Follow the Steps below to get your gamepad to emulate a xbox controller.

1. Download the Xbox360 Controller Emulator – Mirror.
2. Extract the xbox360cemu.ini,  xinput1_3.dll, and XInputTest.exe files to the directory of the game you want to use the controller in.  The same folder as the game executible.
3. Plug in the gamepad you will be using.
4. Run XInputTest.exe and check to make sure your buttons are mapped correctly.  If they’re not, open the xbox360cemu.ini file and change around the mappings till it works.  Here is the ini file (xbox360cemu), that works with my Dilong USB Dual Shocks Gamepad.
5. Enjoy gaming again.

I really love this little hack, the reason being, there is no program running in the background sucking up resources.  It’s just a couple of files and a dll and blammo, instant controller emulation.  How great is that!

For more info on compatibility with specific games, check out Rumblepad2 Blog.

I hope this little tutorial helped you out, if it did a comment would much be appreciated.

You are free to check out the pictures and directions below, but be warned, do not attempt this project if you don’t know what you’re doing.  There is a very good chance you’ll end up as a brown smoldering stain on the carpet if you’re not careful.

After all the parts this project cost me around ten dollars.  You might have some of this stuff lying around the house so it might cost you less.

Here are the parts I got from Lowes.

An 8ft grounded three device extension cord, a 10A 125v double insulated throw switch, and some electrical tape.

Before I hacked up the extension cord I called my pops up on the phone to pick his brain about the best way to wire up the switch.  He told that the wall sockets have one large prong slot and one small prong slot, and that I should install the switch on the wire that goes into the large prong.  I took out my wire strippers and got busy hacking up the cord.

I staggered some of the cuts so I the butt connectors wouldn’t be in a huge bunch.

I cut pretty close to the ends so I could keep as much cord as possible for the switch end.

Here is the setup tested and working great, I used 18-22 gauge butt connectors.

Here is the final setup, I zip tied the cellphone wire to the cord with the switch just a few inches away from the cellphone end.  I finished it up with some black electrical tape, some heat shrink tubing would work nicely here too and give it a nice professional look.

Now that the switch is right where I plug and unplug my cell phone I’ll be sure to use it every time I plug in my cell phone.  I also plugged my netbook charger into one of the free spots on the plug end too.

The purpose of heatsink grease is to fill any small gaps, or unevenness between the heatsink and the cpu.  It’s works almost the same way as car wax does.  It fills in cracks and scratches in the clearcoat to give the appearance of a smooth surface.

In a perfect world you wouldn’t need heatsink grease at all, the heatsink mounting surface and cpu would be completely smooth.  Unfortunately this isnt’ a perfect world so a little work is needed to smooth out the surfaces.

On the past couple heatsinks I’ve purchased they’ve come with pre-applied “TIM”, thermal interface material, and it sucks.  It’s usually very tacky and anytime I’ve run it in my system and then went to remove the heatsink its yanked the cpu out of the socket along with it, sometimes bending cpu pins.  So that is usually the first thing I do, remove the tim.

An old credit card works great at taking the stuff off.  Take a little isopropyl alcohol to it to clean it up and your ready for lapping.

Lapping is basically just buffing the surface of the heatsink to get it as smooth as possible.  I used some very fine sandpaper I had lying around that I used when making models decades ago.

I wish my camera took better pictures but hopefully you can see the before and after pic of the heatsink.  It feels noticeably different.  I’ve seen some folks buff their heatsink to a mirror finish, but that is a ton of work.

Onto the cpu, you shouldn’t have to do to much to the processor out of the box.  I usually just wipe it down with some alcohol to make sure its nice and clean.

Now the trick to applying heatsink grease is to get as thin a layer as possible.  This ensures that as much metal as possible is touching, and thats what transfers heat.  Heatsink grease does not conduct heat as well as metal.

Put some small dabs on the processor, or heatsink whichever you prefer, and grab that old credit card again and smooth it out as much as possible.

There you have it, take your cpu, install it into the socket and carefully install the heatsink.

