Past Projects: The Los Angeles Dodgers Xbox

When my best friend, Kristina, asked me if I could make a custom xbox for her boyfriends birthday, I was like "Uuum... have you seen my Deceptacon xbox? What do you want?". "Los Angeles Dogers, I'll give you $150". "When do you need it?". "Day After Tomorrow..." All I needed to buy for this project was paint, primer and sand paper... I had everything else ready to go.

I started with a regular old, run of the mill softmodded console. She didn't want Media Center, or anything else... Just emulators and roms, so I went with UnleashX.

Since this xbox was in excellent condition, I did not need to sand before priming. I did, however, need to give it a good wipe-down with isoprophyl alcohol to get all of the grease and dirt off.

I primed all of the pieces that needed to be painted, inside and out. I wanted this thing to look like it was actually made by Micro$oft.

I painted the lid, base and button guard blue. I painted the faceplate and DVD bezel white.

This shot is with the shielding, fan and controller ports in place. The contrast of the blue against the chrome is brilliant. Better that that dingy old blackish green.

I masked off the faceplate and DVD bezel, then I gave it a quick shot of blue. While I was at it, I shot the button assembly with white. So far, so good... Then I put the faceplate back together.

Next up was to cut out the "LA" logo from the lid...

I printed out the logo to the apropriate size...

Then I masked the fins and taped the logo down where I thought would be nothing less than perfect.

I cut the logo out, pushing the x-acto knife into the lid a little harder that I normally would to sort of "trace" or "etch" the logo into the lid.

Then I took my novelty, battery powered, Dremel (do not buy one of these, they absolutely suck) and drilled a series of holes around the inside perimeter of the logo on the low setting. After that was complete I kicked it up to the high setting and drug the bit from hole to hole, making sure to keep track of the inside of the "A".

Then I used nail files (dollar store) and my x-acto knife to clean up the edges and make the corners sharp.

After I was satisfied, I took the lid out back to be sprayed with 3 thin coats of white, letting it dry for about 15 minutes between each coat.

I let the final coat dry for about 2 hours. Long enough for me to change the P/E (power / eject) lights from green to blue and wire up all of the indicator lights. (network connected, network activity and HDD (hard drive) activity. I was also able to test the machine to make sure everything was perfect.

After the paint was completely dry, I removed the masking.

Then I cut a piece of "frosted" Lexan (plexi-glass) to back the "LA" logo. I simply hot glued it in place on the under-side of the lid. I attached the inner piece of the "A", again, with hot glue.

Originally I had planned to clear the jewel and light it up with blue LED's. Kristina came by to see where I was at in the project and asked me how long that would take. She needed it sooner than later, so we opted to just paint the jewel blue to match the rest. And the Dodger Xbox was born.

Kristina took Brad to a Dodgers game the next day and brought the xbox with them. When they were getting their coats out of the trunk of the car she asked him to get something from "that box". He opened the box, saw the xbox and, from what I was told, almost fainted. He loved it.

My work here is done...

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Xbox Laptop - The Motherboard... DONE!

Ta Daaaa!

Here she is, as slim as I can get her. Less than 1 inch tall... Man-oh-man..


Now that this BS is done, I can get on with what I love the most... Case Modding. The next few post's will be ALL about building the case, fabricating pieces, the keyboard, the power button, the LCD etc... Please, stay tuned!

Thanks for reading,
Josh

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xbox Laptop - The Softmod

Ok, now that I got this thing running it's time to softmod it and later try my hands at a TSOP flash.

The first thing I had to do was take the Samsung DVD PCB out of my "Lucky" slim, put it back together and replace that broken Phillips drive.


Then I had to upgrade the dash from 4920 to 5960. To do that I used Halo 2, went to xbox live, troubleshoot and let it do its thing.


Next I used my SD card and my xbox to USB adapter, that we made a few days ago, to get the Mechassault game-save exploit to the console.


Finally I popped in Mechassault, selected install Linux and ran the on screen instructions and less than 10 minutes later I was booting into UnleashX. Yes that's me, yes that's "The Champagne of Beers". My girlfriend came out because she wanted to see how the Mechinstaller works and apparently to take pictures.


NOTE: I am over the legal drinking age in my state and / or country. I do not condone underage drinking OR drinking while handling electronics. Drinking leads to health problems and the making of stupid decisions... just look at my tattoos... right? If you have to, drink responsibly. If you can avoid it, just don't drink at all. Also.. if you have to drink, please drink something better than Miller High Life.

