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| I got the idea for this mod when a friend of mine asked me if I knew how to repair
busted dvd drives. I told him that I just wasn't that cool, but that I did in fact know how to bypass his busted drive,
and then after thinking about it some more I told him that while I could do it, it would be cheaper to buy a new xbox.
So he did, and then I bought his busted one off him. After having realized that I could do this, I couldn't hardly stand
to let the opportunity pass me by. |
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| I started by completely dissasembling the xbox and splaying the parts out around me on the
floor to see what exactly I was working with. Then I got on ebay and started looking for the parts I thought I needed.
(A dremel tool, the briefcase, a nice case sticker from shattered web, and a new dvd drive which I ended up not using)
I also had to get a mod chip of course. I could have just replaced the dvd drive by getting one from the llama, but where's
the cahllenge in that? I've already got a functional xbox, I wanted a flashy one!
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| Once all the parts came in (I'm still waiting on the mod chip, which canada post tracking tells me has
"enetered destination country") I started trying to fit them all in the briefcase. I must have tried a gojilliondy different
configurations. At one point I was able to determine that in order to fit a working dvd drive in the case, i was going to have to
remove the left hinge from the case, so it's gone now, and it really could have stayed. Oh well.
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| Once i had all the parts arranged how I wanted them, I had to figure out how to mount the motherboard,
so that I could then cut out the holes for the LAN and a/v plugs. I managed to find an old 386 in the corner of my dad's office that
I swear has been collecting dust for ten years. I broke it down to just the case, and found three funny little metal strip things
that the mother board was mounted on, so I drilled out the weldings that held them in place and found a way to position them in the
bottom of the briefcase that would line them up with enough of the mounting holes on the xbox mother board to secure it. I had to
drill out holes in the odd metal strips then put some of those gold mounting posts in the holes. You know the ones that screw in,
and then have a threaded hole in the head to screw another screw into? I ended up haveing to epoxy them into place, and then also
epoxied the metal strips I'd epoxied them into in place as well.
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| Once the glue had set (I left it overnight) I marked the holes I needed to cut on the inside of the
case, and then measured and re-measured the dimensions of the plugs in order to transfer the markings to the outside of the case. Then
very careefully cut out the holes. The circular cutting blade on my dremel was too wide to complete the holes without cutting beyond
where I wanted the holes to be, so I went as far as I could and then chiseled out the rest with a screwdriver. Then when I drilled
the front controller port holes I got smart: I traced the size of the ports onto a note card, taped it onto the briefcase, and cut
out along my dotted lines so to speak. I still had to chisel some metal out in the corners though. The power supply hole was
especially hard to make since it needed to be oval shaped to fit the power input on the xbox, so it's a bit messy.
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| Speaking of the power plug, I moved that from the side of the case, where it was due to the way the power
board fit in the case, underneath my mounting strips and to the back of the case, which lookes better. I had to unsolder 4 connections
from the power board and then glue the plug into the hole in back to do that.
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| I also pirated a floppy drive bay from this old 386 and epoxied that into the roof of the case to hold the
hard drive. You can see it in the upper right of the interior pic. and then the green circuit board below it is what's left of the dvd drive.
I took it apart piece by piece, turning the xbox on and off every time I removed something, to make sure it would still boot up. I was
left with two little circuit boards which still had to be plugged in (one if you don't mind the green led blinking for eternity) which I
have yet to mount. I imagine I'll do them similarly to the mother board though.
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| That's all my progress so far. I still have to cut vents for the fans I got from a hard drive cooler set,
which I'm going to put in the bottom corners of the case, or the top corners if you look at the picture, and I mounted a red cold cathode
tube light under the controller ports, mainly because I think if I didn't throw a light in then I'd never hear the end of it from whoever
sees this page. I also still need to install the modchip, so that I can then ftp my games to my hard drive from my computer... I'm not
entirely sure how that works yet, but a buddy of mine knows all about it, so he gets to assist with that when the time comes. I may
eventually upgrade the hard drive once my wallet has recovered from the cost of this mod, and maybe I'll install a second dvd drive
so that I can actually put discs into my creation. It'll be a work in progress for some time yet.
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