General Mods

Discussion about Modding the XBOX, including hardware and software hacks.
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Elite_Snafu
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General Mods

Post by Elite_Snafu »

I am new to the mod scene for xbox, I was just wondering what were some easy mods to do. I have already got XMBC running on the Xbox :D , I just dont know where to start or what would be the easiest mods to do. (I have a very rescricted income for any mods :x ).
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Re: General Mods

Post by whufclee »

The one I find is a "must" is the 80mm fan mod. I use the xilence 80mm fans which you can pick up really cheap here in the UK - it's a fairly simple mod and takes about 1-2 hours to do but having a silent xbox is well worth it in my opinion. I did a guide on here somewhere for it.
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Re: General Mods

Post by Elite_Snafu »

i was actually looking through all of the tutorials and what not on here, and i noticed alot of people on here are from the UK, however, i am in canada, and finding people that do this out here is a little bit harder. also, about how much is one of those fans? and is it possible to wire an old laptop fan into the xbox to help with the cooling? i have a few torn apart laptops and was hoping i could use some of the parts.
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Re: General Mods

Post by whufclee »

You can pick those fans up for about £2.50 here in the UK (plus postage) so it's a very cheap mod to do. I'm not sure how a laptop fan would work, it's a bit on the small side so you'd have to build some sort of casing for it and I don't know if it would be man enough for the job.
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Elite_Snafu
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Re: General Mods

Post by Elite_Snafu »

i was thinking more of putting the laptop fan over the gpu and blowing towards the rear fan. <-------would that be possible?
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Re: General Mods

Post by whufclee »

Oh right you have one of the old xboxes that have the noisy fan on the GPU do you? In that case yeah I can't see why it wouldn't work. Luckily I've only ever had one xbox with a fan on the GPU and it was goddam noisy so I soon got rid of it!
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Re: General Mods

Post by trogggy »

I had one with a noisy fan on the gpu. Now it's one with a missing fan over the gpu - been fine for years. :lol:
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Re: General Mods

Post by Elite_Snafu »

I have one of the 1.6 xboxs, no fan on the gpu, just a heatsink. i want to through a fan in, would that be useful or not?
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Re: General Mods

Post by infinity8x3 »

No it wouldn't be useful. If you can get away with it passive is always the best cooling solution. Less noise, power consumption, and things to go wrong.
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Elite_Snafu
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Re: General Mods

Post by Elite_Snafu »

is there anything that would come out of a laptop that would be useful in an xbox? Because i have two disassembled laptops that i cant through into my current one, so if i could use some of the parts on the xbox, that would be nice.
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Re: General Mods

Post by Nextelhalo »

USB port perhaps?
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Re: General Mods

Post by Elite_Snafu »

how would i go about wiring that in? and how heavy duty would that mod be? as well, how many ports could I install?
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Re: General Mods

Post by whufclee »

You'll find a guide on the USB port mod in the tutorial section, it's not something that I've personally done yet but appears to be fairly straight forward. A little bit of solder work would most likely be needed though if you're using existing ports from a laptop.

Out of curiosity what's wrong with the laptops? If it's just the screen that's knackered you may be able to install mainbranch xbmc onto them and just use the video out port to go straight to your TV. I'm hopeful my neighbour is going to give me their old laptop with broken screen, they were on about throwing it but it would make a great little xbmc unit ;)
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Re: General Mods

Post by nidge »

whufclee wrote: Out of curiosity what's wrong with the laptops? If it's just the screen that's knackered you may be able to install mainbranch xbmc onto them and just use the video out port to go straight to your TV. I'm hopeful my neighbour is going to give me their old laptop with broken screen, they were on about throwing it but it would make a great little xbmc unit ;)
Hi whufclee, I have a laptop motherboard here somewhere that I had the same idea for :) I was going to see if I could put it in some sort of DVD player/recorder or even an old VHS video recorder case. But I can't find a case that it'll fit in :( It's fully working, no memory, (was used for something else), and no PSU power socket, but it would be easy to solder on another. One of my many ideas/projects that didn't really get off the ground :lol: Another is putting an xbox motherboard in a PC case, I think that's been done before though?
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Re: General Mods

Post by trogggy »

Meanwhile I'm trying stick a netbook motherboard and a pi (well why not, it's only diddy) in an xbox slim case. :lol:
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Re: General Mods

Post by Elite_Snafu »

well the motherboard on one is fried, The screen on the other is broken, but they are too different to be frankenstien'd together. One is Netbook (only USB's), the other is an actual Laptop (with DVD drive). So hypotheticly i should be able to put in as many USB's as i want? :?:
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Re: General Mods

Post by whufclee »

The one with the broken screen you may as well install mainbranch XBMC onto it, if the specs aren't too great then I'd go for openelec but if it's decent then stick a linux or windows OS on there and bam you've got yourself a decent HTPC.
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Re: General Mods

Post by asbo »

Elite_Snafu wrote:well the motherboard on one is fried
You can probably turn the LCD into a spare monitor, always handy :)
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... f=13&t=152
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Re: General Mods

Post by Elite_Snafu »

just waiting for the paint to dry on my controller, and i realized that the one laptop has no cord. How difficult do you think it would be to turn the old screen into a screen for the xbox?
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Re: General Mods

Post by asbo »

well assuming the LCD is ok, you'd need to buy a matching LCD controller as mentioned in the other thread, you'd also need a component to VGA converter as the boards(well mine at least) do not support sync on green. They might also work with a sync separator although I have not tried that. To be honest its probably not worth the effort if you want it solely as an xbox screen, but I find it is always handy to have a spare VGA and DVI monitor laying around :)
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