WIIp it

[gannon]

So, got fed up with wanting to work on this but not having quite enough money to get all the parts...so I started anyways!

Right now I have a semi-hacked 7" widescreen LCD, wii, and 320GB 2.5" HDD
It's pretty much what my wii development setup has been so far, but without a wifi router.

Now for things to decide on: Battery or not? If not I'll probably have a power supply built-in. I don't have a multimeter (or soldering iron) on me at the moment, so don't have stats on the draw for hdd + wii + lcd, but I'd assume that I'd have a max of 2 hours on a normal battery.

I'm probably going to just have the unit be completely separate from the wii itself and build most stuff into the (now) mostly empty LCD case. I'm going cheap on this, so it's mostly function over beauty unfortunately.

[jjhammerstein]

Are you looking at making it a laptop, or are you doing a tablet kind of deal? Or a handheld? The Wii is pretty light on batteries, but I don't know about the screen, if you're making it into a standalone kind of thing, and you're looking for function over form, throw in some NiCads. They're pretty cheap.

Also, 50 VIEWS AND NO REPLIES? AFTER A DAY? What's going on?!

[gannon]

Just splurged and bought a lipoly battery today, it's pretty large, but has huge capacity.
If I don't do too much modification of the cases I have it'll be kinda big (wii size + 2" height), but for having hours of battery life and 320GB of usb storage it's not bad.
I'll be making it laptop style most likely, although now that I think about it if I had more case building materials I'd be interested in integrating a GC controller and making it more standard portable. Maybe in a rev2 in the fall

[gannon]

Doing a bit of work while waiting for parts I bought to arrive. Just opening up my wii now (not that I haven't before )
Prepped part of the lcd case for modification (removed parts, took off stickers, etc), not sure if I'll use it though. But having the hinges already made (and a case that's made for the screen ) makes my life a bit easier I think.




Edit: After opening up the wii I see I can make it much more thin. Anyone happen to know of a place where I can buy a ribbon cable extension for the wii? If not I'd have to relocate the GC controller / memory card ports.
This makes it much wider, but much more laptop-like. But...this would require much more case work, it would also compel me to get a bigger LCD, kinda hard to find with the Wii being low-res.
The overall size of a unit like this would be 12"x8.5"x1.5-2"

[joeyjoe9876]

i have that laptop
good luck

[gannon]

Looks like I can save some space by relocating the bluetooth module. Looks like it'd be 16 fairly small wires though >< I can also save a bit more by relocating the SD card slot (or maybe just permanently adding a large sd card, then I put it where ever there's a bit of space.
Granted, all of this isn't relevant if I choose to keep the wii in it's case...

[OMGpedobear]

The wii cd drive can e flipped over and put next to the M board with the stock cables. Ill take some pictures of my setup and post them in news sometime next week.

[gannon]

I already know and have talked about that, the only issue is that it can only be flipped over to the side with the gamecube ports. If you want to flip it to the other side you need an extension cable.

[palmertech]

Have you thought about converting the Wii DD to top loading and using that? With a laptop, it has no real disadvantages, and allows you to trim a lot on the sides of the mobo, not to mention making the entire assembly way thinner.

[gannon]

I don't see any specific advantage to modding the disc drive to be top loading, not to mention the amount of work it would require.
My battery gets in tomorrow, and I hope I'm not wrong about how well it'll work (about the size of the wii, but ~.5" thick

[gannon]

Got my battery today, everything is fitting together fine, but looks like I need to get a step-up converter for the battery. The 12V line on it isn't quite enough to power the wii unfortunately.
Looking more like I'll be going for the wider laptop design rather than the thicker design, I wouldn't have quite enough room for the battery and hdd in the bottom of the lcd case, so I'd have to do some case work anyways.

[jjhammerstein]

a top loading drive is WAY thinner. Palmer has the numbers.

[palmertech]

Not too hard, you may want to look into it. The hardest part is getting your replacement CD clip to be perfectly on-center, the Wii DD uses a nonstandard sized axle, so you will need to widen the plastic of any clip you hope to fit on it.

[Tchay]

Not too hard, you may want to look into it. The hardest part is getting your replacement CD clip to be perfectly on-center, the Wii DD uses a nonstandard sized axle, so you will need to widen the plastic of any clip you hope to fit on it.

can we hope for a tut? Or is it pretty "do-it-yourself"?

[OMGpedobear]

a wii laptop anywhere near that thin woudl be uber awesome and actually portable !!