Alright, here's a project that i've sunk a lot of time and effort into, it's called the Matt Makes Games Console (MMGC)! This Project is dedicated to Matt Thorson at Mattmakesgames.com who inspired me with his challenging, simplistically creative, and unique games. I really like Matt's games but unfortunately I'm not a big fan of playing games on a PC, so I took it upon myself to engineer a way to play his games on the Tube. The end result was the MMGC, a small form factor PC tucked into an old XBOX case with a Solid state Hard drive and a Scan convertor.

Here are some of the Specs and Info:

Mobo: ATX Motherboard that is a little smaller than most
RAM: 512MB SDRAM
CPU: 1.4GHz
Video: On-board VGA hooked up to a Scan Conveter
Extra USB Ports: 5 USB port PCI card
Hard Drive: 16 GB 233X Compact Flash (CF) Card with a CF to IDE (PATA) Adpater
Power Supply: an XBOX 360 Brick run it a 120W DC-DC Convertor
Operating System: Windows XP Pro
Chassis: an ancient XBOX case with a Jewel I modded [just for fun :) ]
Optical Drive: 8X Read Laptop style DVD-ROM
Keyboard: Mini 8" USB Keyboard from eBay ($12 CAD)
Mouse: Optical PS/2 Mouse

I really wanted this console to be fairly portable so that I could run it in a vehicle and my passengers could take advantage of the console by playing games on it during those long road trips or search for free WiFi with it :). All it needed was a +12V input with a current handling of around 4A, and I knew that most vehicles (including mine) have a +12V cigarette lighter socket rated for 10A so I found an easy place to get the required power. The power that comes from the vehicle (or XBOX 360 Power supply with Accessory Adapter) is wired to the 120W DC-DC Convertor that then provides all the needed PC voltages. I bought my Power supply convertor for $40 CAD on eBay.

I also wanted the console to be fairly rugged so i opted to use a Solid State type Hard Drive in it. A 16GB CF card with a speed of 233X was chosen to be the Hard drive. It was also purchased from eBay for around $70 CAD as well as the adpater to IDE which was only a couple bucks.   I would not recommend any CF card with a speed less than 233X to be used as a Hard Drive unless you like to watch paint dry!!! Take it from this guy who bought a generic 16GB CF card with an undocumented speed only to find that it took 6 hours to install WinXP and 20 minutes for every boot up!

To hook up to a TV (or Portable DVD player) I needed a Scan Converter which takes a VGA signal and converts it to RCA (composite) the one that I bought was the Ulti Mate 2000 AX. I  got mine for $40 CAD on eBay. I found that in order to be able to read text on the TV the PC resolution needed to be at 640 X 480 or 800 X 600. The only issue I ever had with mine was that the selector switch was set up for PAL when it arrived so I had to spend a couple minutes figuring out how to switch it to NTSC.

This project was the cornucopia of many projects I've been wanting to do for a while and now Version 1.0 is complete........now onto the next version, stay tuned!