[IcoNyx]

First off, this whole thing belongs in a "hardware dev" forum, but seeing as how there really ISNT any such section *ahem-MODS?* Ill post it here...

Ok, I know I havent posted in a while and there are probably some people out there wondering "what ever happened to that 'Ultimate mod' Guy?"

Well let me tell you; got divorced, lost my house, lost my kids, lost my money... all of it... had to deal with the humiliation of moveing back into the basement of 'mommies house', had to resurect my entire network from scratch-which is only running at 75% now thanks to the ex takeing some of my hardware in the divorce, and let me tell you its not easy assembleing my setup in the space I have alotted to me-I can go on, but it depresses me...

Anyway, I had promised to keep everyone up to date on my progress and so here it is:

For those unfamilliar with the project in which I speak: I am the guy that whinned about an internal hard drive in the gp2x (along with some other little gadgets), I was told I should do it myself... so I am.

on the hardware side, I have space to work on this little jem, but for the sake of some of the mods I wish to build, and due to the condition of my localle (IE: a musty and dust riddled basement), some additional hardware not normally used will be needed; a micro clean room.

I need to create a chamber I can work on this in, this will allow me to eliminate as much dust and debris from the work environment as possible. particularly with the screen modifications. is there anyone with ANY expertise/ideas for how I can do this? I had originally thought to use an old discarded neonatel unit from the local hospital untill I found out they crush them and when I approached the admin for the possibility of buying one PRE-crushed they refused, but offered to give me a contact name to buy one ($4000 US)... rude.

basically I can do this with simple angle brackets, plexiglass (AKA cheep clear sheets of plastic) or acryllic, and a hell of a lot of caulk. the problem area is how to get the hardware into and out of the chamber w/o getting dust in too... Ideas?

for those that only read books with pictures ( ) the final device will look something like this:
http://dailydffr.dyn...c/gp2xredis.PNG

Note the "old busted" on the left and the "new hotness" on the right. (forgive the gratuitous MIB2 referance)

Ultimately the final "contraption" will NOT be as thick as shown, reason: I planned for an extra 2 milimeters arround every component and circuit board addition, this space will ultimately be unnecessary and removed bit by bit, the overall thickness added in the image is about 8 mm greater than the original. That will probably be shaved down to 4 or 3mm in the end as I will ALSO be removeing some superflous components from the motherboard (the entire battery subsystem will be partially obsolete as the NEW battery system will be basically 2 PAIRS of AA batteries in paralell as apposed to the original single tandem set. running AA batteries in paralell hoops the amperage up to between 4800mAh and 5000mAh maintaining the 3v power. MORE than enough to power everything in the kit for a sufficient period of time (though I cant test it, I suspect I can easily squeze 4 hours out of this configuration.) and for those electricians out there, as far as I can tell this baby does not complain at all at haveing all that extra power at its disposal (yes I have built this particular part of the mod and it APPEARS to work fine (though suggestions for preventative measures would be appreciated)

Next: I will ahve to sacrifice the ext. port, the USB functionality is stolen from the ext port. I suspect this may cause adverse affect if a bob is used, untill I can test this further, I just wont use it.

for the plastics, I am going to do a vacuume forming method similar to what this guy used:
http://retroactive.be/l64/

BTW: It is HELA tempting to use his PS1 LCD delie and combine that into my mod makeing a Supra-Sweet little media player, but I have this feeling that it would inhibit gameing if not Bulkify the beast WAY too much.


a final checklist of what is going into the mod:

60GB HDD <3
additional/moved battery bays
4cell battery charger (so I can charge my batteries w/o takeing them out! ) <3
ZIF to USB HDD carrier component
Dpad mod <3 (face it, the "stick" sucks, plain and simple)
itrip fm audio broadcast device
2 port usb hub w/ 2 external type B ports (use your imagination )

so now, all there is to do is wait, I have everything I need except for the "micro clean room" and the actual hard drive.

suggestions on that clean room?

This post has been edited by IcoNyx: 08 July 2007 - 07:19 PM

[Aki]

Whoa, some story.
Welcome back and wish you all luck with this project.

[StarG]

Good luck IcoNyx !

What would interest me how do you plan to fit such an drive into the gp2x - do you want to create a custom backside for it ?

[IcoNyx]

Good luck IcoNyx !

