My Silent Playstation 2-HTPC Hybrid WIP UPdate 17/10
Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 12:08 pm
Hi all. I thought I would introduce you to a work in progress.
This is a lesson how "That seems a simple idea" turns into "How many of those things have I trashed now"
I will in the future do a more detailed description of the process, with some shots of the trickier bits of the mod.
First of all lets start with a simple idea.
For my living room I wished a silent HTPC. It had to be silent as I intended it to run 24/7 and I like my piece and quiet. I also play some gentle jazz from time to time and the whine of a fan ruins the effect. So a plan was born.
Make a 100% passive HTPC.
On reflection this turned out to be the easier aspect of this machine.
Inside
2100XP palamino Undervolted 10 1.4v and underclocked to 1133mhz. Cooled by a modded typhoon. (similar to project bruce lee posted here)
Abit NF7 mobo. Modded with a 6cm CPU copper cooler, running the NB passive. The power regulators are heatsinked with a cut up PII heatsink. The SB has a PII heatsink shaped and added. The thing runs stable with no forced cooling
2x512mb DDR 400 ram heatsinked with nexus memory sinks. Running in dual channel mode.
Silverstone 30NF 300w power supply. 100% passive piece of alu gorgeousness!
ATI 9600 pro AIW (tuner now no longer required)
Asus 7131 DVBT card
V-Stream/K-World DVB-T100
So I thought take a standardish cheapo ATX Midi tower case. Stripped out the bays, cut out the front, panels at the rear and rear sides. Make a new front panel I have a cover made which is meshed at the rear as well. More of that to follow...
I then thought (and this is where I have to say a leson could be learned about how dangerous thoughts are!) There is space in their for other stuff, what else could I fit in there. The answer was staring me in the face. My playstation 2.
This was the killer. Or to put it more exactly I became a playstation Killer....
I stripped the first PS2 down. I seem to recall it was a V7. Worked out a placement, built brackets. Removed its own power supply, Soldered a molex onto it and tried it out. Bingo, power and it worked. Now all I had to do was
1. Extend the controllers and Mem cards to the side of the new case.
2. Extend the graphics output to the back of the new case.
3. Work out how to get the power and eject buttons to the front of the case.
4. Add drive bays to the (at this time non existant) front facia panel
Easy?
I searched the web, but noone seemed to have done this mod before.
Now some piccies.
This is an untidy first draft at the front facia. I used 2 lian li optical drive bay plates. The power buttons are funky stainless steel flush fit vandal resistant door entry push to make switches. The one to the imediate left of the drives is attached to hte PS2. The Eject button on the lower drive bay opens the PS2 The top is the DVD drive for the HTPC.
This is a top shot where you can see the PS2 in position. For the moment the PS2 is being cooled by its fan the V10 fan is exeptionally quiet once you take it out of its case.. This is the third PS2 that I have used.
No 1. Died in an unfortunate soldering accident when I tried to wire the power switch directly to the mobo.
No 2. Died by short circuit.. OOPS
No 3. You can see in position.
I bought the two replacements as faulty on E-Bay This is a good way of getting hold of replacements. I used parts from the first to repair them.
You can see in this photo how I extended the game ports to the side of the case. I cut out a section from the first PS2 case which pokes through. I then seperated the control board from the controller chassis and soldered about 30 odd wires to allow it to be placed. The controller board is attached to the PS2 with its origional FIC cable.
You can see also how I stacked the drives. The old 5' drive bar was cut up and bonded to the top of the PS2 DVD drive.
Note also to the right of the fan. This is the graphics output of the PS2. I soldered about 12 wired to the solder points on the PS2 board. I left the origional output in place as I had a spare. This made testing my extended port easier.
This side view gives a good idea on the case construction. You can see the alu bars that I bonded in to strengthen the case. I also had to move the PSU mounts a couple of CM to take into account the Typhoons position so close to the edge of the mobo.
You can see here the power supply in its new position. The mesh at the back will be replicated in the case lid which has mesh on the top and sides
This photo demonstrates how I extended the graphics output of the PS2 to the back of the new case. I desoldered the output from the origional (V7) playstation. It is mounted onto a PCI Blank.
And you can see where it pops out the back. Still got a little tidying to this.
One more into the side of the machine... In the far right you can see the playstation controller port. It is still to be bonded in. Going to paint the case first .
So there it is so far. Still got a few bits and pieces to do.
1. Finish off the case with body filler and paint it black.
2. Finish off the wraparound case lid and paint it (not sure what colour suggestions please)
3. Make a new unblemished front facia. Same again.
4. Mod my mce remote to an internal header, solder the LCD directly to the parallel port.
But that sounds all too easy.... Got to throw something else into te mix.
a) Possible usb mouse scroll wheel to volume/controll knob on the left of the facia. Big round alu or steel dial?
b) Possible port for my Razr phone on the relatively unscathed right hand side of the case?
c) Possible/almost definate heatsink mod to the undersides of the mobo to improve cooling further?
d) Ext cooling/HD suspension for the HD currently encased in a Silentdrive enclosure?
