X-Box Cab

[FLAPS]

Long time since I;ve been here but anyway, last summer I put together a mame cab. It wasn't much really more like just a PC in a old arcade machine running games from Mame and some other emulators. To be honest I'm not happy with it and have been meaning to work on it since around X-Mas but with the summer back around now I've decided to put some more work into it.

The idea I have now hit me a few weeks ago when my X-Box broke, note Pepsi Max and X-box's do not mix. I have a dead X-Box which I;m considering gutting, fitting a new motherboard, harddrive and I-Pac into it and them making its own controllers. I then want to make it so it can be plugged into a TV to run if that is possible, but when I draw some designs up I will measure the monitor I have spare and see how it would look with a frame around it connecting it to the console.

However, I'm not really a IT genius, I know some stuff but not enough for something like this. So I'm wanting to try and gather some advice before I go into it, any pitfalls anyone can see with the idea, how complex it is actully going to be and any advice for the making of it.

Any comments, thoughts and ideas and I would be very thankful. Once I get it going I'll try to post pictures of my progress if I ever find out what happened to my digital camera

Thanks for reading

[Minwah]

Assuming you can fix the xbox, it should be easy.  Xbox's already plug into the TV, which you want, and you can wire some controls up to an IPAC with Xbox adaptor (or just hack some pads).

If you don't know what exactly is wrong with your xbox, it might be easier just to buy a secondhand one...

[Stobe]

And then you could just run MameX instead of fitting a new motherboard into your xbox.

-Stobe

[Silhouette]

Make sure to use a Mini ITX board for the guts, they have built-in TV-Out. And I think you can hook the XBox's DVD drive up to it like a normal DVD-ROM drive.

[FLAPS]

Make sure to use a Mini ITX board for the guts, they have built-in TV-Out. And I think you can hook the XBox's DVD drive up to it like a normal DVD-ROM drive.

Thanks for that I'll take a look. As for fixing the thing and using it as a X-Box and rom machine, the X-box is toast, not even the harddrive on it works the whole thing is pretty much fried. The reason I'm planning to do this with the case is because I have a new X-Box now anyway so I want to make something differnet with the spare case.

I've kept the fan and the power buttons with their connectors with a hope that I can sill make use of them. I did consider keeping the controller points to and hacking an X-Box controller but after a bit of thinking I want to make it a bit more personnel so I'll make my own controls to play on it.

So far all I've done is spoke to a few friends who I know are pretty good with eletronics and IT stff and I've competly gutted so if anyone wants bust X-Box parts let me know 

The next step is to work out how and the cost, although I have a rough idea how. The current plan is to do it from nothing with a new motherboard, graphics card, ram, harddrive etc. Then I need to decide on which operating system to work it off, since I don't want to use Windows on it if I can avoid it, recommendations on which Front Ends make for the best Operating system when looking for ease of use and multiple emulators would be very helpful.

I'll update with progress as I make some and I will get hold of the digital camera from the factory before I do anything too major with it.

Thanks for the reply's.