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[gman060692]

A while ago I was given a panasonic toughbook CF-48. The laptop worked, but was old and slow. IT was 1ghz pentium 3 model with a mobile ati rage 128 pro(I can remember getting excited when my family bought a desktop with simalar specs in 1999 for $3000). I originally was going to load on debian and write some command line apps so I could use it as a bomb prop for paintball which could facilitate a counter-strike esque defuse the bomb game type.  In any case I later aquired an intel core 2 based toughbook CF-19 a while later and the cf-48 fell out of use.

I have so far taken the thing apart, gutted the thing and dremeled out enough room for an xbox MoBo while still leaving the battery compartment intact with small amount fo space. I have also scavanged a heatsink and fan from an old laptop which used a 2.66ghz desktop pentium 4 chip and had a geforce 4 420 go which I think should be sufficient for cooling.

What I need to do:
Get a driver board for the screen(xga 21 pin LVDS)
Get an audio amp to drive the laptop speakers
get or custom a psu which can power the xbox, audio amp, and screen+driver(and possibly run off the 11.6v 5400mAh battery in it.)

To cut power use I may be able to put an LED strip in place of the CFL bulbs.
Also how much worth do you people think it is worth to get it running off the battery and yes I do realize I'll probably only get 30- minutes on a charge.

[gman060692]

added images
(IMG:https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Wy4mjSFmqKY/UJw0S7F8kZI/AAAAAAAAABw/ImYjOPNdtGA/s1113/P1010019.JPG)
(IMG:https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-1EP_Fqmu1_g/UJw0S-Im9WI/AAAAAAAAABs/wWJeBXXJ9AU/s1113/P1010020.JPG)
(IMG:https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-vzmIkYkMvDU/UJw0S4cs6eI/AAAAAAAAACQ/Fi_6r8NKtTM/s1113/P1010021.JPG)

the board in the pictures is not the final one I'll be using(it's broken).

This post has been edited by gman060692: Nov 9 2012, 12:41 AM

[ttsgeb]

Audio Amp:
Try this
And a quick guide on using it
LCD Driver:
Send them a message asking about your screen


Switching it over to LED will just make things more complicated for you, and it will look worse.

As far as using the battery, I wouldn't. If you have room to leave the compartment after shoving in the hdd, power board, lcd driver, and audio amp; I would rebuild the battery to your own specs.  For about $150, you could get closer to two hours out of the laptop, and get rid of most of the problems that those older battery packs have.

I would also get a piece of plexi or other plastic and cut it to they keyboards shape to smooth out the inside of the laptop a bit.  You could do some pretty awesome things with windows if you have the patience for it.

Finally, i think that fan is blowing the wrong way.  Generally, you run a heat pipe from the main heatsink to one on the flat side of the fan, and have the flat side going to the outside.  however, if you are taking out the keyboard and putting plastic there, it would be easy enough to guide air out the top of the laptop if you have if facing that way.

As far as the PSU goes, I'm working on something, and if I get one designed, I'll be sure to let everyone that's watching know.  TI.com is a good place to start.

[gman060692]

QUOTE(ttsgeb @ Nov 9 2012, 07:09 PM)

Finally, i think that fan is blowing the wrong way.  Generally, you run a heat pipe from the main heatsink to one on the flat side of the fan, and have the flat side going to the outside.  however, if you are taking out the keyboard and putting plastic there, it would be easy enough to guide air out the top of the laptop if you have if facing that way.

 The fan was facing the appropriate way. The pictures don't stow it but there is an open panel on the botom of the laptop which will allow for air intake. Although I will need to add some plastic guides to direct air flow to the heatsink and from it out the back or top of the laptop.

I know it would benefit more from the fan being right up against the heatsink and air being pulled from above, but due to space constraints and component in the way on the MoBo it's not the easiest option. What you see there is just stuff I had lying around and I'd like to keep costs to a minimum so a new heatsink and heat pipe isn't really an option.

[Bandit5317]

QUOTE

All you need is 2 3.3v regulators, a transistor, and a resistor. If you look at a pinout of the Xbox's PSU connector and a standard ATX connector, you'll notice that all of the necessary signals and voltages that the Xbox uses are present on an ATX PSU, just in a different arrangement, with 3 which need to be modified. Firstly, an ATX PSU has a 5v Standby line and the Xbox requires 3.3v on the Standby power rail. So you have to use a 3.3v regulator (some people have also used diodes and been successful) to bump down the 5v Standby line on the PSU to 3.3v. Next is the Pw_OK signal. An ATX PSU sends out a 5v Pw_OK signal, but the Xbox requires a 3.3v signal. So once again you use a 3.3v regulator to bump down the voltage. Finally, the Xbox pulls the Pw_ON line high (sends a voltage to it) to tell the standard Xbox PSU to turn on, but an ATX PSU will only turn on if you pull the Pw_ON line low (ground it). So you lower the voltage from the Xbox's Pw_ON line using a resistor (I used a 10k Ohm 1/4 watt) and solder the resistor to the base pin of a transistor. Then you solder the collector and emitter pins on the transistor to the ATX PSU's Pw_ON pin and any ground, effectively inverting the signal.

Alternatively, you could build a battery pack, like ttsgeb suggested. If the battery pack that you have can hold a full charge (though I doubt that it can, given it's age) then it should be able to run the Xbox for about an hour. The Xbox consumes about 60 Watts, which is pretty much exactly the output from that battery. Of course, Lithium Ion batteries aren't as simple as NiMh. They have internal circuitry to handle charging and discharging. That's why there are more than two pins on laptop batteries. You would need to find a pinout of your battery or make one yourself and then build an adapter which would allow for charging and discharging. I've never attempted this, so I can't help you there.