Finding Different & Unconventional Ways To Navigate Things On a Budget

[Doomsday519]

Late last year I had a Lenovo laptop from the mid 2010s all of a sudden stop charging and working in general. At that point I was not really utilizing a computer at home as I was mostly operating out of my cell phone at home while utilizing a "company" laptop for work. But over time I realized I needed something to actually use as a desktop/laptop. I have a desktop but it's extremely outdated so that was not an option. So the only thing I could turn to was my...Steam Deck. I have a mid-range OG LCD Day 1 Steam Deck, no OLED, just the standard. Decided the best thing I could do is maximize whatever I can out of it so I finally bit the bullet and bought a 3rd party dock, USB hub, and connected a speaker system to it and for a while now I have used my Steam Deck as a glorified desktop. My current set-up with it is what I described, a monitor(no built in audio which is why I needed to plug a the speakers, a wireless mouse & keyboard, and a docked 8Bitdo Ultimate 2 controller(was on sale). Have no data cable cuz i'm cheap but I use KDE Connect to transfer files between my phone and Steam Deck.

Now to go back to that Lenovo laptop...

I bought a PS3 at the thrift store and it took some time to fully set it up. Used a third party wired controller for it for a while but it wasn't enough and eventually bought a lot of 4 PS3 controllers at auction(all were able to charge but at least one is no good). And after a while I decided to jailbreak it and got to work. I mentioned earlier that I don't have a desktop/laptop to use so that is where my Steam Deck came in play. Already had games on it so i just needed ways to transfer those files and what I'd need to jailbreak the console with a byproduct of it all forcing me to learn how to operate within Linux-based SteamOS as I hadn't dealt with Linux in a meaningful way since community college in 2014 But yeah, after a while transferring files with multiple USB drives I lifted from work and and an SD card, I finally had things set up, or so I thought...

Realized a bit late that the HDD in the PS3 was way too small so what did I have to turn to? The Lenovo laptop HDD. It is a terrabyte and I made the decision to format it for the PS3 so I removed it and the DVD writer drive(which I haven't done anything with yet) and stuck it in the PS3 and went thru all I needed to in order to get the PS3 up and running. But then I thought of another idea. I had an external HDD from the late 2000s that I had to trash the case for as it was one of those drives that needed to be plugged in and turned on but the power went bad a long time ago. Ended up buying a cheap SATA to USB adapter and plugged it into my Steam Deck and lo and behold after years i finally had access to the files on it which was a TON of movies, music, and some tv, wrestling shows, etc that I compiled over the years. Was so happy until I tried to transfer files, it froze up, then when I tried connecting again, the Steam Deck refused to mount it. Tried everything I could to repair & mount but nothing which meant i'd prolly need a Windows environment to do so which I didn't have. But then that gave me the bright idea to connect it to my PS3 and again, lo and behold it connected and i immediately moved stuff like Kinnikuman & Freakazoid onto it and loaded as much as I could. opened up Movian in it and the video works.

Now to figure out what to do with the rest of the stuff that hasn't been of use to me for some time.

 

[qw90700]

I watched too much MacGyver a lot so I'm very experienced in this topic!!!:

- It all started when decades ago d-pad of my Sega Genesis gamepad was broken and fell on the ground during an intense Chakan playground!!! To fix this I found a big screw and stabbed in the middle of d-pad stuff. It turned out d-pad didn't have individual buttons, it worked via pushing its side to make it press on the button underneath. That's why it worked via moving screw in the middle too. It looked and "functioned" like an analog does lolol.

- And then the buttons of my remote controller stopped working and it wasn't because fucked battery. I had no idea how it happened but it seemed the metal on the bottom of the button couldn't properly make the necessary physical connection happen for the remote's board to function properly. So I cut paper clips as long as how long a button is for each button and stucked them under the buttons and it started to work again!!!!

- When my refrigerator stopped working I just simply turned it off to try out a possible fix. Good thing it was during the winter, and it snowed a lot that year, even on my balcony a lot so I made a "snow box" on my balcony and put my food in it!!! Think with science yo!!! lolol

- Once my CRT monitor was fucked and started to make noises so I had to find a way to convert stuff so my TV can display PC. I don't remember how I did it though but I asked around places that sells such stuff. And my TV is old so no modern visual input, it has classic 1 AV and 2 SCART input.

- Once I was asked to preserve VHS tapes of my family for finding another way to store them so when VHS tapes goes fucked we could have a modern backup. I don't remember how I did it exactly but I remember used my camera and VHS player to convert the videos into something digital by connection VHS player to my camera. I remember it was a lucky guess to even do that lol.

My 3DS related adventures lol:

- Once I broke my PC gamepad and then I learned I can use my 3DS as a PC gamepad.

- I also learned 3DS can be used as a "server". At the time I carried my 3DS around a lot and I had to carry some files from my home to around work and stuff for file transfer, so I thought "why not use 3DS for it" right? I imagined it can be used as a storage device you can transmit files via an USB cable or something but I found something better!!! 3DS can host a server so you just enter the server via file browser of a PC and fetch the files in the 3DS!!! Cool huh? Technology is like a magic lol.

- Also at the time I was using 3DS to watch tv series and stuff during work, then I learned you can stream 3DS's video and audio wirelessly to a PC so you can watch it on a bigger screen. Am I a 3DS wizard or what? 3DS is like magic stone yo lol.

Thanks MacGyver for giving me the necessary wisdom to think out of the box!!!

lolol

 

[Lod 10]

My budget is always tight because I don't work and I have to depend on my family to buy things.

 

[Not_Red]

Probably not that big of an advice as the others, but a friend of mine's 3DS rubber pad fell off due to usage and he superglued a button to fix it.