PCX - A HTPC/Steam Streaming Machine in a Playstation 1 Chasis

[Tearass]

@Rumikarimu lol, but it was an XBOX original, forgot to put that there lol.

 

@James Yeah if I do it, I will definitely do a build log of it and have it running SteamOS (i'll call it the Xsteam, bad name I know but I cant think of anything better), but as of now I have LITTERALLY just then received my parts for my first build (well second, I built one for my parents). I will build it tomorrow and I went Mitx for a reason

 

Hint: I may reuse them in the XBOX PC.  

 

You can call it a STEAMBOX!!!

 

 

 

EDIT: OR A GABEx

[alby800]

GABEx is a good one lol

Hmmmmmmm

[James.]

I know this is being posted a bit late at night, but I figured I might as well post it anyways.
 

Update 7: Patience is something I need to practice.

 

To start this off, I managed to find some nuts for mounting the motherboard to the metal piece.



Because of the very small size of these, they actually took forever to find, and I finally managed to find these in a hobby shop in Kingston after searching for a while. Thankfully they do fit without major problems though.
 

 

Also, I started working on making the acrylic back panel for the computer,

 

 

Those were all done later last night. Moving on to today, after buying some nuts and bolts, I started on the mounting of the controller ports and the metal motherboard tray. A drill press makes this fairly easy.

 

 

And with everything bolted in place.

 

 

I need some longer bolts for the controller ports, and to cut the bolts holding in the motherboard tray, however everything is otherwise working well.

 

 

Lastly, as for that acrylic back panel I was working on, well, I was kinda impatient and decided to see how hard it would be to cut out the stuff on the back panel with a dremel. It did not turn out well at all, and thankfully I have more acrylic to work on.

 

 

I'll hopefully have more updates tomorrow.

 

[SageC]

 

Lastly, as for that acrylic back panel I was working on, well, I was kinda impatient and decided to see how hard it would be to cut out the stuff on the back panel with a dremel. It did not turn out well at all, and thankfully I have more acrylic to work on.

 

 

Any ideas for a better tool to cut the back plate? I did what you did and experienced the same results.

[James.]

Any ideas for a better tool to cut the back plate? I did what you did and experienced the same results.

I was thinking of just using a sharp fine knife, and repeatedly scoring the template on both sides until I can just push out the piece. I'll try it tomorrow, and see if it works. Doing it that way should hopefully allow me to be much more precise, rather than just having hole in a shape that looks slightly like what I want.

[SageC]

I was thinking of just using a sharp fine knife, and repeatedly scoring the template on both sides until I can just push out the piece. I'll try it tomorrow, and see if it works. Doing it that way should hopefully allow me to be much more precise, rather than just having hole in a shape that looks slightly like what I want.

 

It's definitely worth a try!

[James.]

its a bit of a smaller one this time, but I figured I would still make it.

 

Update 8: Filling, Filling it never ends.

So, with the absolute terribleness of the last attempt of making the acrylic back panel, I decided to start the template again.

 

Doing it this way was not the best idea, as I found out later that I would have to make the cutouts larger so that they could fit the entirety of the part that each port is a part of , and not just the ports themselves, due to how close the parts are to the back panel. However, I didn't do that entirely, and so I ended up with this template.

Thankfully however, I can just expand everything, and make the ports fit. Moving on, from the template, I then drilled some really ugly holes into the acrylic so that I can have a basis to start filing it into shape.

Which then results in this,

However this is still very much a work in progress. However, I can already tell that it is going to look better than the dremel attempt so I'm going to stick with it until I can get a somewhat finished piece, and then go from there.

Also, I have been thinking about what the finished look of the piece should be, and one idea I had was to sandblast it and see how it looked. So, I took a scrap piece and tried it out.

The left side is the acrylic untouched, the right is with the acrylic sandblasted on one side, and the center is with it sandblasted on both sides. I personally like the right, because it isn't clear, but still has a glossy finish, but I was wondering is anyone else liked the look of it sandblasted?

Lastly, I also bean to cut out the back of the Playstation, to allow for the back panel to fit.

While it may not be entirely level, despite how long I try, it actually has a really nice fit with the acrylic piece,which certainly makes me happy.

Well, that might be all for today. I wont have a chance to work on the back panel for another day, and I want to continue to work on my motorcycle engine PC project for my father, so updates for this might not be out until thursday.

[Bagmup]

Stick some painters tape over the acrylic, makes it a lot easier to draw on and protects the acrylic from scratching.

 

[James.]

Stick some painters tape over the acrylic, makes it a lot easier to draw on and protects the acrylic from scratching.

I think I have some somewhere, so thanks for the suggestion and I'll use it.

[flibberdipper]

I like the right side.

[James.]

So, I did some more work on this yesterday. I did not take as many photos as I could have, but regardless...
 

Update 9: I love Dremels

 

To start off I cut some more holes into the bottom of the PlayStation. These were cut so that I can access the screws holding the motherboard in place without having to take everything out.
 

 
and from the bottom,
 

 
Unfortunately the hole in the bottom right did not turn out the greatest, but I cant really do that much about it now, so its fine. After that I reattached the motherboard tray, and grinded down the bolt holding it down, so that I can fit the actual motherboard on the tray.
 


