Gebby's Slim Xbox Laptop

[ttsgeb]

Thought I'd crosspost this here too, seeing as this is kinda where I started out in this direction...

So, I've decided to build an xbox laptop. The 360 is for lamers. I'm building and xbox laptop like a boss.
at this point, I've gotten most of the parts in, and what I haven't gotten is on order. So... Pictures...

The PLAN:

I will build an xbox laptop. This will aim to have a total thickness of close to 1 inch and will include an unmodded (as far as the software side of things goes) xbox... disc drive, original 10gig drive, region locked and all. If it is modded, It will only be to allow it to play nice with my VGA monitor.

Screens I had to choose from

after some cutting(of another xbox case) I came to the conclusion that only the screen with the Dell bezel would work for this.

Playing with the disk drive... You didn't honestly think I was going to keep it tray loading... did you?



Pretty standard picture of splayed out xbox guts:


Showing that you... get this... don't need huge chunks of ugly and mostly faulty plastic to make the disk drive work (<3 Ashen)



Case roughed out:


Random bit of it kinda thrown almost nearly together into a roughed out idea:


This is how the internals will be laid out... except I'm flipping the mobo over and swapping the side the drives are on... so that the fans blow out the bottom of the unit...


Right now it's kinda waiting on me to finish cleaning house... and the black ABS I ordered to get here... but hopefully I'll get to finish things up pretty soon.
I wish the damn plastic supplier would send me my crap already. Hasn't even shipped yet. I haven't been billed... but it hasn't shipped yet either. :/

[MichelMoermans]

Very nice work! Very interested to seeing what you do with this

It seems weird to me calling it a slim without modding the hard drive and removing the diskdrive but kudos for sticking with the stock version. Very interested to see where you'll get with that approach!

[eagle5953]

If those are laptop screens, that's not going to work. The connection between a laptop and its screen usually is proprietary. You'll need a screen that accepts the xbox video out signal, like component. You might be able to use a small monitor with vga, but as I recall, you'll need to softmod or modchip to get vga out from xbox.

You should probably wire everything up and get that working before thinking too much about the case.

Also, an inch thick is overly optimistic. Shoot for two. The stock heatsinks alone are probably about that.

Good luck!

[majora1155]

If those are laptop screens, that's not going to work. The connection between a laptop and its screen usually is proprietary. You'll need a screen that accepts the xbox video out signal, like component. You might be able to use a small monitor with vga, but as I recall, you'll need to softmod or modchip to get vga out from xbox.

[eagle5953]

After wading through the crossposted link, you do seem to have the video situation figured out (I'm too used to noobs wanting to use laptop screens without considering wiring them up).

The replacement heatsinks and slimmed disk drive will help, but I still think the thickness is untenable. Consider that the casing material will add four times its thickness (screen back, screen bezel, body top, and body back). This is to say nothing of reinforcing the case by doubling up, as stated in the link.

Nonetheless, I intend to follow this project with interest. The xbox doesn't get enough love as is.

[ttsgeb]

The material I'm using is 1/16 thick, and on the doubled over bits, I'm going to cut out holes for my electronics where I need to. The top of the case is going to be right around 3/8'', and the bottom is actually going to be about an inch thick just because I want it to look good with my case concept.

When I'm done with the board, it will be around 5/8'' thick, while the drives will be about 3/4''. Add 1/8'' for the case, and you get 7/8'' for the main bit, plus 3/8 for the screen, or 5/4''... 1/4'' over my original size.

If I manage to come across another xbox after finishing my current projects, I'm going to go the whole nine yards with the next one... IE 2tb HDD, no optical drive(like a normal person would do), custom PSU and as close to 3/4'' as I can manage.

This version would have the tops of the heatsinks flush with the case, bringing my board height down to 1/2'', and the screen wouldn't have the top of the xbox as the case for it, so it would be 1/4''. Add 1/4'' for the case parts, and you get 1 inch even. Kinda big, but still within today's standards for a laptop designed to play games.

