Turn XBOX 360 into PC. A little bit about modding
I watched once on the Internet videos and articles about PC modding, I was especially interested in the process of turning consoles into PCs. But that of foreigners, that of domestic craftsmen, I noticed one drawback: they all chicken the case and it does not always look aesthetically pleasing. And so I decided that it’s enough to read the articles, it would be time to bungle something myself, since I had an XBOX360 with 3 death lights. A couple of weeks of interesting troubles were waiting for me.
The desire to come as close to authenticity as possible led me to set for myself several main tasks of modding:
1. Leave the Xbox housing untouched, remove all the main connectors from the motherboard through the connectors of the Xbox housing.
2. Power supply from Xbox 12 volt PSU.
3. Put the DVD drive with an external eject button.
4. Put a receiver for wireless Xbox gamepads with a synchronization button inside the case.
Go.
We disassemble the xbox, pull out the motherboard and cut out the video audio connectors along with usb and LAN, the open button, the sync button, usb on the front panel.
We solder the 3.5 "audio jack, D-sub, USB, LAN. We
fix everything that we cut from the motherboard into the Xbox housing.
We take the receiver of the Xbox gamepads from the dealextreme store . We disassemble
it and we see that there is a regular receiver board that can be found, I disassembled the xbox itself, but it was soldered to another board (the one in the gray insulating tape), of which I would only need a button to synchronize the gamepads.
We screw this board to the case.
We fasten the 12v e-mini PSU with a capacity of only 120 watts, but for my needs it will be enough.
We drill holes in the case to put mounts for the motherboard and for USB on the front panel instead of memory cards. We screw the motherboard, additional USB and attach the plastic drive button with a screw. By the way, in the Xbox itself, it was attached to the DVD drive.
Food brought a lot of problems. The Ixbox PSU is turned on if you apply power_enable + 5v to the contact. It is necessary either to close tightly the contacts or to bring out an external button for switching on. I rejected both options. I wanted to turn on the box power supply on the power button. I decided to draw a small sketch.
This is how she really looks.
We fix a small fan so that the south bridge does not overheat.
We fasten the hard side to the ventilation holes. It feels like Xbox was originally conceived for modding.
Now the task is more complicated. Take a DVD drive from a laptop, disassemble it, call the contact on the board responsible for opening the drive tray, solder the thin wires. Close the drive. We glue the cap with the inscription XBOX 360 and tighten the screws to the fasteners, pre-processed with a file.
We fix it in the case.
It remains only to carry out cable management and assemble our computer.
I’ll say a few words about the video cable. I bought it non-native, disgusting quality, was not shielded, and this is for as much as 750 rubles. I soldered the connector from it and soldered high-quality wires.
Here is the result:
It turned out to be a kind of steam machine, although rather weak. The i3 processor with a frequency of 3 GHz, graphics Intel HD 2500, 4GB of RAM. I think the AMD a8-7600 would be the best option, but I collected from what it was. I also wanted to make the corresponding LEDs light up when connecting gamepads, but this does not work at the receiver level, as I thought, but at the OS level of the xbox itself. Theoretically, this can be done using a microcontroller, but I'm far from that.
I have been playing on this machine for 2 months, the flight is normal.
The desire to come as close to authenticity as possible led me to set for myself several main tasks of modding:
1. Leave the Xbox housing untouched, remove all the main connectors from the motherboard through the connectors of the Xbox housing.
2. Power supply from Xbox 12 volt PSU.
3. Put the DVD drive with an external eject button.
4. Put a receiver for wireless Xbox gamepads with a synchronization button inside the case.
Go.
We disassemble the xbox, pull out the motherboard and cut out the video audio connectors along with usb and LAN, the open button, the sync button, usb on the front panel.
We solder the 3.5 "audio jack, D-sub, USB, LAN. We
fix everything that we cut from the motherboard into the Xbox housing.
We take the receiver of the Xbox gamepads from the dealextreme store . We disassemble
it and we see that there is a regular receiver board that can be found, I disassembled the xbox itself, but it was soldered to another board (the one in the gray insulating tape), of which I would only need a button to synchronize the gamepads.
We screw this board to the case.
We fasten the 12v e-mini PSU with a capacity of only 120 watts, but for my needs it will be enough.
We drill holes in the case to put mounts for the motherboard and for USB on the front panel instead of memory cards. We screw the motherboard, additional USB and attach the plastic drive button with a screw. By the way, in the Xbox itself, it was attached to the DVD drive.
Food brought a lot of problems. The Ixbox PSU is turned on if you apply power_enable + 5v to the contact. It is necessary either to close tightly the contacts or to bring out an external button for switching on. I rejected both options. I wanted to turn on the box power supply on the power button. I decided to draw a small sketch.
This is how she really looks.
We fix a small fan so that the south bridge does not overheat.
We fasten the hard side to the ventilation holes. It feels like Xbox was originally conceived for modding.
Now the task is more complicated. Take a DVD drive from a laptop, disassemble it, call the contact on the board responsible for opening the drive tray, solder the thin wires. Close the drive. We glue the cap with the inscription XBOX 360 and tighten the screws to the fasteners, pre-processed with a file.
We fix it in the case.
It remains only to carry out cable management and assemble our computer.
I’ll say a few words about the video cable. I bought it non-native, disgusting quality, was not shielded, and this is for as much as 750 rubles. I soldered the connector from it and soldered high-quality wires.
Here is the result:
It turned out to be a kind of steam machine, although rather weak. The i3 processor with a frequency of 3 GHz, graphics Intel HD 2500, 4GB of RAM. I think the AMD a8-7600 would be the best option, but I collected from what it was. I also wanted to make the corresponding LEDs light up when connecting gamepads, but this does not work at the receiver level, as I thought, but at the OS level of the xbox itself. Theoretically, this can be done using a microcontroller, but I'm far from that.
I have been playing on this machine for 2 months, the flight is normal.