Hello Bit-Tech, As you can see I have had an account here for a while, and have often lurked around the forums and checked out the articles. But after just seeing the post by 500mph I thought it was finally time to make my first post, and get involved with another talented community of modders! So please enjoy my latest case mod, the OS Xbox Pro - Introduction Before I begin talking about my latest build, let me just say this: I'm a PC. That's right, I said it. Back in high school when we got a shipment of brand new iMacs I was one of the few that wasn't lured in by the flamboyant colors and bizarre error sounds. While everyone else was using iMovie and Final Cut Pro I worked with Premiere, and later Avid. There was nothing I could do on a Mac that I couldn't do faster and better on a "PC". Now, though, that I'm looking to start my career in video production I'm finding a lot of employers are wanting editors who have experience in Final Cut. This left me with the distasteful choice of either setting foot in an Apple store or spending the next couple of months laboring in my garage, with the potential for serious injury. I of course took the easy way out; I present to you the OS Xbox Pro. Construction It was just recently that I found out about the EFi-X dongle, a device that plugs into compatible motherboards and allows them to boot a wide range of operating systems including OSX. The promise of being able to buy my own components and run a stable copy of OSX made building my own system the perfect way for me to accomplish my objective and likely save a lot of money as well. ExpressHD.com was also kind enough to sponsor this project by sending me one of their EFi-X dongles. The first step was to decide on a look for the case. While I wanted to throw in at least some design elements to pay homage to Apple cases, I didn't want people who entered my home to think I was a Mac users either. Microsoft has helped me avoid this for years, and I realized they could buy me some more time. I decided the original Xbox would make the perfect starting point for this system, and was lucky enough to stumble across an Xbox Dev. Kit for our local tech recycling center. Hardware wise the plan was to select components with the minimum system requirements of at least the entry level $2500 Mac Pro. Despite being a couple inches taller than a retail Xbox, at 1/5 the size of the Mac Pro this was to be a very tight system. After gutting the Xbox I realized not all ATX motherboards would fit, and eventually found one that was compatible with the EFi-X dongle and had all the featured I wanted, including being LGA 775 with DDR3 memory. Size, and more importantly the space needed for all the connections on the back panel, also limited me to a 300W TFX micro power supply. This raised some red flags as that was considerably under the 400W minimum requirment asked by my low profile GeForce 9800 GT - a component I required to match the "GeForce GT 120" that came standard in the Mac Pro. To compensate I invested in the slightly more expensive 65w version of the Intel Core2 Q9550, the Q9550s. Having received my primary components from Newegg I set about cutting and bending the motherboard tray from a sheet of aluminum. It was soon clear that even with my small PSU I would have to position it above the north bridge, and sacrifice on of my PCI-e x1 slots. To support the wieght I decided I would build a second aluminum tray that would be supported by standoffs from 4 of the motherboard mounting holes. On one side of the PSU, Just above the very low profile ZEROtherm cpu cooler, would be a stack of 4 2.5" hard drives. Among them would be 2 7200rpm 500gb drives raid0 through a highpoint raid card for Final Cut editing, a 5200rpm 160gb drive for OSX, and—in an attempt to make this a proper computer—an identical drive for a Windows 7 install. I then moved onto the front panel. The Xbox controller ports were to stay and be repurposed as front panel USB, SATA, and Firewire ports. Unfortunately they were too low and the headers would be blocked by components on the motherboard. I solved this by cutting them out, flipping them upside-down , and re-attaching them on the opposite side to keep the front panels natural curve. A small panel from the CD Rom drive also had to be detached and bondo-ed onto the front panel as there was absolutely no room for an optical drive in this build. For the shell I first cut away the back face to fit around the new motherboard tray. I decided I would use the same style mesh you find on a Mac Pro in the place of the ribbing that was on the Xbox. After bending the mesh, and a lot of bondoing and needle-filing, all that was left to do was sanding and paint. One of my primary goals while designing this system was to create the best price per performance for running Final Cut Pro. A Mac Pro configured with similar specs runs around $4500. By simply watching for deals, and searching through a wide range of PC component manufacturers, I was able to build a system with a retail cost of under $1500—and that includes a retail copy of OSX. Add to that a copy of Windows 7 and Ubuntu and I've ended up with a computer that I might actually enjoy using. Final Product / Sponsors And of course I have to thank my very first sponsors! Thank you to ExpressHD.com for providing me with the EFi-X dongle—the inspiration for this project. And also thank you to Newegg for hooking me up with a whole lot of great hardware. Specifications Intel Core2 Q9550S @2.93GHz Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3LR Sparkle GeForce 9800 GT 8GB Crucial Ballistix 1333MHz Highpoint RocketRAID 2640x1 2x 160GB 5400rpm Seagate Momentus HDD 2x 500GB 7200rpm Seagate Momentus HDD 16GB 1.8" Super Talent MasterDrive KX SSD EFiX USB V1 You can view this build from start to finish through my video worklog, available on my Youtube channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TggHtINGIyc
Thank you for sharing this with us. I got about 142 ideas just from these pictures. Like I mentioned in the original thread this is only the second dev kit case I've seen since 2005. I know that MS presented them to schools but I've never found a real one. john +rep
Very neat idea and even neater execution - but I hope there was something wrong with the Dev.Xbox, those things must be quite rare, no?
