Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - Disassembly UPDATE 2/23/13 pg.3

[Kyosho]

Had difficulty coming up with a name that describes this thing...


8 inch touchscreen LCD

Integrated Xbox 360 controller with Playstation D-pad, and face buttons for shoulder buttons (triggers are now buttons)

The case is made from two OKW enclosures glued back to back, heavily modified of course. You can see where I screwed up the paint job. Maybe some day I'll fix it.

Mini ITX Socket P motherboard - for laptop CPUs
Intel T7300 Core 2 Duo 2GHz 4mb L2 cache
4GB of DDR3
Geforce 9100m 512mb shared
500GB hard drive

Half-built-in wifi - USB dongle inside, motherboard has mini PCI-Express slot but haven't gotten a card for it yet. Not that I have to. It's under the righthand control panel and I can take it out very easily. Motherboard also has HDMI out, so this thing will occasionally run double-duty as an HTPC in my house.

No internal batteries. I know. I know. Believe me I know. It's kills me, but it's just too heavy. I designed it with batteries in mind. I have the power switch for it, the charging jack, the battery life indicator - ALL integrated already. But I decided against putting the batteries in. Right now, it's already heavy. If I were to add the batteries, it'd be unplayably heavy. I'm going to have to make them into an external pack. As much as it saddens me.

I wanted a motherboard that was very upgradeable, which this one is. I can put a much better CPU in there in the future and maybe bump it up to 8GB if I get Windows 7. I also wanted a motherboard that had a PCI-Express slot. The idea was, when you're at home, you plug in your awesome desktop card and you've got a really decent gaming PC that can run just about anything. I have the riser card and "cartridge slot" cover, but not bothering putting them in until I can afford a better power brick that can handle the amperage.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

(Potentially) handheld Team Fortress 2?

awwwwww yeeeaaaaaaah

Sexy.

 

[CamaroCam]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

That's sweet. And I love how you have it running XP. Vista and 7 can suck it XD

 

[ShockSlayer]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

Love it a ton. This is the one time that an external battery pack is totally acceptable.

I would've shown it playing half life and then browsing the forums.

That's badass though.

Also, everyone loves samjc3.

SS

 

[J.D]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

The ABXY buttons look like they're 1 1/2" inches away from the right analog stick, but still very awesome.

 

[samjc3]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

Congratulations on getting there first! I am saddened by the lack of batteries, but you finished, and thats more than I can say.

Looks like you get excellent performance on that 9100m too. I'll watch the video after school and give a full impression. (youtube is blocked and Im too lazy to circumvent the block with 5 minutes left in class)

 

[HotChick777]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

That looks so sick!

 

[samjc3]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

I like it. Its big, blocky, blue, and has a surprising amount of sex appeal. Also seems to get excellent performance. (presumably due to a Pcie bus that isnt limited at 1x) Personally I dont care for your Xpadder setup, but thats just my preference. I run one set xpadder layout and map my games to it, so I dont have to switch around when changing games. Also, its actually not as huge as it seemed like it was. Maybe its the fact that its running, but it seems very reasonable in size. Overall, great job! Glad I could motivate you!

By the way, if you want batteries that would be epic for it, I have that set of 10Ah ones.

 

[Kyosho]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

Personally I dont care for your Xpadder setup, but thats just my preference. I run one set xpadder layout and map my games to it, so I dont have to switch around when changing games.

Originally I had thought that I would need every available button for most games, which would mean having a button bound permanently to Alt-Tab or Ctrl-Alt-Delete not doable. But I've actually found that most games really don't need all those buttons. Now that I've realized that, your method does make much more sense.

By the way, if you want batteries that would be epic for it, I have that set of 10Ah ones.

I am so tapped out as far as cash goes, there's no way I could do that. I went back and looked at your thread and those do seem like awesome batteries. But they won't fit inside this thing. Not the way I've got everything set up. It's set up with lots of little gaps for individual cylindrical cells. There's no room for long flat ones. Still, they would make for a much simpler and smaller (and lighter) external pack. But yeah, no moneys.