After searching around I found it just where I had left it, in a storage bin, with a whole lot of stuff sitting on it.  The XT couldn’t handle all that weight and it developed a real nice bubble in the center hindering mouse movement.  I went to the Ratpadz homepage about to order a new XT when I found this.  I figured I should at least give it a shot before plunking down money for a fourth Ratpadz.  I tried manually bending it back on my knee, but all that did was give me a sore knee, and then it would return to its bent shape after a few minutes.  I tried pressing it up against a corner of the wall, but it would just return to its bent shape.  I then decided to put some weight on it for an extended amount of time.  I took a 10 pound jar of change and set it on top of the bubbled spot for a week, but that didn’t work either.

Almost at my wits end with this little gem I decided I would go for broke and pop it in the oven and see if that would fix it.  I figured if I melted the thing I’d have to get a new one anyway so I didn’t have much to lose.  I set it on the middle rack, set my oven to bake at 175 degrees, and crossed my fingers.  I let it sit in the heat for about 15 minutes while I checked my email.  Upon opening the oven I found the XT even more out of whack when I put it in and the feet were starting to slide in their goo from the heat.  I took it out of the oven, playing hot potatoe all the way to the desk and placed some weight on it again while it cooled down.  To my surprise, the oven trick worked like a charm.

You can see how tweaked out the Ratpadz XT is on the rack.

My XT is now nice and flat and toasty.  So there you go, toss that crooked Ratpadz in the oven to flatten it out.  Just don’t tell Kyle I told you.

To this

You will need a little help from PCrivals, and stuff from these place

• two pipe ends
• one pipe flange
• two brass nipplets
• rubber tubing

total cost: $8

• one bilge pump

total cost: $25

• Goldstar GR-051SF
• two quarts rubbing alcohol

total cost: $66

You should also have the following available to you

• a circular saw w/metal cutting blade
• a drill w/ various bits
• blow torch
• duct tape
• solder
• epoxy

now lets get this started!

All trademarks belong to their respected companies.
We decided to start things off here at PCrivals with a bang.  We figured we needed something that would grab your ass, and make you come back for more.  After driving around for an hour, I came up with the idea to mount a computer inside of a cube fridge.
Erebus turned the car around and we headed to Wal*Mart.

I know what you are thinking.. “condensation is going to form all over your chitlins and it will fry”.  We thought of that, and only we are stupid enough to try it, so read on.  The cube fridge is going to take care of the components, but what about the processor?  We swung around to Home Depot and picked up some plumbing supplies.

We picked up two copper pipe ends, a copper flange to fit them togother, 10′ of rubber tubing, and 2 little brass nipplets to connect the hose to the pipe ends.  When we asked the guy at home depot for the parts we wanted, he said, “Let me guess… you’re making a bong.”  Then we explained that we were going to put our computer inside a cube fridge.  Needless to say he didn’t know why anyone would want to do that. So I told him AOL would run faster if you put your PC in a fridge and he was all, “I guess you learn something new every day”.  And I was all _chuckle_.
Then there was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
Anyway, we got our things and were on our way.  We decided to pump rubbing alcohol through the cooling system for two reasons:

1. Because if it sprays all over the place, it won’t short out our shite.
2. Alcohol can be chilled to way below the freezing temperature of water.

Back to Wal*Mart for that, but how are we going to pump it?
We thought of a fish tank pump, but those pump air.

The thought came to me after going to Napa Auto Parts.

We had originally gone to Napa to get brake lines.  I was going to bend them up through a heatsink, to get the cold fluid right down near the processor, but decided not to for some reason.  While browsing the shelves I found two rad items.  A fan that runs on 12VDC and blows 230cfm, and a bilge pump that pumps 750 gal/hr, both of which were in the boating isle.  We will use the bilge pump to circulate the alcohol through the cooling system.  I dubbed the fan “The Blow Master” but when I got it home it was so loud it woke the dead, so I decided to save it for another project.

You need to pick up one of these from Wal*Mart:

Its a Goldstar GR-051SF, and its cheaper than a good computer case. We waited on line for an hour because there is a lot of white trash that live in the area.  Plus the check out lady was fat and ugly.  For this next exercise we will assume you have a circular saw with a metal cutting blade on it, and a carving knife.

