Super slim case mod

[bigkidoz]

Going to star a new project shortly as i picked up 4 x new ide laptop hdd's for $5 each, only 40gig but as a streaming front end they'll do fine. First i will see how much i can cut down a standard case yet still retain the xbox shape then move onto a custom case with external psu .

[professor_jonny]

low as i have done is the hight of the step where the controller ports sit on, the psu is the limiting factor tho in reality as the transformers on some are quite high.

there is a specific model of psu/ board that is best for this mod, the fox link psu has the highest hight as it has the transformer that sits ontop of the power plug.

if you use a 12v pc psu they can be made very slim and from then the sky is the limit as you can fold over all the caps and put on a vid card gpu cooler.

[bigkidoz]

Seems that my new hdd's dont want to play ball, first one i attached i was able to run AID and setup xbmc as the dash but after shutdown it wont boot up again and neither will any of the other 3 hdd's, not sure if its the adapter or something else. I was using an X2 bios initially and got an error 7 message so i switched to ind5003 and now it just hangs on the bios load screen then frags

[blighty]

If you take my diet slim as an example my delta electronics psu is the same height as the cpu heatsink and although i kept the 3.5" hdd i couldn't get that any lower than the same height as the cpu hs & psu without soldering the ide cable to the mobo ( i could but considering how many ide cables i've broken over the years i wouldn't want to have a hardwired ide cable )

Have you got an mini ide to usb adapter kicking around? bearing in mind how old 2.5" hdd's are these days i would want to make sure they work ok before i even bothered to instal one into a xbox.

I have 3 40gb ide laptop drives here and only 2 out of the 3 work but i use them with my 360 as usb storage.

if you really want to go with 2.5" drives, i would go the sata route to avoid almost certain data loss.

low as i have done is the hight of the step where the controller ports sit on

Have you any pics of that PJ? I'd love to see that

[bigkidoz]

Drives are brand new but so far no luck booting except for the one occasion, i can buy a usb case for $5 which i may do anyway since i could use it something else.

[professor_jonny]

Have you any pics of that PJ? I'd love to see that

it was a long time ago and i dont have any pictures it was before the time where i really got into modding in a more serious way.
At the front of the console there is the metal step and i basically cut off every thing above there, basically flush with the bottom of the eject button

I had to glue in the controller ports as i cut off the mount bits to make the lid sit on.

i still used the standard cooling but i attacked it with a cut off blade on the grinder it worked but was not pritty, i did fit 2 2x2cm fans which i pinched of a dimmer module it over heated all the time it ended up getting put back in to a normal case and i binned the case as it was really rough job on it.

one day i will make another i still have 6 of the 7 xbox i scored a while back and 2 have dead dvd drives so one would be a good candidate i guess.

[blighty]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IDE-SATA-2-5- ... 51a88d120f

I love these as they are so cheap & so useful ( i bought 2 of them )

[whufclee]

Hey that might just be a great fix for my current problem. My motherboard only has 4x SATA ports and I have 4x SATA HDDs, however I also have a SATA Bluray plyer/DVD Rewriter so something has to give. I did have a PCI 4-port SATA card installed and it worked fine on linux but I'm buggered if I can get it to work in conjunction with Windows... all the drivers in the world don't seem to fix it.

So if I use one of these for my Bluray/DVD thing I guess that should work ok right? I rarely use it so that's probably the best one to stick in the USB port I'm thinking. Can anyone see a problem with that?

[professor_jonny]

Hey that might just be a great fix for my current problem. My motherboard only has 4x SATA ports and I have 4x SATA HDDs, however I also have a SATA Bluray plyer/DVD Rewriter so something has to give. I did have a PCI 4-port SATA card installed and it worked fine on linux but I'm buggered if I can get it to work in conjunction with Windows... all the drivers in the world don't seem to fix it.

So if I use one of these for my Bluray/DVD thing I guess that should work ok right? I rarely use it so that's probably the best one to stick in the USB port I'm thinking. Can anyone see a problem with that?

I guess Just make sure it is fast enough for playing a blue ray it could be a problem i dont know the speeds of blueray may flood the usb interface ?.

[whufclee]

Good point PJ, however I don't even own any bluray discs. In fact I've never even tried a bluray disc in it
I'll only ever use it for writing to standard CD's/DVD's so I guess it should work perfectly fine for that.
I'll have to get me one of those I think

[professor_jonny]

Good point PJ, however I don't even own any bluray discs. In fact I've never even tried a bluray disc in it
I'll only ever use it for writing to standard CD's/DVD's so I guess it should work perfectly fine for that.
I'll have to get me one of those I think

would be nifty if you could cut the plug off and wire it in to a usb headder on the motherboard it would be handy for me also in my mcpc that only has 2 sata ports.

[whufclee]

That would actually be very nifty indeed, I have at least one spare USB header. Hmmm...