|
|
|
|
Poll:
|
Poll feature coming soon!
|
|
|
|
|
Go to Bottom - Back to Xbox tutorials - Back to all tutorials
This tutorial was written by: HaLo2FrEeEk
Before I start, I'd like to make a few disclaimers:
1. I take ABSOLUTELY NO responsibility for ANYTHING that happens to your xbox while perfoming this mod. It was accomplished by me successfully, but it is to be attempted at YOUR OWN RISK!
2. You will need some tools throughout this tutorial. I will list these below. I recommend using these tools, and knowing HOW to use these tools.
3. I did this mod on a Samsung drive, I don't know how different the other drives are inside, but mine worked. You'll know what brand it is after you take it apart because it says it on the drive casing.
4. Be prepared to spend a considerable amount of time with this, always remember: measure twice, cut once; test after each step, just to be sure.
Ok, here are the tools you'll need that I mentioned in disclaimer #2:
You will need:
Soldering Iron
Solder
Multimeter (not required, but REALLY helps)
Thin wire (I used the wires inside an Ethernet cable)
3x3.2-3.8V LED's, you choose the color, I chose blue.
1x1.5K Ohm resistor
Heatshrink Tubing
Hotglue gun with hotglue sticks
And of course, and original xbox (with tools to take it apart)
That's quite a list, I know, and I highly suggest you get all the materials in one place before you start, otherwise you'll lose your train of thought and your place looking for them. Clear your work area, this is important, I can't tell you how distracting it is to have a messy workspace, and inhibiting; keep it clear and you'll be good. Finally, you need a good understanding of what we'll be doing here.
Before I explain, I used a tutorial to do this on another type of drive (A regular PC IDE optical drive). This is quite different. Since I want you to read what you'll be doing first, I'll link you to his tutorial after the explanation.
Ok, basically we'll be soldering the 3 LED lights in series along with the resistor (to reduce the voltage so we don't burn out the lights), and connected to the 12V rail on the drive. The negative lead will loop around to the ground rail on the drive. We will mount these 3 lights inside, at the back of, the DVD drive on the xbox so that when you open it up, the lights shine through.
That sounds complicated, or perhaps it doesn't, but let me tell you, unless you are a god, there is work involved. It took me about 3 hours to get this totally completed and put back together, and that was without a pinout of the drive's power cable.
Ok, here is the tutorial I followed, from DAE JA VOO.
Since PC DVD drives and Xbox DVD drives are rather different, this wasn't as easy as just following a tutorial, at least for the first half. First thing I did was crack open my xbox. I'd done this before, but this time I had the right tools. You'll need a T20 Star bit to unscrew the 6 screws on the bottom of the case:
Remove those 6 screws and set them aside, out of the way but where you can get to them again. DON'T lose them! Flip the box over and remove the top panel, this includes the sides as well.
You will see the xbox's "guts", the smaller box on the right is the harddrive, and the larger one on the left is the optical drive, or DVD drive. This is what we're after. Unfortunately, you have to remove the hard drive before you can remove the DVD drive. Carefully pull the grey ribbon cable out of the harddrive so that only the 4 wire connector is left. This is the power cable, and has to be unplugged. Wedge a screwdriver in between the side of the power connector (which is called molex) and the side of the housing it's in and level it out, using your finger on the other side. Once it's free, carefully extract it from the side of the housing until it's just sticking out from underneath. Lift the harddrive housing out from it's place and remove the power cable from it, it's easy really. Set the harddrive aside, don't touch it more than you need to.
Now there are 2 screws holding the disk drive housing in place, I found that my changeable-bit screwdriver is too big to fit in either one of those holes, so I used a small flat head screwdriver, it worked wonders. Get those 2 out and set them next to the case screws. Remove the grey ribbon cable from the disk drive and them carefully pull the yellow multi-wire power connector out, too. This odd power connector is what made this mod so difficult (for me, cuz I didn't know the specs of it).