We take no responsibility if you slip and dismember yourself. Having said that…. You will need to take off the door by removing the plastic cover that hides the door screws,
cut a hole in the door like so:

cut away the insulation on the inside of the door:

and mount your motherboard tray in it like this:

We didn’t have a motherboard tray, so we cut apart a case and made one. We will assume you are a crafty individual.

As Krypton85 was working on the case mod, Erebus was working on the processor cooling system. Using the parts from Home Depot, Erebus went at it. First he had to make the “heatsink” out of two pipe ends, and a pipe flange fitting. For this exercise we will assume you have a torch and some solder.

We take no responsibility if you catch your house or flesh on fire. You need to drill a hole on the end of one of the pipe ends, and on the side of the other.  The hole should be the diameter of one of the nipplets, because you are going to have to hammer the nipplet through the hole.

Then you have to solder the pipe ends to the fitting so it is water proof. The nipplets are made of brass, and are tough to solder to the copper, so we used epoxy.

Attach the rubber hose to the nipplets, and epoxy the flat end to the processor. In this case, a celeron 500.

So we got all that done without anyone getting hurt. Well sort of. Take these words of wisdom: “don’t drip water onto molten solder” It tends to *pop* and shoot scalding hot solder all over.

You will need to remove the freeze plate from the inside wall of the fridge. It should just snap out, I had to pull on it REAL hard, but it finally popped loose.

After that is hanging free, you can bend it into the shape of the clear plastic tray that came with the fridge. We will call this the “freeze tray” from now on. It should look like this:

This is what we are going to fill with alcohol and submerge the bottom of the bilge pump in. Eventually it will look like this:

The feed line needed to be epoxied into the outlet of the bilge pump and runs to the nipplet mounted closest to the processor. The return hose should be mounted to the nipplet on the end of the heatsink and return the alcohol down the freeze plate into the pool.
Here is a shot of the mounted processor:

By now you can mount your hard drive mount from your case inside the door of the fridge. We did it like this:

A hole drilled into the back of the fridge makes a perfect spot to slide a power cord through.

WARNING: When drilling through metal, DO NOT use a drywall drill bit, you will tear your arms off, and send the drill flying.
We know from experience.

You then need to put your drives in there and connect all the cables. We removed the power suppy from its case and mounted it naked inside the frond door. Take a look:

If you notice, we had to drill holes in the front of the door to get the power switch and LEDs out. By now the project should look something like this:

The duct tape was added so that we woulden’t lose any of our precious cold air.
If all goes right, and you didn’t screw up, you have just built yourself the perfect overclocking machine.

Check out these temps we got while running the Computerator:

That’s pretty damn cold. When I first saw the temp I thought it was positive 17.9, but when I saw the negative, I creamed my pants. Just imagine pumping that across your cpu! If you imagined correctly, you imagined this:

Yes, that is ice on the outside of the heatsink, we also got ice on the underside of the CPU.  But not to worry, you only get condensation when you turn off the refridgerator.
While everything is running, we have NO problems with condensation. We left the Computerator on over night and all was well. So if you are going to be turning this beast off, remember to unplug the powersupply, and let it dry off before powering up again.

Heres what you will need to build one for yourself:
An old pci slot card that you can break apart
Power Supply
Fan
Case slot cover.. you know the part you have to take out if you want to install an addon card and epoxy.. lots of epoxy, preferably the kind that smells like cat piss.. it gets u ripped.. hehe

Now .. take the power supply out of its covers and remove the fan. Then Take the PCI slot card and break off the pci slot part on the card but leave some so you can epoxy it to something.. like so

Glue the PCI slot piece that you broke off on to the Power supply, make sure you line it all up correctly, so the power supply will fit into a pci slot just right. Also we found out that we needed to grind off the pins on the pci slot piece so we didnt fry our motherboard.

Then take your case slot piece and glue it to the side of the card so it slides into the case and you can screw it down.

Make sure you line that up correctly too.

That is pretty much it.. we also took off the power cord connector and made an extension so we could mount the plug holder wherever we wanted.. we cut the wires and extended them..

