"What'd you say? Mustard Cheese?"

Well so almost two weeks ago now I started my blog up again and posted a short post on it and then from then until now I have been meaning to write another but every time I think that I'm going to have time to write I never do and so I push it back and back further and further.  Now I have a few hours before work and my homework work load isn't too bad and so I thought it would be a good time to update everyone as to what's going on with life right now.

 Well so one big thing is that last week my parents came out west for a bit with my little sister to look at some colleges and to visit my sister Diana and I out here.  It was awesome being able to see my family again.  After not seeing them for two years and having limited communications with them for so long it's kind of weird that now I can call them up anytime and can see them more often.  But while here we went shopping for a car and between the dealer from Canada, by the way he was from Canada.  Did I mention he was from Canada? and the Mexican guy, one who drove a Mercedes SLK 2 door coupe from selling used cars.......  and one who had no idea if his cars had ever been in an accident before...  But it runs well... nice car.... nice car... So it wasn't looking to promising.

But thanks to my awesome Sister Diana for suggesting that we look at some cars over in Wyoming near where they live we found one that fit the bill.  I ended up getting a 2006 Nissan Sentra SE that has about 76,000 miles on it.  It was a done deal.  It runs really well and even came with the Nissan upgraded sound with a 10" sub.  Now it's nothing like my KICKER I had in my old Suzuki but it produces nice base.

School has been going really great.  I'm coming more and more the realization as to why it was that I was supposed to come here to Brigham Young University Idaho as I have had many experiences and met a lot of people (mostly my roommates) that have really influenced me.  Got to thank my good friend Craig for his help too.  When I got back up here I started wondering if Computer Engineering was really what I wanted to do.  I loved messing around with electronics and stuff but I don't know if I would really enjoy designing computer chips or other hardware because honestly without the code behind it they don't really do much of anything.  So I was considering changing my major to Computer Science but then Craig was telling me about the CIT (Computer Information Technology) degree and some of what it entails and it just sounded right.  I did a little more research and went to talk to a few more people about the differences and for more details on the CIT degree and decided that it was time to switch.  So I switched my major.  The CIT major is much like Computer Science but not only do you get programming but you also are instructed on Networking, security, Database managing, etc...  It's more of a "How do I use technology to solve real business problems" type of thing.

In my free time I have been kind of toying around with a new project but it has more to do with software rather than modification of hardware.  After a conversation with my dad about the way people interact with technology, especially through voice it got me thinking about those lame voice command things everyone has on their phones and how they suck since you can only say one word commands, not full sentences, and most of the time it doesn't even really recognize what you are saying.  After a little looking into it I found out that both Google and Microsoft have a speech to text application that they utilize on some of the smart phones with the Bing app and on Android phones.  They record your voice and send it to Microsoft or Google respectively and then process your voice and convert it into text and send it back to your phone.  It's really quite amazing.  I don't think that I have ever had either of them get a single word I have said wrong.  They can recognize context and so they know the difference between "right" and "write" and depending on what your sentence is and what your trying to say will convert it accordingly.  Well this got me thinking that if they already have the speech to text down then analyzing the resultant text wouldn't be too extremely difficult.  So I took it upon myself to try this out just as a proof of concept and to give me a chance to practice what I'm learning in class on something that will be fun and practical in the end. I have started working on it but
considering it took me 2 weeks to even get a blog post out I bet you can guess how long it will take for me to put a dent in this.  After an hour or two I got the program to take a sentence in from the user and split it up into it's individual words so that the program can analyze each individual word.  Fun Fun.

First post in a long time.

Well I was going through some of the old stuff that I had lying around on the internet which I had created before and I came across my blog from before my mission called modsbywerd.  It kind of sparked a new interest in me to want to keep up on a new blog.  The problem was that my old blog had content on it that I had linked to some really high traffic websites just because of the nature of my posts about electronics.  So I had a bunch of followers on there that I didn't know and therefore didn't really want seeing things about my personal life that I posted on my blog.  So I decided to delete my old blog and make a new one but still contain all my old posts to let people know what it was that I have done and am doing with my life. Thus commenced the creation of this blog and it's further posts.  Hopefully this way I can keep some of my family and friends better informed about how I'm doing and what I'm doing since facebook is lame besides chatting with the occasional person here and there.

