The thing had been sitting on a makeshift shelf in the garage—very close to the roof. I had only tested it briefly after I acquired it from an estate auction in December 2002 (too bad I missed getting the compatible Canon printer in the same auction!!! Grrr).
Back then, hacking this piece was still a popular hobby for hardware guys. But maybe I had too much to attend to and forgot the iOpener altogether.
Last month, suddenly, after I set up yet another PC/TV for my parents in our living room using the assortment of PC hardware strewn in all parts of the garage, the final product didn’t seem to appeal to me aesthetically. Ding! Ding! Why not use a hacked iOpener instead?
Maybe it’s fortuitous. Had I done the hack earlier, the prices for the parts would have been considerably steeper! Now, I’m simply waiting for the UPS truck to arrive!
—notes:
You can see the ‘blow by blow’ account’ of the iOpener transformation (hack??) here.
After a month of on-off-on work, the hack was completed on 6/01/04. You can see the finished product here.