[XBOX 1][sprocketme2]Xbox Mini FINISHED

[sprocketme2]

Okay, so this entry is for an original xbox console that I had been planning on modding for a long time. Seemed like a good time to start. The mod itself, xbox mini, has been done before but I will be adding my own personal touch to it (more on that later). It is a V1.0 xbox if that matters  This is my first competition but I have been modding for a couple years, including a PSP and another xbox.


Now a little about the work I have planned:

1.) Write enable, split, and burn TSOP with X2 5035 and iND
2.) Replace stock hdd with spare 2.5" HDD and create mounting bracket (scrapping DVD drive)
3.) Install a micro DC-DC PSU
4.) Iceberq 4s on GPU and CPU
5.) *NEW MOD* mount 4 wireless controller receivers inside
6.) *NEW MOD* write and program pic12f683 to run leds and a TOUCH SENSOR power button
7.) *NEW MOD* 2 USB ports will be wired up in parallel with controller ports 3 and 4 to become master when something is plugged in.
8.) Test fit everything and create CAD drawings to have a black lexan case laser cut
9.) Cram all that into a small case
10.) ????
11.) Profit

I've opted not to include internal network card because of budget and inconvenience.  I will start tonight, as i already have the xbox open.

[sprocketme2]

Late night last night, but got a good start on things. Hard drive mount turned out decent for being eyeballed.

It is made of .25" plexi and cut with band-saw and dremel.
The standoffs are... I don't really know, just found them laying around.

I originally split TSOP 4 ways then realized i needed 2 way split so one of the two switches is unused. The hard drive's mounting holes are nearly stripped because I used cruddy screws, but it'll have to do.
Re-sized an 80 wire IDE cable to fit better but its still a bit long.


Now I'm pretty much idle till my new PSU gets here. I may start on my new PE board/chip.

P.S. Is anybody here knowledgeable on capacitive touch sensors?  I'm not really sure what to use for an electrode. Does it have to be copper, or just conductive? I was thinking like a metal washer

[sprocketme2]

Still waiting on PSU  So, I have been drawing what i can of the case on autocad. I am indecisive so give me your opinion on witch fan grill to use:
I think i like the 2 on the left most 
There will be 2 grills side by side with blue iceberq lights behind them if that sways anybody's opinion

[sprocketme2]

Okay, here is an update for anybody following this. I had been drawing up the motherboard and case for a few days. I finished the design, its pretty similar to all the other slimboxs, but i like it. Here are the final drawings:

Ordered from www.pololu.com. I gotta give them props for an amazing laser cutting service. Speedy cut and ship, plus good communication. Decently priced too I would say.
All the cutting and engraving came to $53 plus the price of the acrylic. It was submitted the 26th and shipped the 27th! According to fed-ex tracking, it should arrive September 2nd.
My DC-DC power supply came in, but sadly i do not have a 12V AC-DC power supply brick to test things out with.

I will try and find one locally within the next few days. Yesterday I wired up a patch cable for the PSU to V1.0 xbox power plug, following this guide.
If everything works, i will remove the plugs and solder everything straight to the DC-DC PSU.

Today, i will finish ordering parts hopefully. I don't have as much time to work on this now as my high school just started back up. This is my senior year so i have to stay on top of things.

[sprocketme2]

been a while... Ive been working on this every spare minute between school work and sleeping.  Plus, today my grandpa passed away so I will try my best to still get this done on time. I'm nearing completion, but the programming is a little buggy and my controllers were just shipped out today so we will see. Anyway, what I've been up to:
AC-DC power supply came in Tuesday. Everything worked well. The iceberqs came in yesterday:

Open them up and I'm greeted with a horrendous copper surface. 

Couple hours of extra work but it sanded/polished away pretty well. I applied AS5 and attached the iceberqs using screws/nuts. I don't really know how much tension I should have on the fans so I just guessed.

The last thing I did last night was rewire the DC-DC PSU to remove the extra plugs.

Tested the rewired psu and the iceberqs for a few minutes last night. All seems well.
Sorry no case pics right now. The acrylic has come in, and I managed to get it bent pretty well using a ghetto jig. It has not been glued yet, but that needs to be done tonight. If i get that done ill post pics.

[sprocketme2]

Gonna be a busy day tomorrow but I'm 95% done. Lots of soldering to be done as my 4 controllers are coming in tomorrow (and college classes start). Anyway I will put a nice look at whats to come up here.

Ill be honest, this front panel was just setback after setback. Again all the problems arose form poor planning, but still it brought hours of extra work.


I would say the size is pretty small for my first attempt, and all this rushing.

