Enlightenment from Ben Heckendorn: console mod god

The Xbox 360 laptop - image from Protable Video Gamer - Image 1 

We’ve been alerted by QJ reader David, that in an interview over at Portable Video Gamer Ben Heckendorn, portable gaming console modification god, had a few interesting things to say about his projects that has gathered fame, which includes the Xbox 360 laptop, the Wii laptop, and the portable N64, and the Atari Jaguar mod.

What stand out most though are his comments on the PSP and on his take on the notoriety of the term hacker. As for the lack of the extra analogue stick on the PSP, Ben had this to say:

Yes thatÂ’s pretty much what I thought about the PSP. Although I was more disgruntled with Nintendo, for not making the Gameboy Advance backlit in 2001 and not adding X and Y buttons until the DS. The DS is pretty nice though, probably one of the best handhelds ever.

As for the bad rep of the hacker term, here’s his musings:

I think the bad rap stems from the fact the term “hacker” went from someone who figures out hardware (old school hacking) to someone who goes around destroying websites, creating viruses and stealing your identity. The correct term for those people is “scumbags”.

One of the positive results from hacking is coming up with new uses for old hardware and using that to make money. ThereÂ’s a huge market for doing this sort of thing, and I wish I had more than 2 arms. I canÂ’t even remotely keep up with requests.

Benjamin Heckendorn’s book, “Hacking Video Game Consoles: Turn your old video game systems into awesome new portables” is still available on a whole lot of online retail sites. Be sure to at least check it out if you’ve got a tinkerer in you there somewhere.

For the rest of the interview, feel free to head to Portable Video Gamer via our “read” link below.

The Xbox 360 laptop - image from Protable Video Gamer - Image 1 

We’ve been alerted by QJ reader David, that in an interview over at Portable Video Gamer Ben Heckendorn, portable gaming console modification god, had a few interesting things to say about his projects that has gathered fame, which includes the Xbox 360 laptop, the Wii laptop, and the portable N64, and the Atari Jaguar mod.

What stand out most though are his comments on the PSP and on his take on the notoriety of the term hacker. As for the lack of the extra analogue stick on the PSP, Ben had this to say:

Yes thatÂ’s pretty much what I thought about the PSP. Although I was more disgruntled with Nintendo, for not making the Gameboy Advance backlit in 2001 and not adding X and Y buttons until the DS. The DS is pretty nice though, probably one of the best handhelds ever.

As for the bad rep of the hacker term, here’s his musings:

I think the bad rap stems from the fact the term “hacker” went from someone who figures out hardware (old school hacking) to someone who goes around destroying websites, creating viruses and stealing your identity. The correct term for those people is “scumbags”.

One of the positive results from hacking is coming up with new uses for old hardware and using that to make money. ThereÂ’s a huge market for doing this sort of thing, and I wish I had more than 2 arms. I canÂ’t even remotely keep up with requests.

Benjamin Heckendorn’s book, “Hacking Video Game Consoles: Turn your old video game systems into awesome new portables” is still available on a whole lot of online retail sites. Be sure to at least check it out if you’ve got a tinkerer in you there somewhere.

For the rest of the interview, feel free to head to Portable Video Gamer via our “read” link below.

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