Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Discussion about Modding the XBOX, including hardware and software hacks.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by xman »

Well I received another two of the four extra converters I ordered so now I can rip one apart and see how it works and have some idea where it can actually go when inside the Xbox. Surprisingly, it looks quite well made. Could have done with a slightly longer bath to clean the board but I can live with that.
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For reference to size, here it is beside the middle heatsink on an Xbox board. The board's size 50mm X 55mm excluding RCA plug over hang or roughly that as the heatsink....
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Height wise, here is a side on shot...
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Now, I do intend on taking the RCA plugs off the board and that will halve the height profile of the board. Very simple, big solder points these RCA plugs are mounted on with only two solder points per RCA making for nice big landings for direct soldering of the component signal wires. I'll leave the HDMI plug. They are ridiculously hard to solder all those wires and really no benefit for height anyway. I'll also leave the mini USB power port. A pleasing point is the board actually has two 3mm mounting holes on the board making mounting of this board very easy. I will use those for mounting the board. To eliminate noise in the video wires running inside the Xbox, I intend on using original Xbox video cables in the sheath with it's grounding mesh grounded. That seems to work fine outside the Xbox so no reason why it won't inside the Xbox for keeping interference down. I'll get some more pictures on here after I've had a bit of time to "play" with it. :lol:
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by professor_jonny »

that is real cut down compaired to mine, bad thing is there is stuff all to mount it to any thing and the holes to mount it are at the back.

This is how I mounted my one by soldering on brass bolts to the ground plane works really well and easy to remove.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by asbo »

hawsey wrote: This arrived today from Hong Kong after ordering it on the 30th , not bad :-)
Will try it out tomorrow .
That's impressively fast! Maybe its so quick because there's not many people ordering stuff directly after Christmas.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by hawsey »

professor_jonny wrote:that is real cut down compaired to mine, bad thing is there is stuff all to mount it to any thing and the holes to mount it are at the back.

This is how I mounted my one by soldering on brass bolts to the ground plane works really well and easy to remove.
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That looks great , very pro :-) where are you taking the power from in the Xbox please .
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by hawsey »

Mine ( staying in case :-). )
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by professor_jonny »

hawsey wrote: That looks great , very pro :-) where are you taking the power from in the Xbox please .
I'm using the hdd power connector
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by hawsey »

Well I've got it hooked up to a 24" Viewsonic monitor that I never thought I would be able to use the trusty old Xbox on ; a few teething problems at first with the Xbox re booting a few times whilst trying to calibrate and set it up but all is good now at 720 :-)

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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by xman »

Good to see the mod serves it's purpose. To extend the life of the Xbox. That is what this mod is all about. :D
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by Nextelhalo »

xman wrote:Good to see the mod serves it's purpose. To extend the life of the Xbox. That is what this mod is all about. :D
Yeah it is, thanks for this Xman. I'm going to try an internal install on my Trusty. Thank you again for bringing newish life to the xbox.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by xman »

I had a few of these "flange mount" HDMI cables.
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They are about 150mm long with one female end with a flange and the other is end is a normal HDMI male with no flange that plugs into the converter. They were an arse to locate but I did end up finding them. These allowed me to mount the whole converter inside the box it comes in under the DVD caddy. I just need to solder the wires up and and take pictures of coarse. The flange allows the HDMI female end to mount direct to the Xbox's rear case. I also removed the mother board mount, ( the one you remove for 1.6 boards to go in earlier cases), and now I have a hole for the video wires to go the board to the converter. I liked this setup because it allows the mother board and converter to become one piece. Just undo the HDMI flange bolts and the whole mother board and converter come out as one piece and can go straight in another Xbox just requiring the HDMI hole.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by Rocky5 »

Would the 5v on the LPC be enough to power the device?

I have been using one for 2 years or so & its powers via my TV USB port, but internalising it would be handy.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by professor_jonny »

Rocky5 wrote:Would the 5v on the LPC be enough to power the device?

I have been using one for 2 years or so & its powers via my TV USB port, but internalising it would be handy.
it is not something I would recommend.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by EvoluterX »

Rocky5 wrote:Would the 5v on the LPC be enough to power the device?

I have been using one for 2 years or so & its powers via my TV USB port, but internalising it would be handy.
Unless it's power hungry,I'd say you can power it off one of the USB ports - ports 3 and 4 would be ideal.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by xman »

Rocky5 wrote:Would the 5v on the LPC be enough to power the device?

