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[jhax01]

Received the TX Demon in the mail today so I worked on installing it.  Unfortunately, they shipped me the Slim Post QSB instead of the Postfix adapter so I'm not yet able to glitch the console, but the Demon install went great and the 360 will boot stock from both the Demon NAND and the stock 360 NAND...  Also stripped and soldered in the RF board so I could boot the console and test...



The QSB went in reaaalllyyy easy; however, I should have paid closer attention when I was lining up the Demon itself.  Some of the lower points were skewed which made it a little bit more difficult to solder successfully.




The kit is well put together....





RF Board....




Still waiting on a couple parts, but it's coming along....  

[jery911]

wow, looking good so far.

[jhax01]

@jery911  Thanks!  Hey, what's with the TX forums??  I've been trying to register there in case I have questions, but it's always "the server's too busy, blah blah blah..."

Anyway, received the Postfix adapter today so I installed the DGX / RGX and Postfix...






Here's where I got ahead of myself a little -- I had seen a video where someone used a DGX and had Xell up through HDMI and I assumed it had been converted to an RGX device.  So I loaded up JRunner, wrote the RGX files and the ECC to the Demon Nand, and tried to boot to Xell.  I could tell the console was glitching, but no video...Well, of course, the HDMI out only works with the DGX and there's no going back once you convert.  Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal because you could just get the CPU key via the Ethernet scan, but I've already removed all of that stuff!

So after some research, I'm realizing that I kind of backed myself into a corner and my only real option is a COM monitor cable.  And since I don't have a NAND-X USB cable, I did the next best thing I could -- make my own.  It just so happens that for one of my BMW iBus hacking projects, I used a board to monitor the bus which translates from the bus itself to serial and then to USB.  Perfect -- a bit more soldering and I had a working RS232 interface.







So now the console has been successfully RGH'd.  It's booting in anywhere from 5-10 resets which is ok, but I'm going to see if I can tune it a little and speed it up a bit.  I'm all ears if anyone has a suggestion on the best way to start.  

Next I'm going to try soldering up the internal memory mod to add a 500GB HD for the RGH side only.  From what I understand, because it's a non-4GB console, the HD will only show up on the glitch side which should help to keep things separate...  Also going to rewire the Wi-Fi card and figure out the antenna situation -- this card is a little different than the last one I did.

[jery911]

QUOTE(jhax01 @ May 3 2013, 09:19 PM)

@jery911  Thanks!  Hey, what's with the TX forums??  I've been trying to register there in case I have questions, but it's always "the server's too busy, blah blah blah..."

not sure, its working fine for me, if you need any assistance you can drop me a pm and ill do my best to help you, im vip over at the xecuter forums. but try again if you cant.

[jhax01]

Thanks, if you have any thoughts on fine tuning the glitch, lemme know!

So I pretty much have everything laid out the way I think it should be.  I wired in the second hard drive to the J1D1 header, but it is recognized as an external USB drive on both the glitch and retail sides rather than internal memory.  Not quite what I was hoping for, but it will still work ok.  Still have to wire the wifi, vga board, and audio board as well as complete the corners on the case.  I also plan to add one usb port to the side as well as an access plug for the Demon.

[Bandit5317]

Wow looking good. Are you going to use negative air pressure within the case to suck the air through that heatsink using those exhaust fans?

[jhax01]

Thanks!  Actually, I'm changing it up a little from the first one I built, partly just because of the way the lcd housing attaches to the top plate.  So instead of having a hole just over the heat sink, which seems to be the typical design these days, I'm going to try more of a "wind tunnel" effect.  Both fans are going to blow out the front (not ideal, but because of the layout and limited space it's all I can do) and the air is going to come in through the slot below the lcd hinge.  I'm also going to use baffles to ensure that the air moves across the heat sink before being blown out the front.  I just finished wiring up the video board and wifi card last night -- still waiting on the audio amp board, but I plan on trying to do some heat testing later in the week to see if it's going to work the way I want it to...

[jhax01]

I was able to complete some more work on the zenbox...Pretty much all the wiring is done and I have everything fitting in the case ok...Started doing some heat testing today with some disappointing results.  Looks like I'm going to have to either readjust the way airflow enters the case or possibly look at some different heat sink options.


Wiring done and test booting retail and glitched...




