Project Angel Dust (PCp)

[Kyosho]

As I said in Sam's thread, I really hadn't planned on talking about this until it was finished or near-finished. But after reading that thread and enjoying talking about this stuff, I figured what the Heck. I also would like to talk a bit more about what I'm planning and get opinions without hijacking Sam's thread.

To address this right away: No, I am not ripping off Sam's ideas. People have been offhandedly talking about building something like this since this hobby began. I had been planning one of my own for a few months. I made a Newegg wishlist with most of the parts I need back in August (you can see the date here). Which was before his (her?.. that title confuses me) thread was created. That isn't to say I don't give full props to Sam for being the first. I'm learning a lot about the performance I can expect and whatnot from his (?) thread. It's quite nice actually. I'm looking forward to his (...) progress.


So yeah. Let the rambling commence.

I was expecting my check to come today but it didn't. And tomorrow I'm going to be up in Cleveland visiting my sister and going to the Omnimax (looking forward to that). So I have at least two days to finally decide on the motherboard I'm going to get. And now I'm starting to question my design. Which is one of the reasons I made this thread, to see what you guys think. Blah. Let me just tell you my primary choice:

ASRock A330ION: Mini ITX (obviously). It has a dual core Atom 330 (1.6Ghz) with onboard Nvidia ION (Geforce 9400m) video chipset. It is one of the only ION boards to support DDR3 RAM (1066 in this case). 4GB max. It's gotten great reviews. It supports overclocking. In fact, it has built-in overclocking presets in the BIOS. It basically looks at you and says "Would you like to overclock me to 2.1GHz with no hassle?" and it would be hard to refuse. Especially with that face.

Now obviously it's not going to play the latest games at full detail (or even at all, in some cases). Which, as a PC gamer, does bother me a little. But I can get over that, because, frankly, I love a lot of older games and even just playing Morrowind on a portable would be epic. What is bothering me the most, though, is that I can't upgrade it in the future. As a hardcore PC gamer, that is hard to swallow. The Atom is not swappable. Nor is the ION. Sure there's a PCI-E slot but it's useless for video cards because the Atom would basically hold back its performance. Sam's recent issues with Mass Effect 2 make me want to reconsider too. Though the fact that Dragon Age reportedly runs well is a good sign.

But still, this isn't the first time I've had these thoughts. In the Newegg screenshot I linked earlier, you can see a second wishlist called "PCp2." Let me introduce you to Plan B:

JetWay JNC64-LF: Mini ITX (duh). CPU Socket P, which is for mobile (laptop) CPUs. Geforce 9100M G. 8GB max DDR3 RAM.

What does this mean? Well, the CPU I'm thinking of getting would be a T7300 (2GHz, 4mb L2 cache) but it could in the future be upgraded to something insane like, say an Core 2 Extreme X9100. "Ah, but the onboard video is crappier!" you may be thinking. Sure is. But, perhaps without the Atom to hinder it, it may perform decently. Perhaps even on par with the ION (unlikely, but who knows). However, with a CPU like the T7300, that PCI-E slot starts to look a lot more enticing. Imagine, if you would, on the back of this portable, there being a cartridge slot. Except, not for cartridges but a PCI-E video card. For instance, the one currently in my desktop (GTS 250 1GB). Why, it would practically scream along then, wouldn't it? Sure, maybe it wouldn't play the newest game at max settings (though it likely could), it just happens to be what I have on hand. It could potentially be upgraded in the future. That's the important part.

The line of thinking goes like this: When you're charging or connected to an AC outlet in general, why not toss in that nice video card and get some better performance? I've already done the math, and there's a nice little PSU I could get that would power everything nicely. If I were to put in an extremely beefy video card, I might have issues, but there are always lower power alternatives. That GTS 250 I mentioned, is a "green edition" which I bought earlier this year simply because it was cheap. Now it seems it was fortuitous.

BUT! There are problems with this scenario. Even without the PCI-E card plugged in, it's going to need more power than the Atom-based system. Quite a bit more. The Atom one is already going to be difficult to get good batteries for. For instance, Sam is looking at getting eight (!) of those popular Li-Poly batteries everyone loves. That's expensive! I myself was considering using a camcorder battery I already have, along with a second one. All-together that would end up being 12 (!!!!) cylindrical cells. That's insane! And still might not give me good battery life. I'm not sure yet (won't be until I settle on a screen). Sure, perhaps I could make the battery pack detachable. That way you wouldn't have to hold the massive thing when you're plugged in. But still, I'm not sure what kind of battery life you'd get. And isn't that the whole point? To be "portable"?