Glad to see you posted the log. That is some impressive work you have done. I edited my earlier thread to link back to this one.
great project and nice idea. Just with I had the patience and equipment to do something like this. Must be one of the nicest xbox mods I ever seen, and way to stick it to M$ I especially like the vid, very well done, you sure are multi-talented.
Yea, probably most of my negative comments are people pissed about that. I noticed it at a tech recycling place. There were about 3 or 4 others. I had never seen it before but knew it would save me a whole lot of trouble, as the size was absolutely perfect, and the guy offered it to me for, like, $15. Supposedly it was working, but sorry people, it's not my job to assume a 6 or 7 year old console needs to be sent to a museum. It was worth a hell of a lot to me for what I used it for. The case is 13"x10"x4.5" The efix dongle is only about a 2" square (i didnt measure it, let me know if you need exact dimensions), its pretty small, but unfortunately it seems like it will likely block a second usb header right next to it if direct mounted to the board. That's why I had to use that little cable it comes with, as my mobo only has 2 headers. Thanks guys!
Coolio! I read about your mod on Hackaday this morning, great job on modding the actual Xbox casing with the mesh and such! I love the OS selection screen, how did you manage that? Looks semi-custom, as it uses the same Apple logo that you have on the case..
The main bit is a 1 - 13/16" square about 1/4" thick, Thanks. That OS selection tool is part of that EFiX adapter we were just talking about. You can check it out at expresshd.com
Would a board that already runs EFI have been usable in this project as an alternative the the EFIX dongle?
Just thought I'd let everyone know that Efix is a bit of a.... rip off? All it is is a USB stick encased inside lots of epoxy from what I read. TBH it isn't quite worth the money.... on another note, why no link to the video on youtube? I saw it and the editing/shooting was some of my favourite. Of all time. 6/5 stars. Seriously.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked the vid. I actually had put a link at the very end of the post, so please everybody check it out! As for the Efix, I read about it and saw things about it and what I liked is it seemed to get osx running no problems with a decent sized list of supported hardware. I know there are other ways of getting osx running but I also know about a lot of people having issues with getting all the controllers working, etc. I didn't want to deal with all that, and just wanted simply to have a computer running osx, and so far this setup is doing exactly that. Hopefully people who read these worklogs and get inspired with an idea still do a bit of research on there own before starting their own project, but for me, I am totally pleased with my selection.
Oh, I missed it! I would put it front and centre, it's an excellent vid. About the Efix, it's not that it doesn't work or anything it's the fact they're selling a $5 USB stick with software for $80+...
You do know, that they're developing the software and re-coding the drivers for the hardware themselves... do you? The software-side to a multiboot-system like this (OSX + Windows) is actually the hardest thing to do on your own. Chameleon f.e. doesn't stand a chance against EFI-X in that regard.
Amazing mod. I found the video on insanelymac.com and I just cannot believe how amazing this machine looks. The video is amazingly done also. You got the skills!
Actually, I'm not sure how hard the multibooting actually is. The same problems of partitions and hard drives do not apply to how EFI bootable options are launched. There is en entire thread in this line of conversation along (I wonder if an end user could just grab the EFI EDK from www.tianocore.org, build DUET and use that on a USB key). But if we assume there was any software development involved, then the price does not seem that bad (at least based on what typically billing for EFI development is). I asked about the hardware selection because I'm made an assumption. I know the MSI Wind has been a popular system to make a hackintosh from, and I assumed it was because it is using an EFI implementation called Aptio. But it looks like it's based on drivers, and people are still using EFI emulation layers. I know Intel's boards all run EFI (though they do try and hide it on their desktop boards), and there is that MSI board they publicly released an EFI BIOS for as well. I had never seen an Xbox development system so I though the shell was some after market replacement someone put on the unit before you got it. It's kind of funny that the proportions worked out so well for you, and that is the way it came from Microsoft.