Everything in and booting...the clamp is holding the top on because at this point I'm uncertain how things are going to pan out heat-wise so I haven't working on finalizing mounting locations, etc...  Sorry for the cruddy pics, someday maybe I will invest in a real camera...lol...







Short vid...
zenbox

[Jumpy_Beans]

Just Awesome!
I would love to be able to make something like this.

[jhax01]

QUOTE(Jumpy_Beans @ May 8 2013, 11:46 AM)

Just Awesome!
I would love to be able to make something like this.

Thanks!  If I can do it, ANYONE can... I'm not using anything other than simple hand tools...

QUOTE(Bandit5317 @ May 8 2013, 02:21 PM)

Maybe you could try moving a couple capacitors and having one of those blower fans push air directly into the heatsink. Then have a guide at the back to direct the hot air under the hinge and out the back. That may not allow for enough airflow, though. Dissipating almost 100 Watts in such a small space is going to be difficult.

Not bad ideas... But honestly, at the rate the temps were rising, I suspect that my heatsink wasn't making good contact and coupled with the crappy antec thermal paste, that is too much to overcome.  Even with no air moving it seems to me that it should have risen slower.  I think my next move is to check my spacers and reapply some arctic silver before I make a judgment...

[jhax01]

I was able to overcome the cooling issues by making a hole over the heatsink, swapping out the fans for some higher cfm ones, and putting baffles along the back to make sure that the air is funneled over the heatsink.  Also spent some time getting the speakers  / amp wired in as well as the ROL.  I've done the bottom in black vinyl for now, but will eventually add some color to help disguise the MANY imperfections, etc... Someone with more patience/artistic ability could certainly make it look a lot better, but, for me, function > form....





I also added some buttons on the side for Volume UP/DOWN and Sync (which also switches the NANDs)....Tried to keep them as stealth as possible for a clean look...






HDMI out...I still may add a USB port on this side, but for now I haven't needed it...




The whole thing is just under 1.28 inches thick -- I don't know of anyone who has made a smaller one.... TBH it could be a little thinner -- I believe my top plate is a little bit unnecessarily thick and the bottom case could be 1mm shorter and still clear the heatsink and power input.





Still have a couple things to do -- some more vinyl on the case and rework the LCD bezel.  I've tried a couple different double-sided tapes available locally, but they eventually start losing their grip and allow the bezel edges to lift a little.  I've ordered some sticky tape from overseas specifically made for the job, but will have to wait a couple weeks to get it.  I also have to decide what to do on the top cover, ie vinyl or paint, etc...

I've also started reworking the 17" one that I showed at the start of the thread to make it similarly thin -- although the 17s monitor will add some overall thickness.  For this one, there will definitely be some external usb ports as well as the kinect port....

Here's how I made the case:

Making Xbox laptop case out of aluminum

[Bandit5317]

That is by far the thinnest one made yet. The previous thinnest was just under 2". I can't remember the guy's username, but he made several of them in 15.6" and 17" form factors. They had the DVD drives, though. Still, very impressive.

[jhax01]

Pretty much finished with the rework of the 17 inch model -- I'm going to start taking it on trips to see how it holds up before I try to pretty it up a bit. This one (a Trinity) is sporting a Coolrunner Rev C / DemoN -- thanks again to TX for the reliable RGH / Dual NAND solution! I managed to cut down the thickness of the case slightly compared to the ZenBox so I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. As I've used the ZenBox quite a bit so far, I've come to realize that the speakers are somewhat superfluous, for me at least. I'm usually using headphones or I have it plugged into a TV. The problem with the headphones on the ZenBox is that there is so much going on inside the case, there's a lot of stray ground noise and try as I might, I've been unable to eliminate it completely. To address this on the new model, I took a set of Turtle Beach XP510s and integrated the transmitter into the case. I had already taken the Toslink connector off the XB motherboard so I just soldered the SPDIF connections directly and it sounds great. Next up is to "scuf-erize" one of my controllers...  

On a side note, for mobile Live connectivity, T-Mobile's LTE paired with an android device's hotspot feature does a pretty respectable job of letting you frag to your heart's content.  For those trying to access a hotel or public wifi system, a recently released android app called "fqrouter2" allows you to turn your phone into a wifi repeater of sorts.  Just turn off all the proxy crappola and you're good to go on just about any suitable wifi network without the need to spoof your MAC address...