From an engineering standpoint, i definitely overlooked some things, but nothing catastrophic.

[blackburn]

i really like this, im actually drawing up a case to be CNC'd for my xbox media center! 

What do you use to draw up your case?

[sprocketme2]

ok, well its pretty late, I've got school tomorrow, and I've been working non stop since I got home today.
Anyway, here it is. Its not perfect by any means but the deadline is today so here:




The lid was yet another oversight. As you can see, it is slightly raised above the sides. This was not my original intention, but the wires push up a little on it and I don't have the screws on hand to fasten it down flush. I assure you though it will close flush and turn on. It does indeed have 4 wireless controllers, but the led for player 4 is not working  Again no time to track down problems. The power button is touch sensitive, does not light atm because I can't get pulse width modulation working. 

Oh and on the left hand side are HDD and LAN activity leds, then 2 usb ports that disable 3rd and 4th wireless controllers when active.

REALLY bad picture of the back if anybody is curious:

[sprocketme2]

i really like this, im actually drawing up a case to be CNC'd for my xbox media center! 

What do you use to draw up your case?

You can find scale models of the motherboard on the internet. Open those up in any 2d cad program (I used Autodesk AutoCAD) and trace over parts. My advice, don't make the case the EXACT width of the mobo, leave some space. Good luck none the less

[Blazinkaos]

Nice thats some wicked modding there.

[blackburn]

ive got another question for you... what did you use as the trim on your laser cut box? Like the rounded sides?

[sprocketme2]

ive got another question for you... what did you use as the trim on your laser cut box? Like the rounded sides?

No trim at all. I figured up arc length for the corners then incorporated it into the sides. By this I mean, the entire case is only 4 pieces; top, bottom, then two edge pieces consisting of 2 faces and two corners. Everything comes flat so i made a jig to bend the acrylic to the appropriate radius. this is one of the hardest steps to get right IMO. Bending ONLY the portion intended and nothing extra, and getting it close to 90 degrees by eye, is hard.

Oh yeah, since the competition has been extended, Ive been doing what little work I can. College started, so my classes doubled, plus the family is in (staying at this house) for my grandfather's funeral tomorrow. Enough about that though; I have gotten new screws that will sit flush, fix the power button/light, fix player 4 LED, and hopefully clean up the wiring inside.

[Slim Hacker]

What materiall did you use for the case and does it work well with the heat from the mobo?

[DarkShot]

What materiall did you use for the case and does it work well with the heat from the mobo?

The material is acrylic. It's good stuff to use.

[Slim Hacker]

well do you think it could handle PS3 heat?

[blackburn]

yeah, im almost finished with my case design, and i am going to be CNCing my out of a solid block of billet alluminum 

[young mone]

sweet looks cool!!

[sprocketme2]

well do you think it could handle PS3 heat?

I believe the outer shell of the ps3 already is acrylic, so yes. Just don't get 1/8th inch acrylic and rest hot components directly on it. I have 1/8th inch standoffs below my mobo so air can flow, and to prevent stresses. If the ps3 is not acrylic then maybe buy a small sheet of it locally and try some heat tests.

yeah, im almost finished with my case design, and i am going to be CNCing my out of a solid block of billet alluminum 

As I said, make sure to leave some tolerance between motherboard and case. My case squeezes the mobo on all four sides. Also the aluminum will look good but be careful as shorts will be alot easier; and it only takes one bad short to ruin a motherboard    Are you having the sides milled separately then bending them yourself or just creating a hollow container then a lid?


___UPDATE___
Im waiting for stuff to dry atm. Things are coming together nicely, only thing that got screwed up was the touch sensor. I lost the piece I was using for an electrode but I did manage to get the PWM working. The code was really buggy anyway, resulting in hours of testing, which led to me loosing the washer I was using as an electrode. None the less, I can turn the box on and off using a momentary switch until I get a new washer.

I owe everybody a big thanks for the compliments!

[robin1989]

the competition is now closed

[blackburn]

I believe the outer shell of the ps3 already is acrylic, so yes. Just don't get 1/8th inch acrylic and rest hot components directly on it. I have 1/8th inch standoffs below my mobo so air can flow, and to prevent stresses. If the ps3 is not acrylic then maybe buy a small sheet of it locally and try some heat tests.

