: at the preset time, a latch released a thin metal strip that started vibrating loudly against the clock motor. To stop the alarm you pull a tab in the clock which pushed the metal strip away from the clock motor. I hacked the alarm by soldering a wire on the metal strip and soldering another wire to the motor case. I also bound a rubber band around the metal strip and clock motor so that the metal strip would make solid contact with the motor instead of vibrating.The hack worked quite well and I used it until my sophmore year in college. Sorry, I have no picture for it. I took it apart years ago and salvaged it for parts.Simple HacksIn college I replaced that old alarm clock with this tape deck:The tape deck had a great feature: it had a built in computer with an alarm clock. I just program the computer and at the desired time, it would turn on the tape deck and anything plugged into the power socket in the back of the deck. I used this feature a lot to record radio programs and record any albums they broadcast. Normally I had a light and radio hooked up and used it to wake me up every morning.One problem with the tape deck is the working lights were too bright. Not a problem normally but back in those days I wanted to listen to my music with the headphones on and the lights out. The lights from the tape deck were too bright to get in the mood.So I solved the problem by installing a simple switch:It was a simple hack but it saved me from a lot of grief.The tape deck worked great for about ten years until a couple power failures wrecked the computer. Fortunately, I still had my original hacked clock and I used that for a couple years until it finally died on me. Now I just use a regular alarm clock. :/ Perhaps I should build another hacked alarm clock.The radio I hooked up to my tape deck? It was from from my fathers office. He didn't need it anymore and he gave it to me. It worked pretty well but the sound from the internal speakers sucked. It didn't have external speaker plugs and so I hacked it! :)Here's a side shot of the radio:The stuff near the top is where I plugged the output of the tape deck. The squares below that are where the external speaker jacks used to be. I've since removed them for another hacking project.I performed another simple hack on the monitor for my first Atari ST. The sound from the speaker was lousy and so I drilled a hole in the monitor and connected a 1/4" headphone jack in the side:I had some external speakers from a tape recorder I bought a while back and connected them to the monitor. The sound was MUCH better! I performed a similar hack years earlier on an old B+W TV so that I could watch the TV with my headphones.Perhaps these simple hacks aren't much to brag about but they made my life easier at the time. They also remind me of how resourceful I was and recalling them is somewhat of an ego boast to me.These aren't all the hacks I've made, of course. I have many others to share and they are far more interesting then what I've shown already. These include hacks on my first Atari 400, my Timex-Sinclair computer and even on an old Big Trak tank I bought. Stay tuned.