Noobero Uno

I recently bought a broken Guitar Hero X-Plorer guitar on Ebay for $23 hoping to be able to fix it. After plugging it in, the Xbox wouldn’t turn on. This scared me a great deal to say the least. I looked at the power supply and the light was red instead of the usual orange. It had detected a fault and was protecting the console.

Knowing it was a problem with the power, I narrowed the problem down to two things. Either the USB cable was broken internally or the previous owner spilled liquid on the controller. Lucky for me it was the USB cable, an extremely simple fix. The +5 (red) wire was broken right were it starts to come out of the guitar, most likely due to the previous owner wrapping the cable around the controller.

If your X-Plorer controller isn’t working there is a good chance this is the problem. If you want to be sure, test each end of the USB cable with a multimeter. If this is the problem, all you have to do is cut the bad part of the USB cable out and reconnect the two good parts. The bad part will most likely be the thick rubber part coming out of the guitar.

To connect the two good pieces of the cable back together, twist the wires together, solder them, then use heat shrink tubing to cover the exposed part of the wire (you can also use electrical tape, but heat shrink tubing would be best). You also need to twist the outer part of the two good pieces together and solder them. Use electrical tape to cover anything that is exposed (should only be the outer part of the cable at this point).  When finished, use zip-ties to make sure the electrical tape stays put and to keep the wire from moving around.

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This years Comic-Con was an amazing site. I haven’t been to the convention in over ten years and things have changed quite a bit. The last time I went there were about 15,000 people, this year there were 125,000 people! That is an insane amount of people for a comic convention. I actually planned on buying a few things but the amount of people was so overwhelming, I ended up wandering around for hours never even seeing anything I planned on buying. I ended up spending $12 total.

Since I wasn’t spending much, I decided to try to get as many free promotional things as I could. I’m usually pretty laid back, but apparently when people are handing out free junk I turn into an excited little kid. Every time I saw a booth giving away something decent, I plowed my way over to claim my item having no regard for kids, moms, or other nerds.

As if going to a comic convention isn’t nerdy enough, I spent the majority of the time at the video game booths. I tried a lot of games,  many of which aren’t out yet. I was going to buy most of these anyway, but getting to see them in person sealed the deal.

Puzzle Fighter HD - plays as expected; I didn’t spend a lot of time with it.

Contra DS - I thought the gap in between the dual screens would be annoying but it didn’t cause any problems with the game.

Castle Crashers (360) – I didn’t play it much. It plays smoother than Alien Hominid. Support The Behemoth.

The Eye of Judgment (PS3) – Never even played it but I must have it.

Anyway, enough of my rambling, here are a few pictures of the event.

  

  

  

 

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Do you know anyone that uses a MAC address filter without using a WEP key to protect their router? I did, and to prove how insecure it was… I used my Nintendo DS.

That’s right, using a homebrew DS application called wifi_lib_test, I was able to scan all the access points around me, giving me the channels they were using and their MAC addresses. Using the same application I was then able to view the packets being sent on a certain channel. Since this router was the only one in range on that channel, all I had to do was look for the MAC address that didn’t belong to the router.

Once I obtained the MAC address using my DS, I changed the MAC address on my PC and connected to the router. If you want a quick and easy way to change your MAC address in Windows, use Macshift.

Everything I did on the DS can be done with a laptop using the appropriate software, but using a DS to prove how insecure someones wireless setup is gives me a tingling sensation. At the very least, the DS proved to be a great portable way to find hotspots.

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If your Xbox is not turning on at all, your power supply is most likely the problem. If you have a version 1.0-1.1 Xbox, you have a good chance of repairing it. If you have a version 1.2-1.6 Xbox, all you can do is check the fuse on the power supply. If the fuse is fine, you will have to buy a new power supply. A new power supply ranges from $20-$40 on eBay. If you don’t know what version your Xbox is, click here to find out.

V1.0-1.1 Instructions:

• 1. Open the Xbox
• 2. Unscrew, unplug, and remove the plastic hard drive piece with hard drive attached.
• 3. Unscrew, unplug, and remove the plastic DVD Rom piece with DVD Rom attached.
• 4. Unscrew, unplug, and remove the power supply from the case.
• 5. Look closely at the bottom of the power supply. If it there are cracks in the solder or burn marks where the solder should be (see picture below), you will most likely be able to repair it.
• Resolder the areas that are cracked and burnt and it should work perfectly.

This is a fairly easy repair and anyone can do it.

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While playing my Nintendo Wii a few weeks ago, I started seeing different colored pixels appearing randomly on the screen.

From what I gather, the problem is caused by the Wii getting too hot in standby mode. Apparently the fan does not turn on in standby mode even when the Wifi is connected.

Luckily, it was still under warranty. After backing up my saves and content, I sent it to Nintendo for repair. About a week later I got a replacement Wii that works perfectly. To my surprise, my Virtual Console games, web browser, and saves were still there and working.

Hopefully this will not happen to the majority of Wii’s, we don’t need another Xbox 360 crisis on our hands.

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