|  | September 05, 2017 Choosing the right DC-DC PSU August 27, 2015 AMD's Project Quantum August 13, 2015 The Redstone PC is the ultimate Mini-ITX Minecraft Machine October 09, 2014 The "Restomod TV" April 09, 2013 Installing NAS4Free February 28, 2013 Building an XBMC 12 Home Theatre PC January 25, 2011 XBMC Guide updated to version 10.0 August 06, 2010 Building a Green PC February 15, 2010 Building an ION powered HTPC with XBMC October 10, 2008 The "Cambridge Autonomous Underwater Vehicle 2008" |
|  | | | September 12, 2008 "Florian", the DVD burning robot September 05, 2008 The "i-EPIA" May 22, 2008 The "GTA-PC" April 14, 2007 The "Digg" Case January 19, 2007 The "ITX-Laptop" December 07, 2006 The "Tortoise Beetle" October 02, 2006 The "DOS Head Unit" August 31, 2006 The "Janus Project" August 05, 2006 The "Leela PC" June 26, 2006 Nano-ITX in a Football May 17, 2006 The "EPIA Alloy Mod" April 11, 2006 Neatorama's Collection of Case Mods February 18, 2006 The "Rundfunker" October 24, 2005 The "ITX TV" October 06, 2005 The K'nex-ITX August 05, 2005 The "Waffle Iron PC" July 21, 2005 The "Supra-Server" July 18, 2005 The "Mega-ITX" July 07, 2005 The "Encyclomedia" May 25, 2005 The "Accordion ITX" |
|  | | | May 16, 2005 The "FileServerRouterSwitch" May 15, 2005 The "Mini Falcon" May 13, 2005 The "Bender PC" May 11, 2005 The "BBC ITX B" May 10, 2005 The "Frame" April 20, 2005 The "Jeannie" March 09, 2005 The "Cool Cube" January 30, 2005 First Nano-ITX Project? January 17, 2005 The "iGrill" January 15, 2005 The "Gumball PC" December 15, 2004 The "Deco Box" December 03, 2004 The "TERA-ITX" October 06, 2004 The "Coealacanth-PC" September 17, 2004 The "Gramaphone-ITX-HD" August 26, 2004 The "C1541 Disk Drive ITX" August 25, 2004 The "SEGA-ITX" August 13, 2004 The "Quiet Cubid" August 06, 2004 The "BMWPC" July 14, 2004 The "Moo Cow Moo" July 02, 2004 The "Mini Mesh Box" Full alphabetical archive on right hand side of page... |
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The "i64XBOX"
By Jason Olmstead - Posted on March 8, 2003
Introduction
My whole plan was to put a PC inside of some type of super small case and
use it to play ROMs on a TV. Who wants to sit infront of a PC and play old
Nintendo games though? That's what I thought. That's where the idea for the
box came up.
I wasn't sure what to put the box in. Someone has already put a PC inside a
Nintendo, but I didn't want to be a copy cat. I managed to score an XBOX
that was gutted on eBay for about $20, so I decided to use that as my
starting point. I also got my hands on one of VIA's tiny EPIA motherboards,
and a very small ATX/ITX compatible power supply. For the hard drive, I had to
keep it small to keep the whole project inside the case. I didn't want
anything outside of the XBOX shell... the whole idea of this project was to
keep everything self-contained and very modular say I wanted to take it to
someone else's house. The only choice for a hard drive was simple - laptop
hard drive. My friend Chris York had a 3.2GB laptop drive that he sold me
pretty cheap. It had more than enough space than what I was going to use it
for, so it was perfect. I was then able to buy a laptop hard drive converter
on eBay that would allow me to use it on a normal PC motherboard. It works
pretty well.
I was able to get the motherboard to fit in the box after modding it a
little and custom mounting my own mounting posts for it to screw into. I had
to cut all of the mounting studs from the "floor" of the XBOX and use
motherboard standoffs that I had left over from a full-tower ATX case by
drilling small holes and forcefully threading them into the plastic XBOX
chassis. I cut the back of the XBOX out so the ports on the back would be
visible, just like a PC, and use the little port panel that came with the
motherboard to keep it clean. I cut almost everything out with some small
wire cutters, and then smoothed it all out with a Dremel later. I also was
able to keep the plug for the power supply in the same outlet on the back of
the case, although I had to open it up a bit with the Dremel.
I put Windows 98 on it and made a custom interface that any USB
joystick/gamepad can control. All you do is plug it into the wall, plug in a
gamepad or two, and hook it up to the TV via composite video or S-Video
(looks much better) and the audio cables I fabbed up and you're ready to go.
No keyboard or mouse, and with the exception of the two second text-flash on
startup to boot to a LAN (which I can't turn off, sadly) you wouldn't even
really be able to tell it was a PC.
This is how I had the internals set up at first. It looked really clean, but
soon would need to be changed.
I was able to get the power button and the LED on the front of the XBOX to
work with the PC motherboard thanks to some help from my friend/boss, Chris.
The LEDs aren't quite as bright as when an XBOX is powering them, because
there are actually two LEDs in there that light up what looks like one
light, and there's only one light header on the motherboard for power, so I
had to split power between the two LEDs. It's still bright enough though.
This is what the box looked like at this point. I had all of the hardware
inside, had the front buttons and LEDs working like normal, had the hole cut
for the fan, and had the grill mounted. The only thing that had to be
changed was on the inside. The hard drive had to be moved from ontop of the
power supply to the side of it to accomodate the depth of the fan. My
original idea was to use an 80mm fan for the top, but I couldn't find an
80mm fan grill, so I used a 92mm fan/grill instead. The fan hit on the top
of the hard drive, which wouldn't let the top of the case sit flush with the
bottom, so I had to relocate the hard drive. When I did this, I rounded the
IDE cable, and performed some clean-up on the inside.
Rockin the stock look. Except that fan grill that's now on the top. I think
I might pull that off and paint it black. Or grey. I'm using a Microsoft
Sidewinder controller for now. Since it's running Windows 98 it can use
pretty much any PC controller. I eventually want to get a pair of wireless
controllers for it. I think that'd be pretty sweet.
Here's what the ports look like on the back.
Notice the power cord is in the stock location... and the clea, work around
the ports for the motherboard. Also notice that if you look through the
stock fan grill you can see the fan for the tiny power supply. This lets the
PSU exhaust stay functional, but maintains a very stock look. Needless to
say, PSU mounting worked out pretty well.
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