Help me out here guys. Help me decide. I'm going to go crazy.

 

[Kyosho]

Yes I'm double-posting in my own thread. Sue me. That wall of text needed a break.

Right, so, the motherboard thing is the most pressing issue. But let's talk about screens. I've got two broken portable DVD players in the mail that should arrive tomorrow. Unfortunately I'll be out of town so hopefully they don't get stolen (bad neighborhood). I will be checking them out to see how good they are and if they're even usable. I've also toyed with the idea of using a PSOne screen. The resolution is fairly low, but, it might be fun. Plus I already have two. I've already got all the parts to build this VGA to RGB converter. Just haven't gotten around to it yet. Some people report that it looks bad. Some people say it looks good. I guess I'll find out.

Whatever screen I end up using, I'm going to get an appropriately-sized touch screen digitizer and a USB controller for it. Those're easily gotten off ebay. If the RGB converter ends up giving a terrible picture, I'll likely have to go with a screen that natively accepts VGA. Who knows, I may end up with the exact one Sam's using. It's a bit expensive though. There's this awesome cheap touch screen on ebay that doesn't have a controller board. It's supposed to accept RGB. There's a PDF data sheet with a full pinout but it's a bit beyond me. I mean, there's 6 Red inputs (and 6 blue and green)? I've contacted the maker of one of those fancy universal-type controller boards. They support tons of models but apparently not that one. I also talked to another company that makes something similar but they want $160-ish for it. Bleh.

 

[XCVG]

Go with a native VGA screen. You'll get a much better picture, higher resolution. The one without a controller board won't work. Needs digital RGB, what we consider RGB isn't the same. Also, I don't know if soft15KHz will work with ION, but you could try.

Also, better off sticking with the Atom. The second plan could potentially be more powerful, but it's going to end up big and power hungry.

 

[Kyosho]

Well, I'm probably going to regret this but I went with Plan B. Which is to say, the Socket P motherboard. The tipping point was the sale going on with that particular board (and many of Jetway's other products). With the sponsor code MBJETWAY30 it knocked $30 off the price. Which makes the cost of getting it and the CPU about the same as the Atom board with the CPU built-in. I also got this 4GB stick of DDR3. I haven't actually purchased the CPU yet (most likely will be unable to until Monday), nor the PSU, and I've already spent $180.

My two broken portable DVD players arrived. I've disassembled them and had a look at their chips. Neither of which I can find a pinout for and in fact have been puzzled over by people from BH in the past. Figuring out if/where composite-in exists will be easy enough (connecting ground to ground and then just touching the composite wire to different contacts until I get picture). But composite isn't going to help me with this particular project. I'm sure I'll still find a use for them though.

I'm planning to build the VGA circuit tomorrow. I assume it will be fairly poor in result, but we'll see. If I have to get a VGA screen (which is likely), I'll probably go with a cheap one ($50-75) and forgo the touchscreen at first. It's very easy to add a digitizer later.


Oh, by the way, I know we're not talking about the ASRock board with the ION anymore, but I actually did email them about the 15khz thing. I don't think they entirely understood what I was asking, but their response was kind of amusing (the link).

Dear Sean;
We can not confirm if works with the ASSRock model.
Since this models need to detect a monitor o display device in order to configured the correct displayed adapter.
About Warranty is void when you physical damage or modified the ASrock System.
Please check below from the address about cable converter
http://www.google.com/products?q=vga+to ... CEAQzAMwAg

ASRock America Support

I think the bit about it needing to detect a monitor was referring to the DDC line.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Ha, reminds me of the customer support email I got from Sapphire one time. Looks like both companies use native Engrish speakers for support. XD

Looking forward to your progress on this.

 

[Kyosho]

Hah yeah. But the fact that they linked me to cables that do essentially what I was asking about, after saying it wouldn't work... But then they also got component mixed up with RGB. Ah well.

