This was clearly the most complex mod I did. I wanted to have the IR dongle always connected, but I hated that stupid dongle and how I had to remove it to ever use that 4th port. I saw this on the www.xbox-scene.com tutorials site, and tried it for myself.

Here's the dongle I got. I should apologize now, I didn't think to use the macro function on my camera so all these pictures are crappy.

I opened it up, you can see the IR receiver.

This IR screen will come in handy later, so I kept it.

A close up of the board, witht he receiver up front.

To access the connector ports, you have to bend up the IR port.

I desoldered the connections, 5 of them for the USB port, and ripped the connector off, so I could remove all of the plastic.

I have these plug ports, I took one and placed a 5 pin/5 wire connection on it for later use. You'll see why.

The back of the board has the holes there for the connector, which I wired to the female pin port.

I took 1 inch pieces of wire and stuck them in the port holes.

I used some hot melt to make a plastic plug as a male connector to these pins.

After a little shaping and soldering, the male port is well formed.

More hot glue to protect the connections.

Using the old connector port, I made this removable controller connection. Now, if I ever get a new case or whatever, I can use the DVD dongle outside of the case should I desire.

All Together

Once Again, with the glue protection showing.

See, it removes.

I can even use the plastic case again.

See?

This is to show the connection for the green LED which indicates when this port is receiving the 12 volts.

To make this dongle automatically switch back to the 4th controller port when a controller is plugged in, we use this 12V 4 connection trip relay so that if 12V are detected on the 4th port the connection is switched. You also see the plastic hard drive chassy, which is the only good spot to put the relay.

I dremeled the plastic out.

Fits nicely.

We need to connect to the ground of the 4th controller port eventually, but we dont' want to ground that out to the whole case, so we insulate the 4th port with electrical tape.

Soldering a ground wire to the controller port.

Soldering 12V from the power supply.

I tapped into each of the controller port wires for port 4.

All of those wires get connected to the side of the case to keep them out of the way.

Labeling and connecting everythign to the relay.

I found these pins to make another male connector this time without the janky paper clip wires, so I did.

Marked the hole for the IR port.

Dremeled it out.

And it's a perfect fit!

With everything, including the LED in.

It's glued to the inside of the plastic.

I had to do some nasty massive case wrecking, but it worked in the end.

The connected relay.

The port off, with the controller indication on and the IR LED off.

And when the port is empty, the IR dongle is on, shown by the LED! There is only one problem, some 3rd party controllers don't draw enoguh current to trip the relay, but all the original Xbox controllers trip it, so I need to remember what I'm connecting where. I don't recommend doing this mod unless you really know what you're doing, it took a ton of time and effort, but it turned out cool!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2004 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Projects.