modtech: September 2006

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

PS2 in palm !

Here's a quick look at the cooling system I came up with. I had a machinist cut me out a piece of copper and mounted the fan and heatsink on top. I found it ran pretty hot once inside the case however. To test, I ran a game for just over two hours. I didn't experience any overheating issues. It warms up your hands pretty good though.

I created these rigs out of cardboard and shish kabob sticks. This made it easy to wire the motherboard to the DVD drive while the drive was screwed into the case. Wiring in the LCD was the last thing I did so it was nice to have a TV on my workspace for testing purposes.

After creating two other portable systems you'd think I'd learn by now to base my designs on ease of assembly, not size. I decided to move the controller board from behind the motherboard to the front half. This saved me the trouble of having a couple dozen wires running in between the two halves of the case. Mounting the LCD on the motherboard was a smart move as well. It made testing the system a piece of cake. Mmm, cake!

I'm kind of an artist when it comes to finishing my cases. They look awful when I first get them. It takes a good day's worth of sanding to get them to look like this. Several layers of flat black Krylon plastic paint, inside and out, gave it that authentic PS2 look. Unlike the palmPSone, the memory card on this system can be grasped on both sides.

I tried to use as many parts from the PS2 as possible. Springs, buttons etc. I even used the "PS" logo from the front of the PS2 case. The door on the PS2 has a switch that is used to detect when it is opened. I used the same switch on my door so it works the same way. Creating a battery pack was an afterthought since I knew battery life would be pathetic. It made sense to make an external pack to keep the weight down.

The only thing worth complaining about is the "green" problem that comes with using the RGB output. This was a design flaw on Sony's part, not mine. If you play a game long enough you'll start to notice things getting slightly green. Even then, the display still looks better than composite. I didn't want to make this write-up too long and boring, so email me if you have questions about anything not covered here.

Xbox360 notebook ?

微软的次世代游戏主机XBOX360以出众的游戏能力征服了许多游戏玩家的心，但是不能将家用主机随时带在身边不能不说是一个很大的遗憾，许多追求便携性的玩家宁可选择笔记本电脑也不愿意选择需要搭配电视的游戏主机。不过也有玩家为了追求强大的游戏性能和便携性，自己动手将XBOX360改造成了一台“笔记本电脑”。这位玩家将XBOX 360整合到一个笔记本电脑大小的机箱中，同时还安置了一面分辨率为1280×720像素的液晶屏幕，从外观上看，这就如同一部比较笨重的笔记本电脑，但实质上它就是整合了键盘与屏幕的XBOX360游戏机。下面我们就跟随这位玩家的blog，一起来看看整个“改造”的全过程。

XBOX360 笔记本改造成品