Once that was done, I reattached the motherboard in order to see if the bolt was grinded down enough. When I did that I decided to just see what would happen , and I actually worked out well! This will probably be the orientation that I will end up having it, since It allows me to easily access all of the replaceable parts.



From here, I then started to cut out the back of the PlayStation so that the motherboard ports, and the back panel can fit.



There were also some inner parts that had to be cut out, and so I cut those too.



Additionally, Parts of the CD tray at the back had to also be cut.



With this section, I was a little too aggressive with the dremel, and so its a bit messy on the left side. I can't really undo it though, so I simply tried to make it look a bit better by filing it down a bit. Moving on, with the motherboard flipped, I now needed to cut out a space in the bottom so that the fan can get airflow through the bottom.



The picture made it not look the greatest, however I did manage to clean it up fairly well afterwards. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of this. Afterwards, I then decided to cut out the side pieces of the motherboard tray as they were not needed.



And then reattached it to the PlayStation.



Finally, I figured I would see if everything still worked and it everything fit together.



With everything put back together.



And then retesting it.



So, not even though that may be done, there is still more for me to do. I still have to finish the acrylic sheet, I have to order in some PS2/PS1 adapters, and get those hooked up, I have to attach the front controller piece, solder some longer wires to the power connector, and just simply clean everything up. I still have a lot to do, but at least I'm making progress on this again.

[alby800]

Nice

[d33g33]

Really cool!

[James.]

Its not quite done yet, and the camera's battery decided it wanted to die half way through this part of the build, but I figured I should make an update anyways.

 

Update 10: I spend way too much time on this (or in other words, the backplate is done.)

 

To start this part off, I needed to level off the piece of acrylic after all of the failed attempts. So I put it in a vice,

 

 

Then leveled it off,

 

 

And then the camera died. Basically from here I used a plastic cutter to cut a level edge, measure the size of the space needed for the acrylic, and cut it to that size, then redid the template for it, used the drill press to cut out some holes to start filing from, and then spent many, many hours filing it down. In the end, I had something that looked like this:

 

 

And just to make sure that everything would work, I tested the fit of the the various connectors.

 

 

and everything fit. Throughout all this however I had forgotten to cut out a ventilation hole for the fan. seeing as this is probably a good thing to have, I proceeded to cut this out. So to start this I once again clamped the entire thing down on the drill press.

 

 

And then cut out an obscene amount of holes in order to reduce the amount of filling I would have to do.

 

 

And after filling for a while, I had a result of this:

 

 

I was not completely done with the backplate yet, as I still had to sandblast it. Once that was done, it had an almost final look of this:

 

 

The picture isn't the greatest, and while I did do some more filing afterwards in order to make everything look better, I filled it past the point where it it can look perfect so eventually I simply decided that it looked good enough. With that done I then worked on reattaching the front ports,

 

 

and started work on the power button. This will be shown in the next update since its not complete yet. After that all I have to do is order in the controller connectors and attach them, and then this is done, and I can work more on the next custom case.

 

 

 

 

[Brazsty]

Coolest thing ever!

For real!

[James.]

Coolest thing ever!

For real!

 

Really cool!

 

 

Nice

 

Thanks!

[flibberdipper]

I'm liking where this is going so far.

[Laputacake]

This is pretty cool. I'd love to see someone do an Original Xbox mod though...

Well I was planning on doing something but in new but it sold. Who CH should I do? Original or 360 white old one rrod

[James.]

Well I was planning on doing something but in new but it sold. Who CH should I do? Original or 360 white old one rrod

 

I'd say Original because you don't see it as much, but either would be interesting.

 

 

Update 11: Mounting Switches

 

So, not much has happened since the last update but I did manage to take a fair amount of pictures of the power button mounting, so  why not post it? To start off I figured I would show off the mounting bracket. This took forever to make, but it didn't look too bad in the end.

 

 

In addition to that I also had to drill another hole in the PlayStation. At this point I don't really want to have to take the rest of the parts, so I kinda just screwed through the plastic and then filed down the hole...

 

 

Probably not the best way to do it, but it worked, as seen below.

 

 

After this I had test attached the power button, in order to figure out where I wanted it to go.

 

 

However it turned out that I had drilled the mounting hole for the power button  to be too high, and so had to remove some plastic from the case in order to make the button fit, as well as having to sand down the PlayStation's button itself.

 

 

It did fit in the end though.

 

 

Now I just have to do the wiring for it.

 

One last thing, I was wondering if anyone thinks that I should sleeve these wires? They would never actually be seen but I found some rope that fit the wires I was going to use, and figured it would make for decent practice.

 

 

[PrehistoricDuck]

I like how a PC can be built into the size of a PS1. It's so freakin awesome!

[Sernyhough]

Love this

[flibberdipper]

I don't think you should bother sleeving them.

[James.]

I don't think you should bother sleeving them.

 

I decided on that myself afterwards. Its something that wouldn't realistically look good, and its something that would never be seen anyways so its not really worth the trouble.

[Twancoooler]

I really like this project

[flibberdipper]

Well I was planning on doing something but in new but it sold. Who CH should I do? Original or 360 white old one rrod

Original.