What would interest me how do you plan to fit such an drive into the gp2x - do you want to create a custom backside for it ?

kinda... I plan to completely redesign the plastics... about the only thing in the plastics that will be the same is the UPPER front plastics will serve as the BASE dimensions. Iam goung to slather the face with mineral oil and soak it overnight, then set it into a plaster mold and case it, the changes will be in retooling the "stick" section into a proper Dpad, and for those asking; yes, I will include the screw mounts. the face is not changeing... much.

the back plastics will be completely retooled... look at the image I left in my post to get a better picture of what it will look like:
http://dailydffr.dyn...c/gp2xredis.PNG

(EDIT): Oh! and also, the HDD Ill be useing is friken TINY. it is a 1.8" HDD... smaller than a laptop HDD, much like those used in iPods and creative Zens

This post has been edited by IcoNyx: 08 July 2007 - 07:28 PM

[Nova]

Sorry to hear about your relationship stuff.

Anyhow, cleanse yourself of that shite now, it's all in the past, eh?


I wish you very good luck with your project, it's gonna be one helluva mod!

[gp2x.info]

Getting divorced sucks big-time. Starting a pet-project could get your mind of things...

I am very curious how it turns out, are you planning to photo-blog the process?

This post has been edited by gp2x.info: 09 July 2007 - 07:25 AM

[IcoNyx]

are you planning to photo-blog the process?

I am.

I have been meaning to revamp my personal website, I already have a gallery section (curtesey phpblogger) so I think Ill host the images in my gallery and link them to a phpjornal (again, cortesey phpblogger)...

but in the mean time, Im trying to scrape up enough money for 2 things now; the actual Hard Drive, and now also a decent digital camera.

fortunately, per the devorce decree, I get half the sale price of the house... hopefully after paying my lawyers and other bills I SHOULD walk away with about 6 grand... plenty for this project... I hope.

any sucker-Imean-intelegent buyers interested in buying a house in the Twin Falls, Idaho, area?

EDIT: for anyone interested, my site is: http://dailydffr.dyndns.org there is not any gp2x content on it yet and will likely be completely rebuilt from the ground up, but for now, thats my page...

This post has been edited by IcoNyx: 09 July 2007 - 06:01 PM

[RockOut]

From personal experience, I recommend going with Joomla just for the sake of simplicity. I am in the process of redoing my site with it.

[IcoNyx]

So much depending on so many other things... I really hate how little time I have to devote to this... I'm so stressed out and haveing this little gadget would be a truely bright spot in my life...

I have some updates:

My website is down, I know. I rebuilt my server a couple of weeks ago then was forced to walk away... long story short, I have decided to go with phpnuke for my site (it allows the most options for the least headache)

My "clean room" I decided to just dump the whole idea, Ill just work on this at a friends house, he has a decent camera and has offered to loan me his workspace... its not as nice as my workbench back home but then...

My house failed to sell the first time... the potential buyers had a sudden case of cold feet when someone yelled,'la Migra!' I dont mind imagrants, I just dont like people adding to the population withought CONTRIBUTING!!! if ya gonna be here, BE LEGAL! I have a new buyer, they want me to go down almost 15 grand under my asking price... I had to take it... which means no 7 terabyte array for atlas... *sigh but I STILL will have enough for the base hardware for this project...

the money I will walk away with from the house sale will be scant to say the least, I know I'll have enough to get the needed hard drive, and storage controller, but NOT for the plastics I had planned to make... Ill have to go back to plan B: firerglass. I really dont like this idea, but I have no other ideas.

I'm still thinking I like the battey "banking" idea though I think with the amperage change I may be able to get away with tripple As instead of double As... (to save space) though I am not sure I am comfortable with the battery chargeing idea... not sure how much heat it'll generate. im not worried about my hands getting hot, but I AM worried that the heat of the charger would burn up the procs, especially if overclocked... I dunno.

[sephiroth111]

offhand, you could think about making the batteries as a separate removable entity (a la laptop) with the charger removed from the system (a la ancient camcorder batteries) that way you could slap another power card (or power brick if AAs, if you will) on if one goes dead in the middle of a game or movie. the extra cash overhead of such would be an issue though (extra plastics and what not).

The ICs probably wont take any extreme environments (as it really isn't designed to be a outdoorsy system), but you could always put a thicker layer of non-conductive heat resistant material around it (like the psp or nds) though li-ion batteries dont get nearly as hot as NiCd or NiMh batteries when charged. hence why i say semi-removable power.

if i had to guess an absolute fail temp, it'd probably be 100deg C. but higher temps == lower clockspeeds... and i don't know how hot the internals would get with a 266mhz overclock running for an hour or so.

somehow i feel that we are almost exceeding the abilities of this system. This seems seriously awesome to me.