So a couple months back my uncle gave me whatever gear of his that I could use (He had a film SLR setup but I decided to take only what I could use with my current camera). He happened to have a Vivitar 283 and a small PC sync cable (one end was the Vivitar Proprietary connector.
Now the flash itself is awesome. I modded it the first day I got it because my uncle didn't have the battery pack for AA batteries. Of course I needed a way to use it so I had to find out how to get it to work. Luckily the battery door has the perfect ridges for metal contacts to complete the battery circuit. I put some foil on the battery door and taped it down well enough to stick and now I can use AA batteries without that stupid battery clip.
Later on, I wanted to expand on my off-camera flash usage (because using a roughly 10 inch PC sync cable is ridiculous). I brought my PC cable to school, cut it up, and extended it (electronics class). I brought it home and tried to test it only to find that I broke the Vivitar end of the cable by detaching the internal wire from the plug somehow. I cut off the plug and thought of what I could do. I had plenty of 1/8" mono plugs, but no switched jacks. I found that I had an old pedalboard for my guitar, and that used 1/8" jacks to power the pedals. I popped it open and looked at the jacks. They were standard unswitched 1/8" jacks, one wire to tip and one to sleeve. The way the jacks were designed was to be expandable. The plastic casing had different molding and slots to accomodate different switched contacts, one for tip, one for sleeve. It even had slots to accomodate a ring. But of course, there were no contacts in the slots. So I did some handiwork. I grabbed another jack, ripped the plastic off the top of both, pulled one of the contacts out and bent it to fit the molding inside the original jack to act as a switch. I had just created a switching tip, normally-closed 1/8" jack, exactly what Vivitar uses for their proprietary connector (well, the switching part). Now I had to find a way to fit it in. It was a tight fit, but eventually I found that if I cut off the small PCB inside where the original jack connector is and resolder the wires, I'd be good. After an hour or so of surgery I got the jack in there as an extremely tight fit.
Now, the flash has no manual control. 4 automatic zones ftl. I needed manual control. Luckily, this site
has a great list of how to make a custom variable power control for the 283. The main problem being that he is using it remotely and using fixed resistors in a large control box. I needed my solution to be mounted on flash. I read the resistances listed in that site and found that I'd need a 250k VR ideally. I had an audio-taper 250k VR laying around (from my guitar) and found that it was no good for me. It didn't fit inside the flash like I hoped (you can see it in one of the pictures glued inside the casing, that was before I realized it wouldn't fit) so I had to think of something else. I decided to switch the resistors to a 100k with a switch. The switch I use has one throw going straight to the VR, the other throw going to the VR through a 180k resistor. The reason I used this 180k resistor is because the 100k resistor only goes up to around 75k (bad tolerances). To reach full output I need 250k or greater. I would rather using only one pot and having no other controls to mess with but that just won't happen (due to tolerances being so loose in inexpensive pots) so the switch is necessary for me. Plus this mod was completely free for me, just grabbed a resistor and switch from school and spent some time doing the surgery 
In the end, I have a fully manual Vivitar 283 with a universal sync jack, not requiring the use for a stupid battery pack (there is no reason Vivitar couldn't have just used contacts in the door, they clearly made the battery holder to make some extra cash) and having fully manual control over flash power.
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