What was your first “hack”? - Mendenhall
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DomenicGasman
My dad put our only TV out with the trash because it would not turn on. It was
a tube B&W model and I fixed it by soldering the power cord directly to the
chassis, bypassing a bad connector on the rear panel. I put it in my bedroom
and claimed it as mine since it was in the trash. My dad let me keep it for a
couple days until my 5 siblings complained. I was 10 at the time.

~~~
ahoka
This is the saddest thing I have read today.

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wazanator
The only game I had in middle school for PC that wasn't education focused was
Star Wars Empire at War. I ended up learning how to modify the files to change
things like unit stats, unit cap, faction, etc.

In particular I remember deciding that every space ship should be it's own
unit instead of the squad being a unit and ramping the unit cap up to a crazy
high number then having giant space battles. Also I really liked the pirate
units so I think I gave those to both the Empire and the Rebels.

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LarryMade2
Probably did a lot before, but this one sticks -

Early in my computer education at high school, I took a PET maze generator
from one game, It was in ML and I didn't know ML, only the SYS to start it and
how to use the ML monitor to SAVE the game to preserve the code. Added in a 4
way scrolling type-in ML routine from a magazine, and some BASIC game code
which created a moving maze game where the maze moved around the stationary
player.

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kk_cz
I don't know if this qualifies as hack, but as a kid I was pretty proud about
changing the code of qbasic's nibble.bas to get infinite lives. If I remember
correctly it lead to some further experiments (snake's length, level editing)
and eventually I managed to break it completely.

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neilsimp1
I was given a burned copy of the original StarCraft when it was still a new
game, but wasn't given a CD key or crack or any way to play it.

There was room for 12 digits, so I guessed 123456789012, and lo and behold, it
worked.

Uber 1337.

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tedmiston
Modifying strings in the GUI using ResEdit back in the Mac OS 7-9 days. It was
quite fun to change the title of a scoreboard to your name or increase a
default variable size.

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Mendenhall
One that sticks with me the most early on was very simple but inspiring. Using
a hole punch to turn a single sided floppy disk into a double sided at a time
when double sided cost more.

~~~
mobiplayer
VHS tapes had a tab you could pull to make them "read-only". Putting a piece
of cello or tape would make them RW again :)

~~~
eb0la
Did the same yesterday with a microSd to SD card adapter with a broken
(missing) lock tab. Memories....