By the way, I'm planning to use the Diatec M from OKW for the case. It is sitting here beside me and should be nearly the perfect size. I might need to add a little more thickness to it. I've got some plexi if it comes to that. Not sure yet. I'll know once the motherboard gets here. You can get it as a free sample, for anyone interested. Props to iamtyler for pointing it out in his PS1 thread.

 

[Kyosho]

The motherboard and RAM should be here today according to UPS tracking. I might post some pics later. Then earlier today I placed a bunch of orders. I've ordered the power supply. I went with this one. That way, it can power the PCI-E card when wall-plugged. Along with the optional P4 connector (pretty sure this motherboard needs it, if I recall). Also from them got a PSU extension cable so I can relocate it somewhere in my case. What else. The CPU off ebay. A PCI-E riser card/extension cable also off ebay.

Never did get around to putting that sync converter together. Tried. The friggin chip is so tiny I don't actually have any wires small enough to solder to it without bridging connections. Once I get it together, I'll try it with the PSOne screen and see how it does. But I'll most likely end up buying this screen. And eventually probably get this touchscreen kit to go with it.

Batteries, I'm still up in the air. If I get a second camcorder battery to go with the one I already have (which would be 12 cells, as previously mentioned), I'm not sure how to lower the voltage from 14.8 to 12v. The best 7812s on Mouser output 2A. I'd need several of them in parallel for the amps I'm expecting. That's nuts. Perhaps that PSU can handle the 14.8. It most likely can. Not sure.

 

[samjc3]

Batteries, I'm still up in the air. If I get a second camcorder battery to go with the one I already have (which would be 12 cells, as previously mentioned), I'm not sure how to lower the voltage from 14.8 to 12v. The best 7812s on Mouser output 2A. I'd need several of them in parallel for the amps I'm expecting. That's nuts. Perhaps that PSU can handle the 14.8. It most likely can. Not sure.

I have 2 pico power supplies from that site, and I know both accept 14.8v in. However, that fact is listed in the specs of both the power supplies I own, and it is not on the model you got. That could either be an oversight, or it could mean that yours does not work with 14.8v. I would just try it, but I am much more cavalier than you, I think. Email their customer service?

Also, dont skimp on batteries. I got 10Ah 14.8v Li-po's, with charger and circuit, for mine for $130. However, my chipset is the low power version of the Atom +Ion. you will need considerably more amps than me if you want to match my battery life. (~3 hours, perhaps more. I have seen conflicting power draw reports for my PC, so I cant say for sure.)

Also, dont freak that youve already spent $180. ive got well over $500 in mine, and I still need some stuff, and yours seems to be higher cost, what with the bigger batteries and such.

 

[Kyosho]

I don't know if my system is going to cost more than yours or not at this point. Probably about the same but mine will be bigger, perhaps more unwieldy, and have a crap battery life. I think I could probably get okay-ish battery life but the thing would be HEAVY. Which I want to avoid.

The motherboard and RAM did come today. It's small, but not very small.

I linked the wrong screen earlier. Same ebay merchant, different screen. I meant this one. It's LED-lit so hopefully will save a bit on power consumption. However, now that I've seen the size of this motherboard in person, and seen how it fits into my case (not so great, needs a lot of modifications as I predicted), I'm wondering if I shouldn't go for a larger screen. The screen will look rather small and dinky compared to the size of this thing if I use a 7". I've scoped out a few larger ones such as this but that thing is expensive, and is probably a bit of a power hog. Blargh. I could do an LED mod but I really do hate the look of those.

How do laptops get away with using essentially the same hardware as this but still have half-decent battery life? Are they made of much higher quality components or something?

 

[samjc3]

How do laptops get away with using essentially the same hardware as this but still have half-decent battery life? Are they made of much higher quality components or something?

There is always a '-M' at the end of the chipset for laptops. generally smaller fab size (45nm vs 65nm) and lower voltage. Slightly lower performance, and a much higher price point.

Example: Asus G73 laptop = $1700 or something. And it is considerably cheaper than equivalent laptops. An equally powerful desktop could be had for just shy of $800.

 

[XCVG]

That screen looks big and power-hungry. Do you really need all those inputs? Also, no touchscreen.

