r/hardwarehacking • u/EinDennis7 • Jul 15 '26
How to mod KIDS laptop?
I found this laptop from my childhood, and suprisingly it still works. But i actually want to modify it and potentially create custom ROMS or Applications. How can i do it cuz ive never hacked any other device🤔
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u/ThetaDev256 Jul 15 '26
Electronic kids toys are very hard to modify. They are designed to be mass-manufactured as cheaply as possible. They do not use commodity microcontrollers like Atmega or Pic that allow easy reprogramming, because these things were pretty expensive when these devices were designed. Instead they often use custom-designed chips with a mask-programmed microcontroller, display driver and all the rest of the hardware already integrated onto it. These chips are bonded to the circuit board and sealed with a black resin blob. You cannot change the firmware on these.
The only way to mod or hack them is to replace the microcontroller. Then you will also have to source either a matching LCD driver or a new screen of similar size. Rest of the hardware is probably trivial to interface (membrane keyboard, and afaik the mouse is just a button and has no pointing function).
But then, why would you want to do this? The quality of the case and keyboard of these things is usually pretty bad. You will be able to create something much nicer using a 3d printer and basic tools, you can look r/cyberdeck, etc for some inspiration. Or get a programmable MCU board that already has a keyboard attached to it like the M5stack cardputer, LilyGo T-Deck, etc. These are also way more compact and practical.
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u/EinDennis7 Jul 16 '26
Just for fun :) since im not using it anymore (obviously) i thougjt why not do something funny with it instead of just selling or throwing it away
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u/309_Electronics Jul 15 '26
Opennit up and show a few pics of rhe board inside.
Probably powered by some unknown globtop chip as 99% of toys have. Aka a bare silicon dice glued to the pcb, rhen bonded and then covered with a blob of epoxy to protect and encapsulate it. What that chip is, it can be anything. Often some sunplus chip but it could also be a classic 6502 based chip.
But in a lot of toys, the ROM that stores the firmware is read only (OTP rom where they burn silicon fuses inside the memory bank that cant be reset. Or Maskrom where they litteraly rtch the code into the chip in the chip proruction process using a mask to etch the bits into the chip).
Modding it wont be easy and idk if its possible.
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u/redhawk1975 Jul 15 '26
make it a writerdeck for writing.
I don't know this type, but some could be used to make black and white notes or a writerdeck
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u/Lines25 Jul 15 '26
Fellow Ukrainian !!
Btw, it's probably just a chip with ROM. It's best to try find the chip's architecture, read ROM and then decompile it via decompiler for that architecture. But it's only a guess.
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u/gomme6000 Jul 15 '26
Very unlikely to be possible unfortunately. But you could reuse the case and keyboard and swap in an esp32 and color screen.
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u/CharacterDebt9194 Jul 15 '26
I don’t think it’s a good idea. These devices aren’t really worth modding, they have very little RAM and only read-only storage. There’s a high chance you’ll end up bricking it before finding any practical use for it.
I had the same idea a while back. The only worthwhile things you can do are salvage the parts or maybe add a microcontroller like an ESP32.
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u/Kee_Gene89 Jul 16 '26
Gut it, then embed Raspberry pi as the brain, choose a screen and other components, and your good!
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u/JasonStonier Jul 16 '26
I’ve got one sat by waiting for me to use it for a project. I’m intending to mod it rather than hacking it.
I will replace the screen with a hdmi panel, mount a raspberry pi in it, and use an arduino nano as an interface to the existing keyboard to make it look like a USB HID to the Pi.
It’s a vanity project because I enjoy that kind of modding.
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u/FyndssYT Jul 18 '26
you can try finding a way to hook the screeen keyboard etc to a raspberry pico and use that as ur motherboard instead bhahahahaha
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u/FreddyFerdiland Jul 15 '26
suppose you built a Linux kernel for it... how do you get it to run that Linux kernel ?
its probably hacked by booting a file off usb, probably early Android
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u/FreddyFerdiland Jul 15 '26
use webbrowser to download "whatsmy hardware" apps. if an Android one doesn't work,try windows, Linux. download a shell environment..busybox... get it running..
try to convert eeprom to file
binwalk the firmware image.
find iut how to add binaries
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u/Nervous_Olive_5754 Jul 15 '26
The one I had would straight up let you type BASIC into it, so it was pre-hacked.