I have been using one for 2 years or so & its powers via my TV USB port, but internalising it would be handy.
I think it would be enough but if it isn't, there will be consequences. I would think the USB would be OK to use but again, it could be a costly error. There are many places on the board you can get 5vDC but which one would be OK to use but is also convenient?. I'm thinking the DVD connector myself. It is near where the converter box will be located on my setup and I rarely use it for playing DVDs so it will definitely have some spare power on the 5vDC supply. Then again, you could always just solder to the underside 5volt supply pin on the mother board power connector. That location is without risk of overload. As the video negatives, audio negatives and 5vDC negative are all common on the Xbox, you only need one return wire for all of them. By the way, these negatives are all common on the converter itself as well. I have checked that. This means you can run one ground return from the converter to the Xbox's ground, ( or negative), what ever you want to call it, and an ideal location for this return wire is the solder pad around the board mount of the post I'm removing for the wires to pass though the mother board.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

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Here is my first prototype. It's been a while but life has been a bit busy lately. I have made the adapter common to the mother board rather than the Xbox case. I thought this to be a better solution because I can move the mother board around if need be rather than it requiring de-soldering should it need to move from a case. It also makes the mother board HDMI modded rather than the case. A big surprise that wasn't by design but has had a big effect is because the side of the heatsink is now boxed in, more air is being channeled through the heatsink and therefore cooling is much better by about 4c.
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All the wires to the AVIP solder points all go down the unused mounting mother board hole, (that is unused after I cut the post off the case of the 1.0-1.5 cases). Look closely and you will see I used the earth ring around the mounting hole as the ground for the converter board. There is a red wire soldered to the ring itself. This ground doubles as the ground for not only the power but all the video and audio grounds as well. They are all common with this adapter and all Xboxes so that is why there are so few wires needed. I'm yet to look at a 1.6 mother board yet where this post isn't on the case nor is the hole in the mother board. A 1.6 mother board and case will require a different routing of the wires because this hole isn't in the mother board. I'll think of that when I HDMI mod my 1st 1.6 board I guess.

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The wires go through the board using the hole and are soldered direct to the AVIP pins. Five wires in total so pretty easy stuff plus the links that enable component. These links go between pins 11 and 12. The other link goes between pins 13 and 14.
The red wire going down the board is for the 5vDC supply from the mother board power supply connector.

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Don't worry about the other red wire near the power supply connector. It is for a completely different mod.

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This picture shows the required soldering to the converter board itself. I tried to colour code all the wires but I still ended up with 3 red wires. :roll:
The green, blue and red wires at the top of the picture are the component wires leading to the component pins on the underside of the AVIP connector. The red and white wires at the bottom right of the board are the stereo sound wires that again, go to the AVIP connector solder pins. And the two red wires going to the bottom left of the board are the power wires. The upper red is the positive wire that goes to the mother board power connector and the lower red is the ground that goes to the mother board mounting ring and is ground for everything. These wires on the converter board are soldered to the capacitor that is across the power rail on the converter board. An ideal location for supplying power to the board.

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I put the converter case lid back on and plug in the HDMI case mount cable. Bolt the HDMI cable to the case, that has the HDMI plug and mounting holes already made for it earlier and the job is done. That HDMI bulkhead cable is 300mm long by the way. Only place I could find that had them that size and style was Canada and the post was poor, over 4 weeks.

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This picture shows the bare DVD caddy so you can see the finished wire routing and also the fact the adapter is the same height as the adapter box and fits perfectly under the DVD caddy and the DVD drive itself. The DVD drive cables go straight in as does the flat cable to the DVD drive and the HDD. The mod wires don't effect these at all. Doing this mod this way enables me to unbolt the HDMI cable from the Xbox case and remove the mother board with the converter all as one piece ready to go into another case that has the HDMI mount holes in it. No soldering, just the two HDMI mount bolts. I now have another 3 machines to do this mod to but I will change a few things. I will use Velcro glued to the large chips beside the heatsink to mount the lower half of the converter case rather than gluing the case itself as I did with this one solely so I can easierly remove the converter case if required and I will use flat multi strand ribbon cable instead of single core solid wires just to make it look more factory. I can also say the picture is perfect with no frequency lines or any other kind of interference lines on the TV screen and best of all, no more dedicated Xbox cables and HDMI leads come in all different lengths. Well that is it. This is my "How To HDMI Your Xbox". I will add more pictures of the other machines when I do them.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

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The next machine I needed to mod was the wife's machine, a 1.6 so didn't take long to have to work out how to get this done. Even though I did get this 1.6 HDMI modded, I don't think I will go out of my way to do another 1.6. The earlier machines make for an easier mod I believe only because not having that post hole in such a convenient spot of the board right near the AVIP connector that most of the wires need to go to. I really hate having wires going around the side of the mother board so that wasn't an alternative for me so I had to find holes for the wires to go through the 1.6 board.