Now you should have a PCI power supply, make sure you mount a fan near it though so it stays cool, power supplies get real hot.. and dont touch it when its plugged in either.. my friend says it really hurt him.. it did .. trust me. When your all done your pci power supply should look something like this.

Also, I wanted this radiator to fit into a pc nicely, so I figured… why not make it fit into a cdrom slot? .. I drew up a few designs before deciding on which one to do, and bang.. the Bay Radiator is born!

Im gonna make this a pretty quick walkthrough, so If you’re good at building things you’re in a good place. For those of you who suck, POST QUESTIONS IN THE FORUMS and I or my other midget circus clowns will get back to you asap.

Total Project cost: $12.38 + tax.

This price is assuming that you have a dead cdrom drive you can snag the case from, and that you have all the tools, solder, and what not.

All of these parts can be found at your local Home Depot.
I needed the smallest copper tubing I could find, so I went with the 1/2″ tubing.

5 feet of 1/2 inch copper pipe. $3.92 P/N = 632962015374

[NO PIC]Quantity(2) 3/8inch barb that connects to 1/2inch pipe. $2.60 P/N = 048643071315
Quantity(2) 1/2inch female adapter that connects to 3/8inch barb. $2.56 P/N = 039923037336
Quantity(10) 90 degree 1/2inch copper Elbows. $1.90 P/N = 039923312723

10 feet of 3/8inch Vinyl Tubing. $1.40 P/N = 703896

All these parts are real easy to find, they should all be in the same aisle.

Ok, so we got our parts from the depot, and our safety goggles on, lets start modding.

First, I needed to find out how the fuxor I would fit all this pipe into the cdrom drive. Bang, got that done, here’s what you gotta cut.

Whip out that 5 foot copper tube you bought and mark down these measurements on it.
Quantity(6) 5.3/4″ pieces.
Quantity(1) 4″ piece.
Quantity(2) 1″ pieces.
Quantity(2) 3/4″ pieces.

After cutting them all up yours should look like this.

I found a hacksaw to work the best/easiest. Remember to also take all the burrs off the copper pieces that you just cut.. we need to have a good, smooth seal when we solder them together.

Ok, so you got your pieces cut and cleaned up, now look at how I set it up so everything fits nicely into the cdrom case.

This is where it’s important to understand where all the pieces go, in the back bottom is where the 4″ copper tube goes, now towards the front is where the 1″ pipes go, and then the back top part is where the 3/4″ pipes go. You can see how the top part of the setup is squished more towards the middle of the cdrom case, this is because of where the screws hold the case together. I had to make room for those.

So hopefully you get the idea here, its pretty simple I think.

Now were ready to solder.

Tools required:
Lead free solder
Soldering Flux
Blowtorch
Some heavy work gloves
And Safety goggles

There’s nothing quite like hot solder burning through your retina! Make sure you wear safety goggles.

If this will be your first time soldering, here’s some quick guidlines to follow to get that perfect seal. If you’re a pro skip the next paragraph.

Make sure everything is clean, Now take the FLUX, get a small paintbrush and apply the flux to the parts of the copper pipe where u want the seal to be. So, put it on the outside of the copper pipe, and then coat the inside of the elbows and so on. Now, take your blow torch and apply heat to the tubing. DONT apply the flame directly where the flux is, put the flame on a part of the copper that is near the interconnect. You don’t want to burn off all that flux you just applied. Now when the flux starts bubbling get your solder and run it along where the joint. You should see the solder sort of dissappear. THIS IS A GOOD SIGN! this means that the solder followed the flux path and sealed the pipe good, don’t hold the solder there for too long or you’ll start to see a huge mound forming underneath the pipe. Let the pipe air cool for about ten mins then put it in water very slowly. Then test the seal and if its good move on to the next one!

After all that soldering of the pipe together, you should have a project that looks like this.

Now slide the piping into the cdrom case to make sure it fits all nice and nice.

Presto it works!

Before this beast of a radiator goes into my pc case, I should probably test it out for leaks.

By golly it works!

Now after you got that all that piping soldered and fit into the case, were gonna have to have some fans on there, after all radiators would be useless without fans.
I used two 92mm Delta fans I had lying around.
CDrom case

Where the fans will go

Sketching out where the fans will sit.