Flip the drive upside down and remove the 4 screws on the bottom with a regular philips-head screwdriver. Set them next to the case and disk drive housing screws. Flip the drive back over and remove the top portion, this, again, includes the sides. remove the bottom and you now have a bare, naked disk drive. Careful not to touch the laser lens. Flip the drive over so it's upside down and the drive tray is facing you. Look at the power connector (which will be the 2x6 array of pins in the top right corner). Pins 11 and 12 are labeled. 11 is the bottom row, 12 is the top, therefore, the bottom row is odd, meaning pin 1 is on the bottom left of the array, and pin 12 is on the top right. These are the two pins you'll need. Pin 1 is +12V and pin 12 is Ground, I used a multimeter to check this, so I know it's right. Get 2 lengths of wire, make sure you have MORE than enough, you can always cut some off, but it's harder to add more on. Strip the ends and solder the end of one to pin 1 and the end of the OTHER ONE to pin 12. Make sure to use small amounts of solder, less is more, so thatyou don't overlap the contacts and mess stuff up. Here is a picture:
Once you get those soldered, take some of the smaller heatshrink tubing and wrap the soldered ends like I did in the picture below. I had to use a lighter to shrink the tubing, but a headgun or mom's hairdryer will work better. Unfortunately, there were no places where I could drill a hole to run the wires through, so I had to use the existing screwhole, but I ran the wires through there:
Ok, here's where it got tricky. I need to solder the resistor in-line before the LEDs, but there won't be enough room to close it back up if I put it on top of the board, so I had to cut the wire just right to leave me enough to stick the lead for the resistor up through the screwhole, wrap one end of the wire around it, and solder it, then stick it back through the hole without it sticking out at all. In retrospect, Icould have cut the resistor's leads a little shorter than I did, to help, but I wasn't thinking about that. When you get that finished, solder the other end of the resistor back into the wire you cut off. Run your wiring and resistor through some heatshrink tubing and seal it up:
(This picture was taken after I was done, so I'd already hotglued it down)
Now, I used my soldering iron, but if you have a drill, that will work too. Punch holes in the walls of the drive housing. This will not affect the stability or performance of the drive at all. Here's what I did:
Run the wire through it and make sure that you have enough to reach the far back end of the drive without having to pull hard. If not, we'll deal with that later. Ok, so now we need to make our light strip. Take your 3 LEDs, the positive leg is the longer one, and for these it does matter. Bend the legs back carefully, so as not to break them, so that when you are holding the LED such that the positive leg is on the left, that leg sticks back away from you, and the legative leg sticks toward you. Do this with all 3 LEDs. Get some wire and strip it completely so that there is no plastic coating on it at all. Stick the negative and positive leg of the LEDs together and wrap some of that wire around it. Solder them together, make sure they are facing the same way. Do this with all 3 LEDs, making sure that positive always goes to negative, it helps to orient them on your desk all the same way. When you are done, you will have a strip of lights like this:
Measure the negative wire first, so that the end is just a little past the end of the LED strip when you hold it in place. Make sure that it's right, then cut it there. If it's not right, solder a length of wire onto the end to extend it, then heatshrink tube it. Wrap the end of the negative wire around the end of the LED strip, with the end of the wire facing the end of the LED strip. Solder there, then wrap some heatshrink around it and seal it:
Measure your positive wire now so that there is just enough slack to not get in the way, but enough so that you have room to wrap the wire and solder. Now cut it, wrap it, and solder it. Don't worry about heatshrinking this, there's no contacts to short here. You have now finished your circuit. I hope you've been testing each step, but if not, here is a good place to stop. Put your opened xbox on the ground, plug it into power and plug the video cable in (DVD drive won't open without it, for some reason), and plug the yellow power cable into the back. Make sure that none of the contacts are touching anything conductive, and turn on the xbox. If your LEDs light up, you've done well, if not, you missed something, backtrack and review your work.
So hopefully everyone's lights are working, let's continue. Here we can start mounting everything up. I used a high heat hotglue gun for this, just hold the far (negative) end of the strip where you want it (make ABSOLUTELY sure that it won't block the progress of the disk drive when it's opening or, especially, closing), and put a dab of glue, hold it there for a good 30 seconds for it to dry (blowing on it helps). Do the same for the positive end, then the middle 2 sections. You can then seal up the hole where the route the wires in:
And the sections where you made the holes in the housing, and where the resistor is as well:
Now admire the work, I took the time to take some pictures of the strip mounted, unlit, without the casing, here's one good one:
Now test one more time, if everything is good, continue. We're going to put back together the drive now. Since we used one of the screwholes for our wires, one of the flaps on the drives casing will need to be bent up to accomodate it:
You'd better remember how to put this back together, since you took it apart. Anyways, this will need to be bent up. The top of the casing will need to be placed first, that's the thinner metal sheet, without the sides. Place that, then flip it and slide the bottom and sides back on, line everything back up, and screw it together. Do another test.
When it's all back together, unplug the power from the xbox, replace the drive back into the plastic housing, replace the grey ribbon (IDE) cable, and the power cable. Put it back into it's place in the case and screw it in. Put the harddrive back together with the power and IDE cable, be careful since the power cable is soldered into the board, if it comes out, you're screwed. Place the harddrive back in, you'll know when it's right since it won't move around at all. When that's all put back together, place the top/sides panel back on the xbox and flip it over and screw the 6 screws back in with the T20 Star bit. Now we're ready for the fun.
Here is a picture with my xbox off, sitting atop my TV:
And the final Piece De Resistance!
And a movie I made of me running it:
bluelighty (0:55, 640x360, 10.7MB)
Questions? Ask them here and one of our friendly members will be happy to help you.
note: You will need to have an account on the forum to ask questions, but its free.
Go to top - Back to Xbox tutorials - Back to all tutorials
|
|
