michael_0u812's PS3 Laptop Worklog!

[michael_0u812]

Hey everyone,

I've started a PS3 laptop worklog over at BenHeck and was given a tip to start one here so I'll bring you up to speed.

I have a non-updated 60gb PS3 (linux and emulators!) and I want to make a laptop out of it. It's my first laptop project but I have years of experience with modding/building/breaking electronics so I'm really excited for this one. I'm keeping the card readers in it and it has a keyboard and touchpad mouse wired up. I'm trying to make this as fully functional as a real laptop.

The first thing I did was separate the PSU from the PS3. It will be like a power brick on a normal laptop. The reason being is because I couldn't figure out where to put it as I wanted the laptop to be thin and as close to the dimensions of the monitor as possible. Also I measured the temperature of the PSU with a probe and it got up to a scorching 60 degrees celsius. I'm going to have a hard enough time just keeping the PS3 cool! I stole an ATX connector from an old computer and hooked it up. I will also be grafting the monitor's PSU under the PS3's PSU.

Now onto the monitor:
Since this is an LED monitor, it has a nice long ribbon cable that goes to the backlight. I figured I would place the backlight board and the driver board on top of the blu-ray drive and extend the driver board's wires. So now the monitor portion will be VERY thin, hopefully less than half an inch.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Welcome to the forums, michael_0u812! It's always great to have some new blood around here, especially promising modders!

This looks like it'll be a sweet laptop once it's completed, and it already looks like you're making some great progress so far. Do you have a goal for final dimensions? Weight?

Also, just out of curiosity, what resolution is the monitor?

 

[michael_0u812]

Haha thank you!

My goal is to make it the same x and y dimensions as the monitor, so about 18"x10.5". I will try to make the height under 3", I think I can do 2.75". I haven't thought about weight, there's really nothing I can do about it, the PS3 is HEAVY!

The monitor is a BenQ G922HDL. It has that silly 1366x768 resolution.

 

[βeta]

That's really thin. It's about time someone did this, there's no reason for all these inch thick screens.

 

[ToastBucket]

I like the touchpad. Amazing work so far!

 

[βeta]

woahwoah is that a FAT ps3?

 

[michael_0u812]

Haha yeah it is! I wanted my laptop to actually have features, the slim doesn't have any.

 

[βeta]

What are you doing for cooling? Have you considered trying a couple of these?
http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-Iceberq-Pr ... 223&sr=8-2

 

[michael_0u812]

I actually bought two of those! I wired them up and it took a mere 2 minutes for it to overheat. They can't keep up to the heat at all. It would have made it a lot slimmer. I'm going to have to stick with the wind turbine for now. I might put one of them in the PSU though, just to keep it cool.

 

[βeta]

THERE HAS TO BE A WAY! But I can't think of one.
More of those? And heat piping?

 

[Antome]

loogs like you are and going to put a lot of work into this!
Great work so far

 

[PalmerTech]

Have you looked into sealed liquid cooling solutions? I can link you up in a day or so when I can get to my bookmarks. Basically, they are fully sealed, no need to mess with reservoirs, pump ia built in. They let you put a small heat block on the actual chips, then pip the heat away to a nice big heatsink that you can put anywhere! Might really help with thickness.

Oh, and good to have you here! This is looking pretty promising already! What kind of touchpad is that, USB compatible I assume?

 

[Basement_Modder]

It's likely off the keyboard.

 

[michael_0u812]

I bought a USB keyboard/touchpad from:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... &CatId=533

hmm I'm not too sure about liquid cooling. I'm sure it would work great but I'm trying to build this for really cheap.

 

[J.D]

was given a tip to start one here

Anyway, I can't wait to see this done. That screen has the same resolution as my laptop's screen too.

 

[βeta]

Liquid cooling seems like it would be a pain to work with, especially in small spaces. I think it would be better to have heat piping with like 4 or 5 iceberqs pulling heat from the chips.

 

[Mako321]

Or you know, just use some big copper heatsinks with piping and flax.

 

[michael_0u812]

Those Iceberqs are really loud. I think having two is already too loud. Four would be terrible!

 

[michael_0u812]

I've done some work placing more parts. I grafted the monitor's PSU to the PS3's. There is a huge mess of wires that I need to shorten, I needed to make sure everything still worked. I'm not too sure what I should do with the DVI to HDMI adapter. Hand wiring the cable seems daunting, but then again so is building a laptop out of a PS3. I also built an audio amp. I'm going to use the speakers from a PS1 screen (I'm part way through building a NESp).
Here is an updated shot of everything:

A view of the side showing the thinness of the screen:

 

[zeturi]

Nice man. What audio amp did you build?