RE: LATERAL THINKING WITH WITHERED TECHNOLOGY Solderpunk wrote about "withered technology", AKA "seasoned technology", or, less romantically, probably what's more widely called "mature technology" and in turn repurposing old tech for new fun. He asked for examples and I wrote down a list but haven't found time to write about it. Ironically mainly because I've been busy in the evenings putting the finishing touches on my mother's overdue Christmas present which is actually kind-of a good example of the idea since it's made from bits of a particularly unwanted piece of recently-modern technology. But since I eventually want to write about that on my website associated with my real identity, I'll have to skip that here. gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~solderpunk/phlog/lateral-thinking-with-withered-technology.txt Agk also responded to Solderpunk's post: gopher://sdf.org/0/users/agk/phlog/2026-04-14-lat.txt Games consoles These were the topic where Solderpunk started. I use a Playstation 2 hacked to run Simple Media System to watch videos downloaded from the internet on my (old CRT) TV. They even sold nice remote controls for it (I bought one for peanuts at a second-hand store) so it's very convenient, and the player software is much better (besides some bugs) than the junk you get on TVs and set top boxes. The only issue is that the weak CPU (it can't use the decoders built into the GPU) means all video needs to be converted to old codecs and lower resolutions, but that's convenient for my using other old software anyway, and it's tidy having everything in the same format in my video collection. Similar things can be done with a hacked original Xbox. I guess maybe later game consoles even have video players built in as standard now? There's also homebrew software for the Nintendo DS for playing videos, music, and even browsing the web. Though the latter doesn't support HTTPS so it's not much use these days. The touch screen and stylus bypasses the issue of not being able to connect a keyboard. Routers Install OpenWRT on one of these and you've basically got a Raspberry Pi type device with faster networking. Many models have USB, and the IO outputs connected to lights on the front panel can often be software controlled, so used like RPi GPIO outputs. They also come in a great case, so less temptation to leave exposed circuit boards hanging precariously from their power cables. I use a router running OpenWRT connected to a mobile broadband modem to run the FireText service which checks for fires within a defined area and sends SMS alerts about them. A job the government can't be trusted to do reliably. gopher://aussies.space/1/~freet/firetext One issue is they're really quite power hungry compared to the RPi Zeros, which often also have better CPU/RAM specs. Also my constant issue is that the models found cheap/free second-hand in Australia are never supported by OpenWRT. There's just one old ISP-supplied model which with enough effort was working until they removed it as a build target (2025-06-23OpenWRT_Surgery.txt), plus maybe one other one I got which turns out to use the same chipset. Smartphones There's a mountain of these that are junk since 3G was turned off. Unfortunately they're hell software-wise since unlike video game consoles there's so much variation between models that even if you do find a naughty way to get your own OS on there, it probably won't have drivers to do anything like talk to the internet or use the USB, or maybe even display on the screen. But given the latter two issues are sorted out, I've wondered about connecting one of the USB SDR devices (or cheap USB TV receivers that can often be found second-hand) and get the RTL-SDR (etc.) software to run on them so you can use and old smartphone as a radio listening set (ideally with an up-coverter for the TV sticks so they can recieve lower frequencies than VHF). I'm not sure if they have enough processing power to decode digital radio with the open-source software (which is very slow), but at least for ananlogue reception it would work. OK I just _can't_ write posts quickly. I'm away for the weekend to visit my mother (hence the rush over finally finishing the present), so I'll just dot point the rest. Maybe someone will figure out what I mean: * Pepper's ghost 3D display (look it up) built from an old tablet etc. * People used to build plotters and CNC machines out of old dot-matrix printers. Just using the stepper motors from them really. I was incredibly impressed by one of these I saw as a kid, controlled by an old MS-DOS PC. * Ahh, if I ever got around to the last one I'll probably want to talk about it on my website then too... Some ideas already recorded (although not implemented): * Wireless SD cards have facinated me since they were new, but I've still never found one cheap second hand: gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/ideas/2020-02-29WiFi_Leach_Server.txt * Not really rechnology repurposing, but repurposing a technology-adjacent object: gopher://aussies.space/0/~freet/ideas/2020-05-22CD_Tower_VU_Meter.txt - The Free Thinker This post, as usual, posted from my very "withered" thirty year old desktop PC.