Wow its been a long time since I have posted anything up here. I have been busy at college and just got home a little over a month ago for a while and I have been itching to do a mod so here we are.

A few weeks ago I Soft Modded a friends Xbox for him and installed a 250GB hard drive and put on XBMC for him and in return he gave me his older Xbox which was a failed attempt to Hard Mod an Xbox. So I took it and a week later this is what I had.

It has an Xecuter 3 Mod chip in it. I flashed the Mod Chips Bios with Xecuter X3 and the back up Bios (pressing both eject and power at the same time) is FlashBios which gives you the ability to reflash your bios if you screw it up.

The Xbox Hard Drive has been upgraded to a 120GB hard Drive and is running XBMC. A great feature is that if you hold the power button the Xbox will boot up on the original Bios with the Mod Chip off and it will boot to the original Xbox Dash allowing you to play Xbox Live.

The case underwent weight loss and with the removal of the DVD Drive is an Xbox Slim. Gap where the DVD Drive would have been has been removed and now is approx. 1/2" thinner than the original case. The DVD drive can still be plugged in to rip your media to the Xbox as well as when you want to play Xbox Live enabled games because on the original Bios the Xbox won't boot up properly without it connected.

I have also added windows all around the Case. The other pictures show alternate views of what the windows look like from different angles but here you can see the Hard Drive as well as the IDE plug for the HD as well as the DVD Drive. The mod chip is sitting underneath the HD. As seen in the other pictures the XBOX jewel on the top of the case has been cleared as well allowing one to see into the Xbox.

The decals and the Mod Chip were both installed prior to my obtaining of the Xbox.

Back up and Running!

Well i got all of the pictures back up! Hopefully this time everything works out and there won't be anymore blank pictures. Anyways I got more pictures to put up so here they are. It's the Dream Tablet running Power Stone.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

Fixing Pictures

Hey sorry everyone for the down pictures! Seems as if I have more viewers of my blog than I thought. My whole bandwidth was used in a day... So I am changing Image hosting websites and doing some things to help keep the bandwidth usage down. The pictures should be up soon!

DONE!

Got the Tablet done and I decided to name it the Dream Tablet. It is powered by a 14.8v 6600 mah battery which is nice and big and should get a pretty decent play time off of it. Also you can play and charge at the same time so it makes things nice. Here are the final pictures.

From Dreamcast Laptop

Inside

From Dreamcast Laptop

GD-Drive

From Dreamcast Laptop

Circuit that controls GD-Drive

From Dreamcast Laptop

Audio amplifier

From Dreamcast Laptop

Screen controller board with Sega Dreamcast underneath it

From Dreamcast Laptop

Pico Psu

From Dreamcast Laptop

Battery

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

Next to an Xbox 360 for comparison.

Case

I had a few ideas on how I wanted to make the case. Originally I wanted to vacuum form it and make a wood mold with rounded edges to make it look nice. But I didn't do that. I went to home depot again and bought a sheet of acrylic. This method worked well for me. I got some more of the Insta-set but this time I got Maxi-cure. It had a slightly longer cure time then the stuff I used on my portable and it was a little cheaper. But I must say that I do not like it as much as the stuff I used on my portable.

The dimensions for my case are 13.5" x 11" x 2". Not bad I thought for having the GD drive and the screen resting on top of that! I cut out the pieces with a 10 inch table saw this time with a 200 tooth blade. It worked very well and I got very straight clean cuts.

From Dreamcast Laptop

I glued all the pieces together and got the bottom part of the case assembled. To make sure that my pieces were perpendicular to each other I took a piece of wood and used it to hold my pieces against.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

After the case was assembled it was time to make the holes all of the ports, GD drive and the volume knob. I used my dremel with a cutting disc to cut out the GD drive hole and then used a file to make sure I had nice straight lines.

