The next thing I did was to start modding my case. I chose an old compaq case and it worked well. I needed to . create a place for the controllers to plug in on the front panel. To do this I glued drive bay blanks in place and used a Dremel to cut my holes and a drill to make holes for the power on and eject buttons. I used Wonder putty and bondo to fill in gaps and imperfections in the modded front panel.
With my front panel and case modded it was time to turn my attention to mounting components. I used motherboard mounting pegs for the psu board and the MOBO, I found it neccesary to drill new holes so the MOBO would mount. The DVD drive has plastic ears on it that prevent it from fitting into a drive bay, cut them off. I mounted the hard drive and the DVD in a drive bay. I had to extend the wires on the; controller ports, the power and eject buttons, the dvd cable and the power supply. I unsoldered the power input from the power supply board and added about 8" of #14 wire so I could mount the PS board behind the drive bay cage and mount the power in to the back of the case.
In soldering the smaller wires I found that ethernet cable worked great (if I did it again I would use IDE cable instead for a cleaner look).When it came to mounting the controller ports I went quick and dirty and used wonder putty and JB Weld, it provides a sturdy mount.
With my wires cleanly routed and all systems go it was time to assemble the case. Once the case was assembled I chose to replace the XBOX face plate on the DVD drive with a standard face plate. The drive is proprietary so superglue to the rescue..
O.K. it's time to fire it up. If all went well with all of that soldering, your game should fire right up. If it does not and you get a message like "Service must be called" don't panic. Double check all of your connections, it is likely that the ide cable in the back of the hard drive or dvd is loose.Enjoy your cool new XBOX.
Thanks for checking my blog and please check back I plan to post other projects soon.
