I finally bought a used Xbox, ripped it apart, replaced the 10GB drive with a 320GB drive, upgraded that god-awful fan that comes with it, popped/soldered in a mod-chip, replaced the ATA cabling, added an LCD panel with USB ports plus mod-chip push-button controls and loaded up XBMC on it. Now it's basically a home theater PC (HTPC) that also plays Xbox titles. (Yes, the USB ports allow for wireless keyboards, mice, thumb drives and so on.)
Thanks to Warwick for the nudging toward checking out XBMC, which totally p0wns, no questions. I would have never done any of this if it weren't for his regular ramblings and extollings of the open source project that really should just complete its port to the PC.
How did it go? Painfully. Man, I don't care what anyone tells you, modding an Xbox can be a real pain in the rear, among other things.
For example, putting this LCD panel:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8692.JPG.html
...on this case:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8695.JPG.html
...resulted in this (photo taken after the initial clean-up):
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8732.JPG.html
By far, the two biggest pains were the front panel disassembly and re-assembly, and the dremelling/grinding/sanding/snipping/chopping of case parts to make everything fit. And there was a lot of that (much more than I revealed in my photo gallery, because taking all the photos would have really slowed the process). Thankfully, making square pegs fit round holes is my specialty:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8755.JPG.html
Of course, I love it when I do a perfect soldering job exactly as my installation instructions show:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8768.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8758.JPG.html
...only to find out that they labeled the *wrong* points on the motherboard as places to solder. :P
Thankfully my de-soldering went as smoothly as my soldering, though at one point my back cramp I've been suffering through decided to give me a massive spasm of pain right when I was about to touch the soldering pen to the board. It took all my concentration not to fling the damned thing while my body wrenched in agony, but that's another story.
So, how many components come in an Xbox? Well here's a pic of everything that was and would be:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8773.JPG.html
Where are all these cables supposed to go anyway?
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8790.JPG.html
Here's the Xbox trial run without the drives:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8798.JPG.html
With the drives, but no lid:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8802.JPG.html
The LCD didn't come out well in this lights-out photo (and I'm sure the protective shipping plastic that I didn't bother to remove doesn't help), but you get the idea of how pretty this thing looks now in the dark here. Also you can see my ugly yellow ATA166 cable that I replaced the Xbox ATA133 cable with for a noticeable performance boost:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8890.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8891small.jpg.html
I found that the RF shielding from the original case was not necessary for RF shielding, but was necessary to prevent grounding problems. There was a large amount of video interference/distortion until I put the shielding into the new case. I used some metal snips to chop out a good deal of the shielding that tended to get in the way of working with or wiring the Xbox. The original configuration is unbelievable painful to try to work inside. My new RF shielding now looks like so:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8889.JPG.html
The finished product (glowing like this in the sunlight no less!):
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8949.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8939.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8954.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8952.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8955.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8961.JPG.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8942small.jpg.html
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/DSCN8940small.jpg.html
Or, see the whole gallery here:
http://www.analogduck.com/gallery/v/xbox/
I tried a variety of dashboard replacements, but eventually determined that XBMC (Xbox Media Center) is unparalleled.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmc
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/
The dash essentially looks like this and can launch just about any media file under the sun in addition to launching Xbox executables. See lots of XBMC screen caps here to get an idea of what the dash has to offer.
One of the older skins can be viewed here, though this is not nearly as polished as the current default skin:
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/info_screens.htm
I can launch files locally (DVDs, CDs, hard drive files- AVIs, MPGs, Real Media, QuickTime movies, etc.), across the LAN from my system shares, FTP, etc., or even the Internet. It plays Shoutcast streams, from RSS feeds, YouTube FLVs, whatever. I've got all my Xbox titles loaded on the hard drive, along with a ton of movies/anime/etc. I have my server shares mapped so I can browse music, movies, pics or whatever from the XBMC. So I haven't had to pop in a single disc since I performed the mods. I have the weather and time servers configured. I've totally tailored the XBMC menu layout and system config to my needs (mostly XML files, in case you're curious), and about the only thing I haven't done yet is configure the Xlink stuff to play online, multiplayer games with the free service.
http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/
Was it worth it all? Definitely. It r0xx0rs. Was it fun? Yes. In a masochistic manner of speaking. However, if I didn't also want an Xbox to play with, I would opt for a PC/Mac based media center solution by far. I hate the Xbox case (cooling is horrible, upgrading it is beyond difficult, and working inside it is less than desirable), and the Xbox components are already getting rare to find, so maintenance is sure to be a pain. I figure on just buying another Xbox and stashing it for spare parts. The power supplies and DVD drives are usually the first to go, and they're already difficult and expensive to find. (The third-party knock-offs are supposedly very shabby.)
I’ve been totally cracked out on a shlew of Nintendo music that is really durn good music. The two albums I must pimp to everyone:
That these two albums are of exceptional quality is an understatement. The first of the two is symply phenomenal. Top-notch symphonic performance as good as any you would listen to. The second album is just plain fun, my only complaint being that the recording style was to include the live audience instead of isolating the sound of this incredibal band in studio fashion.
Following are a list of possibly useful resources:
At this point, the matter of communicating your needs in terms of how much power is required (W/kV/kVA) and what the input and output requirements (120V/208V) will be is not such a forboding matter. Okay, so now that we know how to speak the language of power, where does one start with acquisition process? My technique is start by contacting the big players first (Liebert and APC) to get an idea of what the equipment is going to cost if we decide to spend all the money, then I price refurbished equipment as well (using Google, eBay, and past-used resources) to get an idea of the full range of options.
The big players:
Other vendors:
Next on the list of things-to-grasp is the subject of connectors: receptacles and plugs. Don't under-estimate this portion of the puzzle. If you don't know the cryptic NEMA "WD 6" published standard, you'll have a real fun time trying to communicate with an electrician or UPS vendor about your requirements. I've had to deal with ordering outlet installations from the electricians in the past, and so I made a blog entry which lists the NEMA outlet/plug types and explains their labeling system. (In English, it's a page explaining all the power plug labeling and having links to lots of labeled pictures of connector types.) Thankfully, clues were contributed by grateful people, so I'm going to recap the pith of the content here in a (hopefully) more useful manner.
The next thing one needs to know is that the ratings of watts and volt-amps are almost the same. When they say volt-amps, they literally mean "volts x amps". Well, look at the WAV formula and you quickly see that it states "watts equal volts times amps". That means they're one and the same. Another rating commonly used is kVA, which simply means kilovolt-amps, or "thousands of volt-amps", just as kW means "thousands of watts". So if you have a UPS that can supply 10,000VA, that means it can supply 10kVA or 10kW. So all of the following are the exact same amount of power:
Another useful calculator.
The important formula to remember is the WAV formula:
The variations of this formula needed to be known are easy enough to figure from the above so long as you know some basic algebra:
This reference book has been created to assist me in determining what type of power equipment I need to order given the requirements of the hardware I'm installing. This book should arm a person with enough knowledge to intelligently communicate with any electrician or power equipment vendor for purposes of installing an uninteruptable power supply. However, note that this book is still a work in progress. I know for certain that there are misconceptions and mistakes in this book. If you have useful input, please send me feedback.
