zondag 18 september 2011

Xbox server - W.I.P. #1

As I cannot make a VGA adapter right now I started some work on the heat sinks. The stock heat sinks of the Xbox are 'glued' to it with the so called Microsoft goo or bubble gum.

With some gentle force I pulled off the heat sinks of the GPU and CPU. Here you can see the goo.
To remove the goo I used acetone and some q-tips (this was described on some forums as being cheap and perfectly safe).
The result was quite good.
Now I did the heat sinks I moved on to the CPU and GPU. The CPU is on the left and the GPU on the right. You can clearly see the goo on them.
So I did the same as I did with the heat sinks. Q-tips, acetone and a lot of rubbing. The result is self explaining.
I ordered some Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste as replacement. I heard good things about it, so I hope it will help some. I want to cool the Xbox as quiet as possible, so passive cooling is a must.

Xbox server - Kick-off

I just started a new project or better said, restarted an old project.
I've got 2 XBox's laying around and I thought, let's make a server out of these.

I'm first going to try to get VGA output on one of these Xbox's. I tried it a couple of years earlier but failed at it.
The problem seems to be at getting the horizontal and vertical sync signals to give to a VGA connection.
There are 3 known methods of getting the sync signals:
  • Using Sync On Green
  • Using a sync splitter
  • Using the Xbox's internal sync signals
Sync On Green
The problem with SOG is that the monitor to be connected on it must support SOG. My monitors don't, and to prevent any future problems, I never attempted this. (Well I think I once did, but it didn't quite work. :-) )

Using a sync splitter
I've tried this method a couple of years earlier. I actually made a PCB for this one.
This was just a test. I just removed the actual PCB I tried to use, here are two pictures.


As you can see on the PCB I soldered some additional wires. With these wires I tried to fix what didn't work. The monitor kept showing the "not connected" message (before the wires) but after the wires the monitor just went to sleep.

But now I'm going for another try using the internal sync signals.

Internal sync signals
I looked up a tutorial on how to make this magic happen. Now it seems I need some electronics I don't happen to have. So I'm ordering right now :-)

I'm using this tutorial to mod one of my Xbox's.

I already did some work, but I'll put this in another post as this is getting a bit long :-)