Finally, cutting and sanding the holes! For this I had to use a DREMEL and about 18 cutting blades, but it worked and I still have all my digits!

So mount your fans and put the radiator in the cdrom case, and lock it up. Everything should fit well, I had to bang out a couple of nipples, but with a little finagling all was good.

Here’s what you should have when after all that hard work.
Oh, I aimed the fans so that they would suck air in from the open front of the cdrom case, over the copper piping, and then out the top of the cdrom case.
You could do it either way you want, but I think this would be the most affective as you would be taking cold air from outside the pc case instead of the air from inside the case.

Lets see how it performed.

This is just a dry air test though, because this is the first part of my watercooling system, without having built the waterblock and mounting a pump, I can’t very well take live benchmarks.. Yet.

So, what I did was leave the fans on for about 15 minutes just pulling air across the copper pipe and here’s what I got in terms of temps.

Room temp is 80 degrees F.
After 15 mins copper piping temp was 75 degrees F, it fluxuated a bit but not more then a few tenths here and there.

Well that about wraps it up, I hope this guide helped you out some, and I’ll be working on the rest of the watercooling system so I can get some hardcore benchmarks for ya. My 2000+ XP is dying to be set free.

A little while ago we put together a lanbox in a case that we had bought from Homedepot for 20 measly dollars. I’ll list the changes that have been made since the first article and then well go through and show you how we did each change.

CHANGES MADE

• Removed the PCI Power Supply and put in a SAFER Power supply.
• Added some nice little LED’s and POWER Switches.
• Cut holes for the CDrom and DVD drives.
• Added a Bracket to hold the Hard Drive.

If you checked out the pci power supply you’ll understand what I mean when I say SAFER. After zapping myself numerous times, and other parts in the lanbox, I knew this thing was unsafe and had to be discarded with extreme prejudice. I think all that zapping has affected my short term memory so I tend to repeat myself. I knew this thing was unsafe and had to be discarded with extreme prejudice. I think all that zapping has affected my short term memory so I tend to repeat myself easily. hehe.. yes i know im a dork. So we found a smaller power supply to put in. We also ran wire extensions so we could run a plug connector directly to the side of the lanbox. This helped with saving space for our cd drives. Also it looks spiffy when you show up to a fragfest. Of course with a small power supply like this one your gonna lose some wattage, ours pumps out sad 185w, but at least its enough to run the machine.

CONT…

Next were gonna look at the LED’s and Power Switches. This stuff is so easy to do and it adds that.. awestruck, flabherghasted look to your pc. Plus chix dig LED’s man. Well thats what the guy at RadioShack told me anyway. All we did here was drill some small holes and connect up some lights to the power supply and then we put in a power switch which you can see all the way on the right. One of the LED’s is actually hooked up to where the hard drive led connects to the motherboard, so we can see when she croaks and when shes still thinkin. The other LED’s are for.. yep you guessed it.. the ladies.

Onto the CDdrives. These were a little harder because we had to cut some pretty large holes in the side of the box and we wanted it to look nice on the outside.. It looks pretty good don’t it. We wanted to also make the drive easily accessible if they needed to be removed so what my bro did was take an old drive bay from a Packard Bell case we trashed.. with the utmost prejudice, and screwed the two drives in there and then velcroed the sucker down to the case. It all works pretty good and they dont heat up that bad either. We also velcroed a old floppy drive to the bay. But what you have to do to use the floppy drive is open up the lanbox. This is okay though cause we dont use the floppy that much.

Last but not least the Hard Drive bracket. Before we made this bracket the hard drive used to just flop around inside the case.. so we sent away for a new one cause it was still under warranty.. hehe. I always knew that those little things you rip out of new computer cases would come in handy some day… you know the little flat peices of metal with holes that block the cd drive bays. Bastard things cut me enough times. So.. take your little flat peices of metal and screw them onto the harddrive, then take an old slot insert and bolt the flat peices of metal to it. Like in the picture below. This actually works really well.. we do lose some PCI slots but thats ok for now because soon the ISA slots well be outdated, so we can cover up those instead. Oh wait did I say soon theyll be outdated.. I meant.. we moved the hard drive over the ISA slots instead.