[ttsgeb]

Minor amount of progress today... did some some on my heatsink setup.

I'm hoping this will keep it cool enough.





I took the fans all the way apart to solder this together... because that's how I roll.




They aren't actually attached to the board yet, just setting on it... but man, this looks so much less intimidating without the stock heatsinks.

[Harlequin]

wondering why you married the two heatsinks together rather than just plugging them both into the xbox itself....

[ttsgeb]

Because I was bored and it's a V1.6 xbox with only one fan connector.

[ttsgeb]

So, I've been trying to figure out a better power situation then picopsu + converter...

I figure the majority of the xbox's power is on the 5V line, so why would I use a 12V supply to run it?

This is what I've come up with:

http://www.ti.com/product/ptn04050c

The 3.3v line is only used to tell the xbox to turn on, so it doesn't need a big beefy regulator, a small linear regulator would likely do the trick.

For the 12v line, I could use TI's ptn04050c, it would *barely* get the job done, though.
I would use another one to power the screen. If that doesn't work, I could figure out something else, I'm sure. NJYTouch says they need a 4A supply, but I highly doubt that from what I've seen.

I could then have that 12V output control the 5V line, and have the 5V line control the 3.3v linear regulator to tell the board to turn on.

SO... incomplete diagram of what I'm thinking:


That's the basic idea. If anyone sees a big glaring mistake in all of it, let me know.

[Harlequin]

so what kind of power supply would you use rather than a pico? They seem to be fairly straight forward in their application and work well...

btw, you can (I believe) rebuild the 2nd fan connector on the 1.6... been a while since I looked at the board, but i think that it is still there, just need to put the pins on it.

[ttsgeb]

I would use the PSU I'm working to design instead.
You know, seeing as the PicoPSU isn't at all straight-forward to use with an xbox, and would require approximately the same amount and size of circuitry to work with it as my PSU will take up total.
Why do people not understand how ridiculous it is to use a PicoPSU for this?


Also, Looking at the board right next to me, I'm pretty damn sure there's no pins for another fan connector.
Anyway, you should know by now that headers are the biggest enemy of cramming crap into small places... even if they're damn convenient when crap breaks.
Not to mention I already did the work, so no sense un-doing it now...


In other news, after my successful re-capping of my 360, I decided that that's a hella lot more fun than manual relocation of these fellers with short leads, So I just (as in less than 5 minutes ago) ordered a set of new capacitors for two V1.6 boxen. Just the really big ones, though, Mind you. I'll still have to bend leads for the ones on the mobo-side bit of the PSU, though. Those things are freakin' huge, even with more modern tech.

[Harlequin]

yeah it looks like they did away with the 2nd pin points on the 1.6. BTW I wasn't suggesting that you re-do any work, was just trying to pass on some info as an FYI.

In re: PicoPSU - there is a reason why everyone uses them with the original xbox -- It works.

It pumps enough power to turn the box on, and to run peripherals from it. If you have a 24 pin to 20 pin PSU cable adaptor, you can do a small amount of cut and solder to create a reasonable enough adaptor to go from Pico to Xbox without moding the Pico itself. This process is pretty easy to do, and gives the option for easy replacement in the future, ot for the gutting of the project at a later date if needed.

I'm not entirely sure what power supply you are intending on going with, as I've only seen the one link posted for the chip that can take 5v and make it 12v. If this works for you, I'm not going to argue with it and will read on with interest.

But you asked why people use PICO and I thought I'd answer that. The simple answer -> it works.

[ttsgeb]

You have to have two power regulators and an voltage inverter to hook it up.
It also supplies a ton of voltages that the xbox doesn't need.

My circuit will require 2 power regulators and a few transistors + support circuitry. Overall size will be smaller, and there won't be a lot of unnecessary work going on, thus it's more efficient.

The reason people use the picoPSU is merely that somebody already did all the work, and that for a long time, there was an adapter available pre-made for using atx PSUs on the xbox, not because it's at all the best option.

[ttsgeb]

Got some parts in the mail, made some progress.