Western Digital sells a number of external drives under the MyBook World Edition brand. These are network-based external storage drives that you can connect to remotely from multiple machines. Inside are a couple of drives set up in a mirrored RAID configuration, as well as an embedded computer running Linux.
MakeFan: tipped us off to Martin Hinner's website, which has a lot of details about the software running on the MyBooks, including info for hacking the devices capabilities to do more than what's available out of the box.
This page provides information on how to hack your MyBook World Edition, so as you can improve performance and add new features. MyBook is powered by ARM9 microprocessor, it has 32MB of SDRAM and boots from internal hard drive. The system partition has 2.8GB (only 260 MB is occupied). This means that you have a lot of resources for various improvements.You can enable SSH on the device without cracking the case. Martin hosts a script that subverts the firmware update software to create your ssl keys and boot the sshd process. Once that is enabled, you have full access to the OS to do what you like, including running an NFS server, web server, or even replacing the standard web interface.
Also worth checking out is the Hacking WD MyBook Wiki. They have links to information on rescuing data from dead drives and building other software for the device. Keep in mind that building MySQL from source will take about 18 hours, but there's got to be something fun you can do with a LAMP stack running on a terabyte hard drive.
Hacking Western Digital MyBook World Edition - Link
MyBook World Edition Wiki - Link
I wanted to take control of the lights on my Christmas tree this year, so I read everything I could about interfacing an LED matrix. The idea was to have a setup where I could turn individual lights on and off, and run a little program that did something more than your typical strand of lights. All of my Googling led me to the Maxim 7219 chip, which can control up to 64 LEDs using only 3 pins on the Arduino. I used one of Paul Badger's Arduino-compatible Bare Bones Boards to run the whole show.
If you get really ambituous, you can cascade multiple 7219s and LED matrixes, so you can have a lot of lights. But I ended up getting lazy, and only built one matrix of 64 lights. I followed the diagram on page 1 of tomek ness' tutorial to build the LED matrix (be sure to read this bug report for an important update). There may be better ways to do it, but I laid out the matrix as a web of wires, using wire strippers to cut into the wire and push some insulation out of the way before I wrapped each LED's leads around the exposed wire. Then I soldered it in place, put some heatshrink wrap around the joint, and ended up with a not-too-shabby LED matrix. Once that was done, I again turned to tomek's tutorial, and hooked the Arduino up to the 7219 and the 7219 up to the matrix. tomek also has some source code available that I was able to modify for my needs. You can find my code right here.
The video above gives you an overview of the project. After the jump, you can see a high-speed video showing how I put one of the rows together (stripping, soldering, shrinking). I'll post some more on this project soon--stay tuned for details on how I got this talking to my Nokia phone over Bluetooth.
The Leopard installer enforces the minimum requirements of 512MB RAM and a 867Mhz CPU. Under normal circumstances, if you have an older G4, you machine won't meet both of these requirements.
The RAM you can buy and upgrade. Nothing new there, but the CPU? Dylan McDermond from Low End Mac posted a hack today which shows us how to fake the CPU's clock speed. The gist is that with a few commands you can make Open Firmware report whatever clock speed you please.
Before running the install CD, you can enter the Open Firmware prompt by typing Cmd-Opt-O-F while booting (with the installer CD in). When you get the Open Firmware prompt, you can enter the following to have the firmware falsely report your CPU speed as 867Mhz and continue booting the installer CD:
dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
boot cd:,//:tbxi
When you reboot after completing the install, your CPU speed will be reported as normal again. Check out the link below for the full details, as well as how to adjust the reported speed for a dual-CPU system.
One thing this reminds me of is that Final Cut always refused to real-time render video transitions on iMacs and iBooks, even on models that were faster or had more memory than their Powerbook and Powermac c