 

[Kyosho]

Which screen are you referring to? The 9-inch? It has a touch screen. The 7-inch doesn't. But it's the very cheapest 7-incher that accepts VGA I can find. The fact that it has all those inputs is very "meh."

There is always a '-M' at the end of the chipset for laptops. generally smaller fab size (45nm vs 65nm) and lower voltage. Slightly lower performance, and a much higher price point.

Yeah. I think you might've missed that part. That's why I went with the motherboard that I did. It's special. Something of a novelty motherboard. It's Socket P. It's meant for laptop CPUs. The Core 2 Duo T7300 I just ordered for it is a laptop CPU. Though it is 65nm unfortunately. But still, it's not terrible. Most powerful one I could afford that was still cheap and at least somewhat power efficient. The 4MB L2 was a main selling point as well. Anyways, my point was that, even though I'm using a laptop CPU and laptop RAM, it's still going to require more power than a comparable laptop. Heck, look at yours compared to netbooks with similar specs. They get more battery time. I don't understand why that is.


Edit: By the way, I dremeled down all the useless little bits inside the case I'm using and now the motherboard fits. Cut the rectangular hole for the ports plate as well. Still need to clean it up a bit with the sanding drum, but should look okay. Unfortunately, it seems the screen will have to be outside the case. As in, I'm going to have to build a small enclosure for it and it'll stick up. I was hoping I'd be able to make it flush with the case, but well... Hmm. I could cut out the back of the case and have the motherboard stick out the back instead. That might be better. Not sure yet.

 

[vskid3]

Why not just have it plug in to the wall for power? Will you really be using it away from an outlet?

If it makes you feel any better, my laptop's CPU is similar to the one you're getting, and the most life I can get is 2 hours. If I cranked it up to where it could actually play games, I would be lucky to get an hour.

 

[samjc3]

Heck, look at yours compared to netbooks with similar specs. They get more battery time. I don't understand why that is

Actually, based on the numbers I have seen, that isnt true. I havent tested it, but supposedly my board draws 14 watts peak. Which is rather low, even compared to a netbook.

Also, most netbooks, and laptops underclock themselves pretty seriously when on battery power. Heck, originally, my EEE downclocked to less than 50% of its base. That saves a considerable amount of power. Additionally, many use those fancy new LED backlit screens with the excellent diffuser and such. They draw like 300mah for the big screens.

 

[Kyosho]

Oh yeah! Low power modes and whatnot! I've actually never owned a laptop of my own (aside from a half-functional Thinkpad 600E). Hmm. I wonder if this thing can do that. I could probably manually set up a switch to lower the power to the backlight. But the CPU thing I assume Windows does. I wonder if it will just detect that I'm using a mobile CPU or not.


Edit: Okay. I purchased my screen. I went with this. It's big, I know. But I think it'll work okay. A bit of a power hog. But I've got some thoughts about that. Anyways, I really like the idea of a 4 screen more than a widescreen. This thing is meant for games, and not just PC games but emulators too. Pretty much all oldschool games were in 4 and all PC games still support it as well. It will take up more space on the front of the portable like I wanted, without encroaching on the controller areas. I think it'll be good.

 

[XCVG]

Nice. I love the fake HDMI on that screen. But you're using VGA anyway, right?

 

[Kyosho]

Haha, yeah I noticed that too. Apparently the VGA cable plugs into that port. They just used that connector for some reason. It means I'm going to need to do some tracing of the pins but no biggie.

 

[Kyosho]

Are you prepared for another wall of text? Of course you are.

CPU came today. Really annoyed at the way it was packaged for shipping, but it seems to be okay. Power supply still isn't here yet so I yanked the PSU and front button/led light PCB out of a computer I had laying around. My method for installing XP off of a USB flash drive didn't work so I just hooked it up to my main PC, installed it, then put it back into this. I'm posting from it now. Don't have my screen yet so right now I'm on my main monitor.

Only tried one game so far. Fallout 3. Works beautifully. Haven't gone to many places in the game (mostly just screwed around by Megaton) but it seems pretty decent. I can turn everything on max (other than shadows and water, which I haven't bothered touching yet) and it seems to run great. The only issue is that there is some slight input lag. Which is a normal thing for Bethesda games going all the way back to Morrowind. Basically, rather than getting a bad framerate you get input delay. Right now I've been testing it at my monitor's default resolution (1366x768). I'm sure if I lowered the resolution the input lag would lessen or go away entirely. There's also the "max frames rendered ahead" trick that I could try as well.

