Put A Vga Port On The Back Of Your 360!, Improved pinouts with auto detection (no switch) Options

[G0t M4xx 21]

All right, with the new update improving the look of the picture on VGA, I thought I'd release my method of wiring up a VGA port to the back of the 360, so you can use a standard VGA cable to hook up the 360 to a monitor.

The new method involves a way I discovered to have the 360 automatically switch between VGA mode and normal A/V mode depending on if there is a monitor hooked up to the 360 or not (uses pin 11: monitor_ID).

This tut also includes installing a 3.5mm headphone jack so you can also hook up your PC speakers. The audio output is active all the time, regardless of if you're using the VGA plug or a regualr A/V cable, though you could jsut as easily use another tutorial to wire up a coaxial/optical S/PDIF output instead.

So, let's get on with it!

Required materials:

Xbox 360
Female 15 pin (VGA) port
Female 3.5mm stereo headphone jack (I had some spares laying around from Samsung 616T dvd-rom mods)
A buncha pieces of wire (about 24-26 gague works fine)
Some coaxial audio cable (hacking up an old pair of headphones works great)
Soldering iron
Dremel or other tool to cut the metal shield and case so you can get to your new VGA port

Wiring:

We'll start by saying this: it looks difficult, but it's not really that hard. The solder points are fairly large, it's not like the Xbox 1 D0 point or anything.

The colors of the pins on the pictures of the Xbox360 motherboard and the audio/vga ports correspond, but I will also give pin numbers.

First, the VGA port (shown from the back side, the side you should be soldering to. Pin 1 is top left. Pins and their corresponding grounds are circled together (is important later)



Pin 1: (Red) - Red output
Pin 2: (Green) - Green output
Pin 3: (blue) - Blue output
Pin 5: (black) - H-sync Ground
Pins 6-8: (black) - Red, green, and blue grounds
Pin 10: (black) - V-sync ground
Pin 11: (Yellow) - Monitor_ID (sets video mode to VGA in xbox 360)
Pin 13: (orange) - H-sync
Pin 14: (purple) - V-sync

Begin by putting a ~ 6 inch piece of wire on each of the data pins, and a different color of wire for the grounds, so you don't get confused.

Now, there's a reason why each pair of wires on the picture is circled. To reduce interferance in the wires, you must twist each data pin (except Monitor_ID) around its corresponding ground, the ground wire will shield the data pin from interferance.

So, you will have 5 twisted pairs coming off the VGA port, plus Monitor_ID. (it helps to label them by sticking a small piece of tape to each pair and writing R,G,B,H, and V on them).

The audio jack (the top of the picture is the end that the plug goes in):



Top: (black) - Ground
Middle: (red) - Right
Bottom: (white) - Left

Take your piece of audio coax, strip back the shielding on it and twist it up and solder it to the ground pin on the jack.

Then, solder one of the center wires to the red, and the other to the black (if your piece of coax only has one center wire you need to use two pieces, but if you got the wire from an old pair of headphones it will usually have two condutcors inside, or it will be two pieces of coax already stuck together)

End of Part I





Part II

The motherboard:

You obviously need to open your Xbox 360 (bye bye warranty, it's only 3 months anyways who cares), and remove your motherboard from the metal shielding (please be aware of static electricity, it will damage your mobo if you're not careful), we will be soldering to the bottom side of the board, under the audio/video plug.

Each pin is conviently numbered on the board (going across it goes 2, 6, 10, 14... then 4, 8, 12, 16, 20... then 1, 5, 9, 13, 17... then 3, 7, 11, 15...)



Starting on top left, then moving across:

Pins 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26, 1, 5, 9, 13, 27 (black) - Ground (they're all connected to each other so it does not matter which ground pin you use.
Pin 4 (green) - Green output (VGA)
Pin 8 (blue) - Blue output (VGA)
Pin 12 (purple) - V-sync (VGA)
Pin 16 (white) - Left (Audio)
Pin 20 (yellow) - VGA Mode select (hook to VGA Pin 11, Monitor_ID)
Pin 3 (Red) - Red (VGA)
Pin 11 (orange) - H-sync (VGA)
Pin 15 (Red) - Right (audio)

OK, solder up all your points (easier said than done, just take your time and triple check that all your connections are correct)

End of part II

This post has been edited by G0t M4xx 21: Aug 13 2006, 06:03 AM

[Kaasiim]

I dont believe it. It worked!
Oh, i'm not surprised that you guys got it to work. but this is my very first mod on the 360, and i havnt sodered anything in years so I'm wayyyyy out of practice, but your tutorial made it damn easy!

I bought the premium package for the 360 in Jan of this year, i never thought of modding this thing out, i didnt know it was possible. so it never entered my mind that i would be cutting into this thing and run a great risk of destroying it by shorting it out or whatever, so i was really paranoid about turning it on when i finished, cause the soder job doesnt look anywhere near as professional as I've been taught to make it.

anyway, thanks for all the tutorials, it made this very painful and difficult process much less painful. (you werent kidding, the sodering was much easier said than done)

thanks a lot guys. cant wait to get started on my next mod.