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I found a hole over near the DVDrive power connector, (not exactly real close to where I needed it but better than going around the side of the board). Only a small hole but I was able to get the 3 video wires and the 5vDC wire through it. This picture shows the 5vDC coming from the DVD power connector. That did not work. Not enough current so I had to run that wire down the board to the mother board power connector like the earlier board. I also found two single holes through the board near the crystal a lot closer to the AVIP connector that I was able to get the audio wires through.

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This machine I used Velcro rather than glue to hold the converter box in place. I also drilled a hole through the base of the converter box to go over the heatsink board mounting pin so I could use the pin as a locator. It also enabled the box to sit flat. You can see the Velcro on the top of the two chips and the other side of the Velcro on the base of the converter box. Although the glue was good, Velcro enables me to remove the box if need be.

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Here is the base of the converter box held in place with the Velcro and located on the heatsink mount pin.

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Board in the base and wires routed and soldered in place. The 2nd picture clearly shows the earth wire soldered to the earth ring around the upper left mount hole and the holes I used to run the audio wires through near the crystal.

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The lid clipped back on after filing a slot out of the lid's edge for the wires to go into the converter box.

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HDMI case mount cable plugged in the converter box and bolted into the Xbox case.

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Done, ready to start using HDMI cables instead of Xbox component lead sets. ;)

On a side note I ripped apart a 1.0 machine today and I noticed the GPU fan connector would be right in the way of the HDMI case mount cable where it mounts to the Xbox case. I'm not saying it couldn't just go higher in the Xbox case but it "could" get in the way. Also nothing stops you running just a normal HDMI cable from the HDMI converter direct to your TV and not use the HDMI case mount cables I use. It would require a hole in the Xbox case big enough to get the end of a HDMI cable through unless you don't mind leaving the Xbox lid off. I use the case mount HDMI inter connect cable solely for appearance and I don't really want a HDMI cable coming out from inside the Xboxes but at least you would have HDMI and save some cash on the inter connecting cable. ;)
A couple of things I took into consideration when I started on the HDMI mod. The cost of the HDMI converter is about $13 for me and the cost of the Xbox component lead sets I was getting were about $15. The cost of the HDMI case mount cable is about $10 and add to this I then need a HDMI cable to go between the Xbox and the TV. The advantages are I can now use HDMI cables that are easy to get and just about any length but it does cost more to buy the parts and about 2 hours to do the conversion. For me, I am glad to go the HDMI route because I love modding and the cost is marginal. I also found HDMI a more convenient setup than component. I was starting to really need to hunt for component cable TVs these days and it looks like HDMI is going to take over as the market standard if it isn't already.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by Rocky5 »

I would have just cut the left screw mount on the AV port & used that hole for the wires.
(Since you probably won't be using the AV port again & the other screws on the board will keep it from budging)
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by xman »

Rocky5 wrote:I would have just cut the left screw mount on the AV port & used that hole for the wires.
(Since you probably won't be using the AV port again & the other screws on the board will keep it from budging)
Funny you should say that, I was thinking take the AVIP connector apart, trim the pins back flush to the board, solder the converter wires to the now flush pins and use the now vacant AVIP connector hole to feed a HDMI cable through the case or use the hole as the HDMI mount hole.
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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

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I have updated with a wire diagram showing the above board AVIP connections. Thanks to MrMajst3r for informing me of these alternative solder points. Now no need to feed the wires through the board for the solder points I solder the converter to. Should make for a much neater install. I'll put up a picture when i do one this way myself. The brown wire is the 5vDC that goes to the mother board connector. The black is the ground for the power, audio and video and is soldered to the board mount surround as in the picture. The purple and white are the two audio wires and the green, red and blue are the video wires.

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And a close up of the solder points.

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Re: Cheap And Easy Xbox HDMI

Post by Henning_B »

Would it not be easier to solder the points to the backside of the connector, those points look huge.
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