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Case Mod - In Progress Xbox 360 PC Mod (Abandoned)

Discussion in 'Project Logs' started by Marmotta, 28 Oct 2009.

  1. Marmotta

    Marmotta What's a Dremel?

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    I thought I'd post this thread, as I noticed that there were a few people out there attempting to do "PC in Xbox 360 case" mods. To be honest, just getting a small motherboard and shoving it in the case isn't exactly the hardest of mods, but my goal was to have it look indistinguishable from a real Xbox 360 once completed. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to finish it and I've since moved on to other mods.

    Anyway, this is what I managed to do:

    Components
    Dead Xbox 360 - I used to work in a game store in London, so obviously we had a lot of dead ones in the basement for me the choose from. I found one with a faulty GPU, as I wanted to use the DVD drive with my mod.

    Jetway J9F2 Mini-ITX Motherboard

    AMD 5050e CPU

    120W Pico PSU - these require a 12V source and cover all ATX connections

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]


    First thing I decided to do was just throw everything inside the case to see how roomy it was. As you can see, it almost fits in without any tweaking, but the tab from the RAM slot prevents the DVD drive from sitting straight.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]


    In order to get the thing looking like a real Xbox, there were really 7 things that required modification: the PSU, AV output, HDD, DVD drive, power switch and ethernet and USB output. I decided it was best to start with the major components, as they were more likely to cause problems, so I began with the PSU.

    My intention had been to use the original 360 power supply, but it uses a 5V standby voltage, which doesn't work with the 12V specification of the PicoPSU. The section below is taken from a post I made at the time:

    Anyway, I decided to do the simplest thing and disguise a 12V Standby PSU as an Xbox 360 one. I bought a 170W power supply from eBay and opened it up to see what I could do with it.

    PSU after being broken open and with 360 connections soldered :
    [​IMG]

    Close-up:
    [​IMG]

    The 360 PSU case needed a little bit of dremeling and a lot of hot glue for the new PSU to fit snuggly:
    [​IMG]

    Completed PSU with working LED (although it's now constantly green and is always outputting 12V, perfect for the PicoPSU):
    [​IMG]


    Next step was the AV ouput. I took a dremel to the motherboard and cut off a section which included the HDD, AV, ethernet and DVD eject connections. Following the guide below, I made a VGA extension cable and plugged it into the motherboard. Unfortunately (and despite me making 3 different cables), the signal always had a blue tint to it. I was unsure why and was considering adding potentiometers to the RGB signals, before I abandoned the project:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]


    Now for the DVD drive. The stock 360 DVD drive was probably the worst thing to modify, as it requires 3.3V rather than the PC standard of 5V and the eject function would not work with a standard temporary push button, like the one found on the 360 motherboard.

    I originally tried to use the DVD drive and converted to 5V from a standard molex connector to the 3.3V required, but the eject button got the better of me and really did bring the whole project to a standstill for a while.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]


    I then thought about using the HD-DVD drive inside the machine. Even though Microsoft (rightly so, it would now appear) were entirely against building it into the console, I'd known for a couple of years that it could be used with a PC to play standard media. Not only that, but it used USB for data transfer and 12V, which I could get from the PicoPSU, for power. It also used a standard temporary push button to turn on and the footprint is identical to that of the DVD drive, so much so that the front bezel can be interchanged without any modification.

    It was at this stage that I began to forget about the project, or at least stopped photographong my progress. The parts that I didn't touch upon, the hard drive and power button assmebly, have been successfully mimicked in other mods, such as this one: http://www.freewebs.com/electric0ant/xbox360pc.htm Hopefully someone with the time on their hands could combine the two and make an Xbox PC along the same lines as I was hoping to achieve.
     
  2. stonedsurd

    stonedsurd Is a cackling Yuletide Belgian

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    Nice! I'm trying to do something similar in a PS3 currently. I should've used a picoPSU but I went with a 1U instead.
     
  3. Cheapskate

    Cheapskate Insane? or just stupid?

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    You've done some great work here. It's a pity we will never see it finished.
     
  4. eimis50

    eimis50 Lithuanian enthusiast

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    Update?
     
  5. Marmotta

    Marmotta What's a Dremel?

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    As I mentioned, I've totally abandoned this project, although I'm currently working on a new mod which I should post up before Christmas, hopefully.
     
  6. JoeK

    JoeK Minimodder

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    xbox psus can be had for around £10 from a well known auction site. in contrast the picopsu bricks are really expensive costing £30-£40.

    It would be great to adapt the xbox psu to connect to the picopsu.
     
  7. KidMod-Southpaw

    KidMod-Southpaw Super Spamming Saiyan

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    Well that was a pointless thread bump.
     
  8. JoeK

    JoeK Minimodder

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    sorry should have read the thread in full, sometime i reply to a thread to mark it in my post history so i can read up on it later. for the sake of saving a few quid it appears that doing this transformation isnt worth it, voltages are all wrong, and the xbox brick has extra pins for communicating with the console so it cant be used for other devices.

    i was looking for some store bought adapter, not a mod.
     

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