USB drives are incredibly useful, both storing files for transport between different computers and for creating bootable drives that let us use or install other operating systems on our computers. While online file storage systems like Dropbox and Google Drive have taken over a large percentage of the former task from USB drives, they have not been able to act as bootable media, ensuring that each of us have a few jump drives lying around. That might not be the case anymore, though, as this guide is the first we know of to be able to use Google Drive to boot to a Linux system.

Unlike the tried-and-true jump drive methods, however, this process is not straightforward at all. It relies on two keys, the first of which is FUSE which allows a filesystem to be created in userspace. The second is exploiting a step in boot process of Linux systems where the kernel unpacks a temporary filesystem, called initramfs, in order to load the real filesystem. Normally a user doesn’t interact much with this step, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. A tool called dracut allows using an existing Linux installation to build a custom initramfs and in this case, the custom initramfs is built to include the proper support for both networking and FUSE.

The proof of concept in this demonstration originally ran in a container, using an existing project called google-drive-ocamlfuse to interact with Google Drive itself. From there, after sorting out some issues with root access, networking, malfunctioning symlinks, and various timeouts on the (perhaps predictably) slow system, the whole contraption was moved over to a laptop so it could be tested on real hardware. Everything runs, and although the original creator of this behemoth admits it is a bit “silly” they note that there may be some real-world use cases for something like this. We still won’t expect everyone to throw out their jump drives anytime soon, though. If you’re not feeling like your Linux skills are up to the challenge of something like this, we’d recommend you start with our own [Al Williams]’s Linux Fu series.

While most of us are probably willing to pick up the tools and void the warranty on just about anything, often just to see what’s inside, many of us draw the line at camera gear. The tiny screws, the complex mechanisms, and the easily destroyed optical elements are all enough to scare off the average hacker. Not so for [Anthony Kouttron], who tore into a broken eBay Sigma lens and got it working again.

Now, to be fair, modern lenses tend to have a lot more in them that’s amenable to repair than back in the old days. And it seemed from the get-go that [Anthony]’s repair was going to be more electronic than optical or mechanical. The 45-mm lens was in fantastic shape physically, but wouldn’t respond to any controls when mounted to a camera body. Removing the lens bayonet mount exposed the main controller PCB, which is tightly packed with SMD components and connectors for the flex cables that burrow further into the lens to its many sensors and actuators. By probing traces with his multimeter, [Anthony] found a DC-DC converter on the main PCB with an unknown component nearby. This turned out to be an SMD fuse, and as luck would have it, it was open. Replacing the fuse got the lens working again, and while there’s always the nagging suspicion that whatever blew the fuse the first time could happen again, the repair seems to have worked.

Despite the simplicity of the fix, [Anthony] continued the teardown and shared a lot of tips and tricks for lens repairs, including where he would have looked next if the fuse had been good. One tip we loved was the use of double-sided tape to organize parts as they’re removed; this is particularly important with camera gear where screws or different lengths can make for a really bad day on reassembly.

Feeling the need to dive deeper into lens repair? This step-by-step repair should keep you satisfied.

The Asus ROG Ally is a handheld that, to our pleasant surprise, has attracted a decently sized modding community. Recently, we’ve stumbled upon a Reddit post investigating a somewhat common failure mode of this handheld — the microSD card slot going out of order, where an inserted card fails to be recognized, pretty irritating to encounter. Now, it turns out, this is down to a certain model of PTC fuses being failure-prone.

It makes sense to fuse the SD card slot. The cards are dense pieces of technology that are subject to some wear and tear in daily use. As such, it’s not unheard of that a microSD card can short-circuit internally — heating up to the point of melting plastic and giving people severe burns. Given that such a card is typically connected to a beefy 3.3 V rail, any mass-manufactured device designer could want to put a fuse between the 3.3 V rail and the card. However, on some ROG Ally batches, a certain make of the fuse is used, that appears to be likely to develop faults: the fuse’s resistance increasing dramatically during the card’s normal operation, with the SD card being supplied subpar power as a result.

There’s a fair bit of investigating happening in the comment section, with people posting oscilloscope captures, using breakouts to tap the SD card, and figuring out the fuse part numbers for the affected models. As for Reddit’s solution, it’s short-circuiting the fuse with a piece of thin wire — we would probably source a suitable fuse and solder it on top of the faulty one.

This isn’t the first ROG Ally modification we’ve covered so far, and given the activity we’re seeing, it’s unlikely to be our last.