As I said, make sure to leave some tolerance between motherboard and case. My case squeezes the mobo on all four sides. Also the aluminum will look good but be careful as shorts will be alot easier; and it only takes one bad short to ruin a motherboard    Are you having the sides milled separately then bending them yourself or just creating a hollow container then a lid?

it's going to be milled from 1 solid piece of aluminum for the bottom and sides, and a seperate piece for the top. And yes i have thought about the shorts and other things like that. What I will more than likely do is buy some cans of the rubberized undercoatings and spray the entire inside, where the HDD, DVD drive and motherboard will be sitting. Mine is going to keep the DVD drive as it will be used as a DVD upscaler (1080i) and media center in my game room. Ive already slimmed down the DVD drive to just over half its original size, so I guess we'll see how it goes. Hopefully once my metal gets here Ill be opening a new worklog for this. And as for ruining xboxs ive got 2 v1.0s and 2 v1.1s (one of the 1.0's has a bad TSOP but has a pin header installed) so its not really a big deal as I got 3 of 4 of them for free from friends.  I will be doing a 4 way TSOP split using a PIC to control the BIOS'es using LEDs to indicate modes. Im getting really excited about this mod now lol

[sprocketme2]

the competition is now closed

Not sure if these count then, but they were taken today. Ill post them for others to see even if they don't count:





Here is how I packed 4 wireless controllers in:



I will be giving credit for inspiration in the coming days.

[Blazinkaos]

It doesnt play DVDs.

[bustinthejustin]

It doesn't matter :P it's being used to stream music and video from a computer I would assume. Plus you can copy games onto the HDD along with music and videos.


But sprocket, it looks really great! Even if you don't win, it was a job well done! Looks really clean and everything.

[Blazinkaos]

Yea got a point there. How large is that HD.

[GhoSt]

this is my favorite project, great job. God I wan't my own laser cutter.

[ghostshadow]

this is my favorite project, great job. God I wan't my own laser cutter.

I have to agree. This one was one of my favorites out of all of the submissions. Everyone did a great job. I think this slim box appealed to me mostly because I am working on doing a couple my self here in the near future. I think it's great that the xbox 1 is still a very viable option as a media center. 

Great work!

[sprocketme2]

I have to agree. This one was one of my favorites out of all of the submissions. Everyone did a great job. I think this slim box appealed to me mostly because I am working on doing a couple my self here in the near future. I think it's great that the xbox 1 is still a very viable option as a media center. 

Great work!

this is my favorite project, great job. God I wasn't my own laser cutter.

Thank you both for your compliments! I am disappointed that I didn't win after all my hard work, but I realize their can only be one winner. I congratulate alman101 for his victory just, as I would expect from others if I had won.  I can see he has put a lot of work into it, and it has paid off. However, if the judges don't mind my asking, what else could I have done to improve?

I gave it my best effort and I guess that's all that counts. Maybe ill be able to win the next one.

[bustinthejustin]

IMHO, you should have won. You custom built a case, TSOP flashed it, swapped the HDD, made the PSU smaller, etc. The list goes on, making this a very difficult mod. Alman on the other hand only drilled 100+ holes and then fitted LEDs, which although is time-consuming, is not particularly difficult. Unfortunately the voting for the winner was admin-only or else you might have won.


Better luck next time!

[Modded Matt]

I think this is an awsome mod, you did a great job. my vote went to another member as the final pics were not submitted at the close of the comp, and I still have not seen a working gameplay video. I think if you would have had a bit more time, you could have finished this and would have blown away the competition. please dont be discouraged. you have done great work!!

[Ben.]

You shoulda have won 

[~:Dhruv:~]

Dont feel bad dude.... a lot of people here think that you should have won....
This was the best mod out of the three  imho...
In my opinion Alman should have been third.

Hope to see more such great stuff from you.

[Slim Hacker]

Great job you actually inspired a project I've been thinking about slot lately.....

[sprocketme2]

Thank you very much bustinthejusting, modded matt, Ben., Dhruv, and Slim Hacker! Your compliments are very encouraging and really mean a lot. Modded matt especially, it helps a lot to know what I could have done better, so maybe I wont make the same mistake next time. I have no excuse for the late pictures, only that I didn't read Sunday at noon. I didn't have any videos because my family doesn't own any digital video cameras.  If I had thought it would have improved my score, I would have borrowed one.

A little follow up for anybody who cares: I am currently modding the 4 wireless controllers so that each one is labeled with a backlit number, so you know which position each controller is. No work on the power button, been pretty busy.

I feel as though I never really introduced myself to the community, so ill do that now. My name is actually Tyler, I'm 17, and a senior in high school. I am taking general engineering courses at the high school, and take specialized engineering courses at the local community college. I am training to get a 4 year bachelors in electronic engineering from OU or UC. Most importantly, i first got into modding when I got custom firmware on the PSP about 3 years ago.

[frenulem - No.5417]

Misscarge of justice should of been No1