Edit: By the way, I've tried installing Android x86 on this thing. I thought it'd make for nicer touch-based browsing. And also have a lot more games that take advantage of the touch screen. However, it doesn't play nice with my touchscreen. At least, not when installed virtually through windows. I may try actually installing it to a separate partition but I don't know how I'd be able to choose which OS to boot into without a keyboard.

 

[nterror]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

That's really a beautiful device.
Everything just looks great, and honestly, the battery issue is easily overseen.

 

[samjc3]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

Personally I dont care for your Xpadder setup, but thats just my preference. I run one set xpadder layout and map my games to it, so I dont have to switch around when changing games.

Originally I had thought that I would need every available button for most games, which would mean having a button bound permanently to Alt-Tab or Ctrl-Alt-Delete not doable. But I've actually found that most games really don't need all those buttons. Now that I've realized that, your method does make much more sense.
You can have like 8 sets of controls mapped using modifiers. On mine, for example, I have the start button as escape, and the back button as "switch to control scheme 2" so that when I hold back I can have Ctrl+alt+del, alt+f4, alt+tab, copy paste, volume control and other utilitarian stuff mapped to the controls. Then when I release back, all my normal controls are back. Its very elegant, and I highly recommend it.

By the way, if you want batteries that would be epic for it, I have that set of 10Ah ones.

I am so tapped out as far as cash goes, there's no way I could do that. I went back and looked at your thread and those do seem like awesome batteries. But they won't fit inside this thing. Not the way I've got everything set up. It's set up with lots of little gaps for individual cylindrical cells. There's no room for long flat ones. Still, they would make for a much simpler and smaller (and lighter) external pack. But yeah, no moneys.

I figured it would make a nice pack. If you decide you want em, let me know. I'll give you a great price.

Edit: By the way, I've tried installing Android x86 on this thing. I thought it'd make for nicer touch-based browsing. And also have a lot more games that take advantage of the touch screen. However, it doesn't play nice with my touchscreen. At least, not when installed virtually through windows. I may try actually installing it to a separate partition but I don't know how I'd be able to choose which OS to boot into without a keyboard.

Hmm thats a good question. Only thing I can think of that would allow multi OS without a keyboard would be virtualbox or another emulated environment. And for touch based browsing, you could install fennec (firefox mobile) for developers. Theres a build for windows:
Download Link

 

[vskid3]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

Someone has finally done what we've all wanted to do.
Any pics of the inside? The only one I found in your worklog was of the controller wired in.

 

[Kyosho]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

Don't have any of the internals. I could take some though. I don't want to take the front panel off because it's a Sega to put back on, with all the wires. But I can remove the back one easily enough.

Sam, trying fennec as I type this. Definitely interesting. No multitouch though. Could be the touchscreen isn't capable. It's a bit odd, but I might keep playing with it. Thanks. Oh, and virtualbox is how I was trying android virtually.

 

[samjc3]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

I doubt your screen supports multi-touch (its resistive). Even if it does, it probably wouldnt work natively under windows.

Also, golly, that does make sense, using VB to do a virtual install and all. Silly me.

 

[Kyosho]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

It seems multitouch is at least partially functional. Within fennec, when I put down a second finger and move it, the cursor acts as if it is attached to the other place I'm touching with a rubber band. Perhaps multitouch just isn't turned on fully in the windows version. No option in the settings but there could be a config file. I'll look around.

 

[samjc3]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

Thats just the resistive touch. It sense the two points and extrapolates a point between them where it sees the best point. At least Im pretty sure thats whats happening.

 

[Kyosho]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

Ah nuts, you're right. Does it outside fennec. Ah well.

 

[mymixed]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

Nice! Looks awesome. I like the back buttons a lot, actually. Really cool how you did that.

- mymixed

 

[kylechu]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

A well executed cool idea that exudes awesomeness.

Awesome.

 

[Popsickle1324]

Re: Portable Gaming PC (PGPC) - pics & video

tht is sooooooo awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! make me one!!!!!!!!!!!!