Learn to: Mechinstaller


Next step: TSOP Flash, and XBOXHDM so I can install the 2.5" HDD and do away with the dvd drive completely.
Till next time!
Josh

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xbox Laptop - The very begining!

Some of you may know this to be my covenanted project, or my top secret project, but some may know this as "Project Buddha".

So far, all that I have revealed is that I need an LCD screen to pull this together. That's true. Some have speculated that I am building a portable. That's half true. I am going to build the worlds first xbox 1 laptop. Why? Because I want to and to the best of my knowledge nobody has done it before.

Last week, during the "eBay woes" fiasco I bought a ton of parts. Basically everything I needed to build this is one except a Pico PSU... Well, the parts started rolling in today so I expect to be starting pretty soon.

Parts List:
-1.1 motherboard
-keyboard
-4 port mini USB hub
-xbox DVD playback kit
-mini SDHC card reader
-2x Vantec IceBerq 4 fans
-pico PSU
-9" head rest monitor
-3x OEM empty black xbox cases
-60gb 2.5" Toshiba HDD
-2.5" IDE HDD adapter
-Stayers AID disk
-random and misc small connectors, screws, bits & bobs. Most of which I already have or I can get at a hardware store when the time comes(LED's USB ports, screws, nuts & bolts etc..). I also ordered a new tool kit to go along side this project. That should be here any day now.

Some of my tutorials are going to be directly descended from this project. I hope all of you like this. I hope to get more followers and what not. I hope I do not run into too many snags along the way.

Now... I'm off to soft mod this motherboard and possibly attempt my very first TSOP flash. Wish me luck folks!

Till next time,
Josh


P.S. Here are some pictures and sketches and what-not... to start you off.

This is the xbox I will be using:


These are what parts I have 'right now':


These are sketches of what I want her to look like:


This is Oliver from my comic "And My Axe":

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About Me

Hello, My name is Joshua Lee. I have been modding xbox consoles for 7 years (since 2005). The very first mod I did was converting an xbox controller to be used on a PC for emulators. In reading how to do so, I learned that there was a whole new world out there... A community of people modifying their xbox's in ways that I never imagined. That was the beginning of the end for me.

I was reluctant, at first, to modify my console. I just paid $200 for my xbox used at EB Games in my local mall. I really didn't want to do something wrong and turn my DVD Player / stereo / game console into a $200 paper-weight. I had already had problems with having to return it because it wouldn't play games past the first level, or it wouldn't read disks etc... So I read.

The first mod that I did on my console was changing the LED's from green to blue. I remember that night... lol. I used 5mm LED's that I harvested out of a PC fan that I dremmeled down to fit. I didn't even have my own soldering iron back then, I was borrowing on from my mother. The next mod that I did was replacing the stock fan to an 80mm fan with blue LED's. I felt like such a bad ass, however, my console was still not "modded".

After fighting with myself in my head and reading page after page in forums, reading tutorial after tutorial, I came to the realization that I would not die if I screwed something up. I could always go buy another one. It might take me a minute to save the money, but by this time I had a friend at EB Games and their prices were dropping.

I didn't have money for a mod chip and to hell with trying to flash a TSOP. That was a foreign language to me! I decided to do a softmod via the hot swap method. The first time I did it was on a slower PC and it took FOREVER. I thought something was wrong so I turned everything off and YEAH, I screwed up. Luckily I was able to unlock the hard drive again, start the sequence all over again but this time I waited. And waited... and waited. Finally it was done and BAM, modded console. I felt like even more of a bad ass now.

That first soft mod that I did, 7 years ago, has taught me A LOT about computers. Back then I thought LimeWire was the coolest thing ever invented and I was altering the HTML on my MySpace page. Total n00b! Since then I have taught myself all about FTP, Linux, Networking, Skinning, TSOP flashing, hard drive partitioning, etc... You get the idea. Modding xbox's for me isn't just about playing games for free. It's more about pushing the limits and seeing what I can and can't do and the thrill of the hunt trying to find used and rare consoles.

At the time of this writing, I am still modifying xbox's. I have not dove into the 360 modding world because I have the same reservations about the 360 that I had about the original xbox 7 years ago. The only thing I haven't done to an xbox so far, again at the time of this writing, is install a mod chip. Hopefully that will change here in the near future due to a recent purchase on eBay.

I have had great support from my family and my current girlfriend, Amanda. She helps me test consoles, test games, build rom lists, gives me constructive criticism on skins and what not. She even want's to design and modify her own xbox one day. I would be more than happy to help her as I would love to help you too! Please enjoy my website. Use it to your advantage! If you find any bugs, misspellings or anything wrong, please let me know!

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