Here is a final pic for ya of the inside of the lanbox.

And thats it for our update to the Frugal LANbox, I hope you enjoyed it and these ideas can help you create your own .. err.. creation.

Just think of how professional you will look showing up to your next LAN party with this bitch! Ever wonder what was in the case in the Ronin?
Read on and you will find out.

EreBuS’ brother (MurDock) thought he would be Mr. BigShot, and try to show up the professionals. MurDock did a good job at making me look bad. I had to help him out a bit, I gave him the PCI Power Supply so he could fit it all in that small box. MurDock heard the words Small Box and he got all excited. I had to slap him in the face a few times to get him to think straight.  Back to business…. there was some foam inside that we had to remove to make everything fit.

EreBus ate the foam, mmmm, good foam.

A motherboard tray to hold all the motherboard goodies. Mmmm… look at my wood inside that small box.

MurDock drilled some holes in the case to add some lights and switches. He didn’t realize that a ATX power supply uses a momentary switch, and not an On/Off switch.
What a turd…

Look at that stoopit toggle switch. The other switches and lights are for some fans MurDock wanted to install. This thing is starting to look pretty bitchin’ I must admit, but it’s nothing compared to a

baboon’s wangular…..

The inside of the box is all messy. I’ve heard that before!

Notice the 1337 PCI power supply!
MurDock decided to plug in his LAN card into the slot right next to the power supply and touched some metal and *POP*. Destroyed the power supply. I had to slap him in the neck 3 times before he woke up from his shock stupor.

Very professional looking, sleek, elegant, and affordable. So go to Home Depot and buy this bastard, just think, you can roll up onto the scene of your next LAN party looking like this jerk:

(MurDock)

Total cost: $19.99
estimated time to completion: 4 hours

Check out what [H]ardOCP.com has to say about our tape.

“We are of course big fans of high performance mousing surfaces. In the last year you have seen some products come out that are Teflon strips that you use to cover you existing mouse feet if worn or you just want that extra slippery feeling. I have tried nearly every one out there and the guys over at FragWare have what is no doubt the best Teflon Mouse Tape product on the market. Kudos guys, we have been testing this stuff for months now and your does not peel off our get gooey on the edges like your competition. If you have not given this a try, it is worth the cash if you want precision mousing.” – Kyle from Hardocp.com.

As far as I can tell its just like regular tape with a Teflon coating, the tape I used is 1/2 inch wide and .005mm thick, so its a decent size. I’ve been using it now for a week or so on my mouse and it doesn’t look like its wearing at all.

Teflon Mouse Tape

This yellow bumpy stuff is the backing that you peel off and throw away, its just like a thin layer of plastic that comes right off.

All I did was just cut about four 1 inch sections to cover my already existing mouse feet. I suppose you could get rid of your old mouse feet and just use this tape, but thats really up to you. It seems just fine covering my mouse feet as seen in the pic below. Just make sure that you clean the bottom of your mouse thoroughly before applying this tape to make sure u get a good stick. You can use just regular isopropyl alcohol, q-tips, and/or paper towels will work. Try and stay away from the optical eye if you have one.

Teflon Mouse Feet

All in all I have to say that this stuff works great.  My mouse glides so smooth and fast that I had to turn down the mouse sensitivities in most of my games to have some control.  It took about 2 days or so for me to get used to handling my rodent again, but It sure is a hell of a lot better then it was before.  If you have a Ratpadz you can slick it up with some Pledge for ultimate gliding action!

Here’s how to get the stuff.  This is a lot cheaper then some so called mouse skatez, or probably anything else even close to this stuff.  If you have any questions at all, email me.

I used to have an actual e-store years ago, but that site is long gone.  I still have the stuff and set up a PayPal button below for now so you can order up some Mouse Tape.  Pieces will be cut in 8 inch strips and are shipped via regular snail mail in US only. You can order multiple pieces if you like.

If you’re a bit weary of ordering here is my reseller ratings account for my past online store.

Get it while it lasts.