Yes, and how much heck could Ben Heckendorn heck if Ben Heck could heck heck? The Master of Mod has united with eDimensional to offer a new, inspired-by-the-hardcore gamer product. And they won't say a thing about it. Not a darned thing. They'll never tell.

No. They're so mean they want you to guess what the hell - er, heck it is.

The Read link below takes you to the contest website, What the Heck?!, where you will find where to send your guesses to eDimensional, in the hopes of winning a free signed copy of WhateverTheHeckItIs from eDimensional. One guess per person, per day (no spamming, in other words).

So what the heck is it?! (Fine, the silhouette kind of resembles a 360, but it could also be a red herring, a decoy). A laptop? Deceptive controllers? An actual analog stick for a portable?

 

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 that’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. There’s a huge market for doing this sort of thing, and I wish I had more than 2 arms. I can’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.

Ben Heckendorn promised a Part 2 to his hack-a-PS2-stick-to-the-PSP project, where he would build some sort of casing for those loose wires. Here it is today, courtesy of Engadget. Of course, we already had Joe Stranger over with his own version, inspired by Ben Heck's Part 1 but which follows a completely different design philosophy altogether.

Joe's Ghetto Joystik obviously has the advantages of being smaller and more portable, and detachable from the PSP. Ben Heck's casing, on the other hand, is bulkier, although also detachable. But Ben's mod has the advantage of being more easily made - he says that it's easy for the casual modder to get his hands dirty on. As Joe hasn't sent us any instructions on how to make his joystick yet, we're making an assumption that it's a bit more difficult, since you'd have to machine the PS2 stick's "holding frame" (metal shop, anyone?).

Yeah, Ben Heck's mod is indeed bulkier. But it can be made. He shares his instructions over at Engadget, but we can show you some pics of the construction process, as well as the stuff you'll need:

• A can of Jerky Stuff (or any similarly-sized plastic can)
• Mini-USB set (port and jack) or an IC socket and header
• Soldering iron and of course, solder.
• Desoldering iron if you're pulling plugs from junk motherboards.
• A Dremel cutting tool (or a similar cutting tool for the plastic can)
  
• X-Acto knife.
• Hot glue gun or other such gluing device.
• Super glue (I prefer the liquid kind).
• Goo-Gone glue remover, or similar type product.
• A 1/2-inch long size 6-inch screw.

Instructions at the Read link, and a few pictures below:

   

Still remember Ben Heckendorn's "solder a PS2 analog to the PSP" project? Unwieldy as it was, dangerous as it could be (because you had to open up your PSP to wire the PS2 stick to the handheld), it was nevertheless a most welcome proof-of-concept that demonstrated that a PS2 stick CAN communicate with a PSP.

You know what happens to proof-of-concepts, right? They're the stuff of dreams! In this case, the dreams of Joe Stranger, who's been inspired by Ben Heckendorn's mod, took the idea one or two steps further, and modded a detachable PS2 stick that sits securely against the PSP! He's emailed us about it, sent us the YouTube vid, and from what we've seen, it works!

What Joe did was to add a USB junction to Ben Heck's schematics. The PS2 stick (and its USB plug) sits in a frame mounting that would also plug into a USB port that had been hacked into the left side of the PSP case. Okay, so the mod is still dangerous, since you have to open up your PSP to add and wire in the USB port. It's now immensely playable, however, and you can now think of the PS2 stick as a detachable "accessory!"

Joe even foresees that the setup could be used to create different add-ons for the PSP. One suggestion he had - since he's a fan of racing games - is a steering wheel. Let your imaginations run wild! He thanks Ben for thinking up the idea in the first place.We say Joe and Ben Heckendorn deserve their props for this one-two kick-a** control mod. Thanks for telling us about it, Joe!