- Joined
- Nov 4, 2019
- Messages
- 27
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- 245
Hey folks.
I have spectated a few of these competitions now, but I finally decided to throw my hat in the ring and make a fool of myself.
I never meet deadlines, and I never can think of ideas worth trying to finish within them, so frankly I am screwed, so to add insult to injury I decided to do the impossible and trailblaze the portablization of a whole new system while I do it.
The original Xbox has always been special to me since I got one at launch and I played it wayyyy too much.
My only disappointment was I had to stop playing Halo and grab a Gameboy when I left the house.
Frankly I wanna right this terrible terrible wrong, I don't wanna put Halo down dangit.
Anecdotally this is impossible and everyone will tell you so. (Just ask Shank's FAQ in his Discord server.
)
So I should just give up now, quit while I am ahead.......or I would if I was a smart man.
The original Xbox is gigantic, it has hundreds of parts spread absolutely everywhere, and chews through power like nobody's business. The complete opposite of the Wii everyone is so fond of in these parts.
But what if I told you not all of these are the case for all of the motherboard revisions?
Microsoft produced 3 different retail PCBs for the Xbox, these were labeled as 5 different (More than that but some ended up not existing, but that's neither here nor there) different "revisions" by the Xbox modding community.
"1.0/1.1" both used the first PCB, this was by far the least streamlined board, it checked all the boxes as far as part spread and power draw. This sucker can chew through up to 68W, and is incredibly unreliable. Definitely can't use this.
A while later "1.3 and 1.4" came along, these were much improved, the layout was just better, and they pulled a little less power, up to 64W. Still not quite usable for what I want to do.
Finally in 2004 Microsoft wanted to reduce the price of the system as they were preparing for the Xbox 360, so they made the 3rd and final PCB, the "1.6"
To reduce costs they consolidated parts into custom silicon, reduced the BOM dramatically, streamlined the design to the max, and the GPU got a dieshrink!
This board fixed everything wrong with the previous revisons, and even managed to cut power draw and look dang fine doing it. This board has an incredibly dense part layout, and draws a mean 46W max!
Finally this is starting to look promising. It is a far cry from the luxuries of the Wii, but it sounds just possible enough to waste time and money screwing around with.
Here is some of my research work so far.
I have mapped out voltages, and mapped out and identified traces working my way inwards as I verified stuff could be removed.
What you see isn't tested yet (Soon!), or completely finished, but it is looking super promising, and I am excited to move forward,
SO, with the rambling over, now for my plans:
* Trimmed "1.6" motherboard
* 7" 800x480 IPS HDMI display
* Project Stellar and XboxHD+ for various fixes/goodies, and to get a clean digital to digital HDMI output to the display
* 4x 21700 cells for hopefully over an hour of battery life
* Custom battery management and regulator PCB(s) to handle charging/power up/regulation
* Controller PCB(s) utilizing a chip from an original controller for complete compatibility with games and homebrew
* IDE relocation to connect storage in the form of a microSD to store games/software on
That's it for now, I'll see ya when I see ya and have more to report.
I have spectated a few of these competitions now, but I finally decided to throw my hat in the ring and make a fool of myself.
I never meet deadlines, and I never can think of ideas worth trying to finish within them, so frankly I am screwed, so to add insult to injury I decided to do the impossible and trailblaze the portablization of a whole new system while I do it.
The original Xbox has always been special to me since I got one at launch and I played it wayyyy too much.
My only disappointment was I had to stop playing Halo and grab a Gameboy when I left the house.
Frankly I wanna right this terrible terrible wrong, I don't wanna put Halo down dangit.
Anecdotally this is impossible and everyone will tell you so. (Just ask Shank's FAQ in his Discord server.
) So I should just give up now, quit while I am ahead.......or I would if I was a smart man.
The original Xbox is gigantic, it has hundreds of parts spread absolutely everywhere, and chews through power like nobody's business. The complete opposite of the Wii everyone is so fond of in these parts.
But what if I told you not all of these are the case for all of the motherboard revisions?
Microsoft produced 3 different retail PCBs for the Xbox, these were labeled as 5 different (More than that but some ended up not existing, but that's neither here nor there) different "revisions" by the Xbox modding community.
"1.0/1.1" both used the first PCB, this was by far the least streamlined board, it checked all the boxes as far as part spread and power draw. This sucker can chew through up to 68W, and is incredibly unreliable. Definitely can't use this.
A while later "1.3 and 1.4" came along, these were much improved, the layout was just better, and they pulled a little less power, up to 64W. Still not quite usable for what I want to do.
Finally in 2004 Microsoft wanted to reduce the price of the system as they were preparing for the Xbox 360, so they made the 3rd and final PCB, the "1.6"
To reduce costs they consolidated parts into custom silicon, reduced the BOM dramatically, streamlined the design to the max, and the GPU got a dieshrink!
This board fixed everything wrong with the previous revisons, and even managed to cut power draw and look dang fine doing it. This board has an incredibly dense part layout, and draws a mean 46W max!
Finally this is starting to look promising. It is a far cry from the luxuries of the Wii, but it sounds just possible enough to waste time and money screwing around with.
Here is some of my research work so far.
I have mapped out voltages, and mapped out and identified traces working my way inwards as I verified stuff could be removed.
What you see isn't tested yet (Soon!), or completely finished, but it is looking super promising, and I am excited to move forward,
SO, with the rambling over, now for my plans:
* Trimmed "1.6" motherboard
* 7" 800x480 IPS HDMI display
* Project Stellar and XboxHD+ for various fixes/goodies, and to get a clean digital to digital HDMI output to the display
* 4x 21700 cells for hopefully over an hour of battery life
* Custom battery management and regulator PCB(s) to handle charging/power up/regulation
* Controller PCB(s) utilizing a chip from an original controller for complete compatibility with games and homebrew
* IDE relocation to connect storage in the form of a microSD to store games/software on
That's it for now, I'll see ya when I see ya and have more to report.
