Xbox Laptop Project, Who cares that the 360 is more powerfull? Options

[ttsgeb]

Well, I recently came into a chunk of change and decided to start a project to build an xbox laptop...
I'm not at all known around these parts, seeing as this is my first post and whatnot, but I figured this would be a good place to cross-post my progress from ModRetro

The basic plan is to case mod an unmodded xbox into a 14 inch laptop form factor. My ultimate goal is to make the entire package around 1 inch thick.

Design Sketch that doesn't tell much:

My selection of screens to choose from in comparison to an xbox.

I'll likely use the Samsung screen on the bottom left... the one from a Dell, although the resolution is a bit overkill. I'm not using the 16:9 screen because I don't feel that enough xbox games are 16:9 to justify it when I could use it for other things.
Also the 4:3 screen gives me more space to work with.

Currently I'm waiting for a few xboxen to come in so that I can get to work. I don't want to cut up the xbox I have... It's purty and it's my first console.

So the plan:
Make the dvd drive top loading to seriously cut down on size.
Use a controller board from NJYTouch on ebay so I can use a laptop screen
Run those fancy Iceberg 4 coolers
Use a picoPSU for power, and have an external power brick, or build a custom regulator bank using TI switching regulators if I can be bothered to figure out how.
Relocate all those bulky capacitors so it doesn't have to be 2 inches thick to fit them.

The case will be a combination of the original xbox case and some like... 1/4inch ABS or styrene that I sit there and mill by hand with my dremmel.

Like I said, this is going to be cross-posted, and this isn't really a place I think to visit much, so If you see a lack of anything happening and actually care, PM me or something so that I can remember to update... Or just check ModRetro.
I'll also try to keep this first post updated as a dated work log all in one place so you don't have to potentially scroll through to see progress.


Man, I'm looking forward to this project.

Also, Holy cow, I joined over 4 years ago... I was wondering when I did that... I don't ever remember making this account.

This post has been edited by ttsgeb: Apr 16 2012, 02:43 AM

[ttsgeb]

First test with video. Everything seems to be displaying fine:


Now to figure out sound and override the open tray detection.

And by figure out sound, I mean I'm too lazy to do anything for it, but I know exactly what to do when I get off my bum and actually do something for it.

So, what are you looking at?
Well, in this picture, I have the board for the dvd drive and the HDD hooked up.

Video is achieved by a lovely Y Pb Pr to VGA converter sent through a laptop screen driver board from ebay user NJYTouch and into an old laptop screen from some 2004ish Dell Inspiron.

Power is just using a standard xbox PSU that I'll be putting in an external case (from a 360's power brick)

The motherboard has all the caps over a cm tall replaced with shorter ones, and ones on their sides, and is being cooled using two VGA coolers, one is an Iceberq Pro 4, the other some deal from Titan. The one from Titan is about 1mm taller, but has about a 5mm smaller diameter.

As far as the software goes, this xbox remains completely unmodded.

Also, that HDD looks bigger every day, but I'm determined to keep to the goal of leaving this unmodded software-side. Meanwhile, I have a little 40Gb notebook drive waiting for whenever I start my next project.

This post has been edited by ttsgeb: Jul 16 2012, 05:14 AM