I'm open to other suggestions?
This is a lesson how "That seems a simple idea" turns into "How many of those things have I trashed now"
I will in the future do a more detailed description of the process, with some shots of the trickier bits of the mod.
First of all lets start with a simple idea.
For my living room I wished a silent HTPC. It had to be silent as I intended it to run 24/7 and I like my piece and quiet. I also play some gentle jazz from time to time and the whine of a fan ruins the effect. So a plan was born.
Make a 100% passive HTPC.
On reflection this turned out to be the easier aspect of this machine.
Inside
2100XP palamino Undervolted 10 1.4v and underclocked to 1133mhz. Cooled by a modded typhoon. (similar to project bruce lee posted here)
Abit NF7 mobo. Modded with a 6cm CPU copper cooler, running the NB passive. The power regulators are heatsinked with a cut up PII heatsink. The SB has a PII heatsink shaped and added. The thing runs stable with no forced cooling
2x512mb DDR 400 ram heatsinked with nexus memory sinks. Running in dual channel mode.
Silverstone 30NF 300w power supply. 100% passive piece of alu gorgeousness!
ATI 9600 pro AIW (tuner now no longer required)
Asus 7131 DVBT card
V-Stream/K-World DVB-T100
So I thought take a standardish cheapo ATX Midi tower case. Stripped out the bays, cut out the front, panels at the rear and rear sides. Make a new front panel I have a cover made which is meshed at the rear as well. More of that to follow...
I then thought (and this is where I have to say a leson could be learned about how dangerous thoughts are!) There is space in their for other stuff, what else could I fit in there. The answer was staring me in the face. My playstation 2.
This was the killer. Or to put it more exactly I became a playstation Killer....
I stripped the first PS2 down. I seem to recall it was a V7. Worked out a placement, built brackets. Removed its own power supply, Soldered a molex onto it and tried it out. Bingo, power and it worked. Now all I had to do was
1. Extend the controllers and Mem cards to the side of the new case.
2. Extend the graphics output to the back of the new case.
3. Work out how to get the power and eject buttons to the front of the case.
4. Add drive bays to the (at this time non existant) front facia panel
Easy?
I searched the web, but noone seemed to have done this mod before.
Now some piccies.
This is an untidy first draft at the front facia. I used 2 lian li optical drive bay plates. The power buttons are funky stainless steel flush fit vandal resistant door entry push to make switches. The one to the imediate left of the drives is attached to hte PS2. The Eject button on the lower drive bay opens the PS2 The top is the DVD drive for the HTPC.
This is a top shot where you can see the PS2 in position. For the moment the PS2 is being cooled by its fan the V10 fan is exeptionally quiet once you take it out of its case.. This is the third PS2 that I have used.
No 1. Died in an unfortunate soldering accident when I tried to wire the power switch directly to the mobo.
No 2. Died by short circuit.. OOPS
No 3. You can see in position.
I bought the two replacements as faulty on E-Bay This is a good way of getting hold of replacements. I used parts from the first to repair them.
You can see in this photo how I extended the game ports to the side of the case. I cut out a section from the first PS2 case which pokes through. I then seperated the control board from the controller chassis and soldered about 30 odd wires to allow it to be placed. The controller board is attached to the PS2 with its origional FIC cable.
You can see also how I stacked the drives. The old 5' drive bar was cut up and bonded to the top of the PS2 DVD drive.
Note also to the right of the fan. This is the graphics output of the PS2. I soldered about 12 wired to the solder points on the PS2 board. I left the origional output in place as I had a spare. This made testing my extended port easier.
This side view gives a good idea on the case construction. You can see the alu bars that I bonded in to strengthen the case. I also had to move the PSU mounts a couple of CM to take into account the Typhoons position so close to the edge of the mobo.
You can see here the power supply in its new position. The mesh at the back will be replicated in the case lid which has mesh on the top and sides
This photo demonstrates how I extended the graphics output of the PS2 to the back of the new case. I desoldered the output from the origional (V7) playstation. It is mounted onto a PCI Blank.
And you can see where it pops out the back. Still got a little tidying to this.
One more into the side of the machine... In the far right you can see the playstation controller port. It is still to be bonded in. Going to paint the case first .
So there it is so far. Still got a few bits and pieces to do.
1. Finish off the case with body filler and paint it black.
2. Finish off the wraparound case lid and paint it (not sure what colour suggestions please)
3. Make a new unblemished front facia. Same again.
4. Mod my mce remote to an internal header, solder the LCD directly to the parallel port.
But that sounds all too easy.... Got to throw something else into te mix.
a) Possible usb mouse scroll wheel to volume/controll knob on the left of the facia. Big round alu or steel dial?
b) Possible port for my Razr phone on the relatively unscathed right hand side of the case?
c) Possible/almost definate heatsink mod to the undersides of the mobo to improve cooling further?
d) Ext cooling/HD suspension for the HD currently encased in a Silentdrive enclosure?
I'm open to other suggestions?