From Dreamcast Laptop

The power switch, and AV/monitor switch I used my dremel and then used a small file to ensure straightness. For the volume I used the hole saw again. The rest of the ports I used a drill. As well as for the speaker holes and I used perf board as a templet as many others do.

After everything was set i began to paint. It is now black instead of clear.

From Dreamcast Laptop

Screen

So rather than going with the LED mod as I don't think it would saved me much power I decided to stick with the original back light in the screen. I used the Dell E153FP 15" LCD monitor. I opened it up and removed the original power/inverter board (they were all on one) and got the Controller board running on the Pico PSU. Here are two pictures of the controller board, the top and the bottom where power must be connected.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

In order to get the controller board working you must connect 3.3 volts to the two pins that the red wire is connected to in the picture. And then ground is the black wire. The other pins I believe are for sending information back to the inverter and such.

The inverter that I am using is one taken from a ccfl light kit for PC lighting. It runs on 12volts and produces enough light with the original ccfl tubes to make for a very bright screen.

For the top part of the case I decided to use the front of the case from the monitor since the cut out for the screen was already exactly the right size. I just had to cut off some tabs on it to get it to fit onto my case. I didn't like the finish on it though because after I painted it, since the finish was different then the acrylic I was using I would most likely end up with two different results. So I put a wire brush attachment onto my dremel and commenced to remove the finish. I then used a sponge sander, used for drywalling, to bring it to a smooth finish. Painting turned out well. I also painted the buttons for use with it. They are a little off white as to contrast against the black case. They turned out well. Here are some pictures of the result with the case glued to the screen.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

To mount the screen to the rest of the cast I glued 8 90 degree metal braces to the back of the screen. I glued a nut to the inside of the brace so that the front can be screwed onto the rest of the case from the sides. I also did this to make the screen removable for debugging after everything was assembled.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

There are 8 metal braces in total.

Sound

For sound I used a kit that was suggested to another member of the Benheck forum community. I figured that it would suit my needs and so I went ahead and got it. It is a stereo 1W amplifying circuit. I put it together and everything works great. I'm using 2 4ohm speakers from a Dell sound bar. I'm pretty sure that thing was never meant to be opened. It had 6 or 7 screws in it but even after removing them all, examining it for several hours, and prying on cracks I couldn't get it open. I finally took out my dremel with a cutting disc and started cutting it up. The amplifying IC can run off a wide range of voltage so I decided that since I was using 2 4 ohm speakers rather than the recommended 8 ohm that i would use 5 volts. It works great.

Here are some pictures of the set up with the head pone jack attached as well. When head phones are plugged in sound through the speakers is turned off. The headphone jack works great.

From Dreamcast Laptop

I didn't want to just use the metal post from the potentiometer for volume control cause it wouldn't match the style of the tablet. I also didn't want to salvage a knob from something else because they didn't match what I wanted either. I wanted something that had a larger diameter and wasn't very thick. The only possession of mine that I could find that had a knob I could use was in active use. So I settled on making my own knob. I used a hole saw and cut out 3 pieces of acrylic that were the same size, and then one more of the next size up so that it would have a backing. I glued them all together, put a notch in it with my dremel and painted it. It turned out really well. Here are the final results.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

(ignore the dust on it, it was stuff that settled on it after painting was complete)

GD-Drive slimming

After I got the GD-Rom onto the tray I decided that it was too tall for my liking. I cut out more from the tray and flattened the remaining plastic on the GD-Rom. I did ave a little bit of a problem because now that the GD-Rom sat so low it would hit across the bottom of the tray. Just flattened the bottom out a little bit and all was well. Here are my results.

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

From Dreamcast Laptop

(GD-Rom disc does no come above sides of the tray)

As you can see in the pictures I put all of the components for the circuit onto a perf board.