The CPU stays surprisingly cool. So cool, in fact, that it seems to turn off the fan when it isn't needed. Which had me thinking there was some sort of problem. Heh. I've been watching it with Core Temp and it turns off when it gets below 35 degrees. And I think it turns back on when it hits 40. Very weird, but pretty neat. Should help with saving some small bit of power occasionally.

One thing that IS going to be an issue is the GPU heatsink. It's just not good enough. It gets damned hot. There is just enough room between the CPU heatsink and the GPU heatsink that I think I can fit a 40mm fan standing vertically, blowing through the GPU heatsink. Either there or on the other side. The way the heatsink is designed, a fan blowing down from above just wouldn't work. Which is just as well, because it would add more height to this already huge portable.

I am really itching to do more of the case work but until I get all the parts, there's really no point. I ordered a second case sample from OKW just in case I screw it up the first time. I was surprised they would send me another. Heh. They're actually about an hour's drive from me so maybe some day I'll go visit them and say thanks.

 

[Kyosho]

Fixed the issue with the GPU heatsink. Put another CPU heatsink+fan in its place. The whole reason I had a second CPU heatsink was because the reviews on Newegg said that the motherboard didn't come with one. The picture on Newegg of the box contents didn't show one either. So I shelled out for this one, which was the only one I could find. Which makes sense because desktop motherboards that take Socket P CPUs are kind of a rarity. Anyways, the motherboard did come with one. It was missing one of its screws though. So I ended up using the Coolmaster after all.

Trying to get this other heatsink to fit on the GPU today was annoying as Heck. The screw holes almost lined up, but not perfectly. It only used two screw holes rather than four, and the one corner of this CPU heatsink ran into some components on the motherboard (capacitors, I think). So I had a Heck of a time today dremeling and getting it down to the right size to fit without touching anything but the chip. And then also getting the original heatink's plastic "screws" to fit through the CPU heatsink's holes (had to make them larger). This was necessary because the screw holes were off by about a millimeter or two and needed to go in at a very slight angle, which the metal screws just wouldn't do. And I didn't want to modify the motherboard itself. Put some fresh thermal paste on there too, because the stuff on there already looked terrible.

Anyways, here's some really terrible pictures I took with my phone's horrible camera.

The CPU heatsink is on the left, GPU on the right (reverse for the second pic). The GPU heatsink used to be the tallest thing on the board. Now, even with the addition of a fan, it sits lower than the CPU heatsink+fan.

 

[Kyosho]

Right, so, I got my screen..uh.. I forget what day it was. It's very nice. Perfect size for this thing. It does 1024x768 but it's a little blurry reading text (due to not being the native res..as expected). At 800x600 it looks really nice.

I've been doing a TON of dremeling and epoxying and sanding and all that crap. Here's the most important/difficult bits that I did earlier today:

I tried drilling/filing the holes for the controls but I screwed it up and they were terrible so I went the frankencasing route that most people do. It looks like a total mess right now (I hate JB Qwik) but it will look better in the future. As you can see my OKW case comes apart into different bits. These are the sides to the front and sides to the back. Those weird looking things are where my "shoulder" buttons will go. They're going to be on the back. I was dead set and having them at this weird angle and basically had to build the whole weird-angled plastic thing to hold them. All I had was JB Qwik so it was a nightmare. You won't be able to get an idea of where they'll be until you see the rest of the case. You can see that my D-pad is from a Playstation controller. As are the shoulder button bits. I would've killed to get my hands on some abs cement or something. Blargh. I was too impatient. Oh well. It worked out fairly well. Oh, except things aren't entirely symmetrical. Meh, nothing I can do now. I've got some spot filling to do but I'm pretty much done with that junk.


I'm still waiting on my PCI-E riser card. Also, I decided I didn't want to solder to the motherboard at all, just in case (I've had bad luck with PC motherboards dying in the past). Which meant I needed some other stuff. USB and audio headers, a right-angle VGA cord (so it won't stick out much), and some little bits and bobs from Mouser, all of which should get here this week. BUT I just found out I have to move, so that may slow things down. We'll see.