Xbox-intosh & An Atom-based Cube

Though [Will] is more of a PC guy, he needed a Mac to run the software he needed for his line of work (Final Cut). Making the best of an unfortunate situation, he constructed this hackintosh inside the case of Microsoft’s original gaming console – the Xbox. [Will] did a good job at documenting the build.

[Paul], who seems a bit more fond of Apple’s technology, still felt as though his hardware could use an overhaul. So he gutted his G4 Cube and dropped in an Intel Atom 330 based system to get his ultimate HTPC. To make controlling the 1 TB beast more fun, he hooked up a Wiimote through DarwiinRemote.

31 thoughts on “Xbox-intosh & An Atom-based Cube

  1. “This left me with the distasteful choice of either setting foot in an Apple store or spending the next couple of months laboring in my garage, with the potential for serious injury. I of course took the easy way out…”

    This man is my hero.

  2. Paul’s build was very impressive. A lot of hardware packed into such a small space. Though personally I would have put a small SSD in the Cube and streamed content from a larger server (with redundancy) elsewhere in the network. I don’t get the logic in putting all of your content on a single drive crammed into a hot and difficult to maintain device like a HTPC, but it seems like that’s what everyone is doing now.

    I’m also going to assume he went with OSX just for the fact the machine was built into a G4 case. In terms of HTPC usability, it seems like it would have been much easier to put the x86 build of XBMC on it instead of going the Hackintosh route.

    Not sure I get the idea behind Will’s build though. Seems like he could have just as easily built the thing into a regular PC case, as it doesn’t seem like there was any reason for it to be so small if it wasn’t going to be a HTPC. Also seems like a waste of an Xbox development kit, though I don’t personally know what sort of value they have on the open market.

  3. mad fab skills 10 out of 10
    disguising a computer as a gaming system 8 out of 10
    the need to do it, i can’t answer that one, i don’t know him. I doubt i would ever know the need to do that, i have plenty of spare cases i can sacrifice to the modding gods. still a good hack

  4. @Tatsh

    Seriously, stop with the Xbox original hating. Every time there’s an amazing Xbox mod like this there’s people who say it sucks “because it’s not a 360 and I thought it would be”. Give the guy some credit, he turned an Xbox into a Hackintoshed PC. Thats pretty amazing.

  5. @supershwa – Saving time, money, and a dev kit xbox is not the point here. The point is the process. This guy obviously has talent, with skillz in the shop and video production. Any monkey can install VMWare on their machine, but this guy took it to another level.

    If the man’s still looking for a job, this production just might be the edge over other lackluster candidates that gets him hired.

  6. The Xbox was pretty cool but the cube I certainly can do better.
    Even some of the G4 upgrades are faster then the Atom 330.
    But if I had a dead G4 cube and wanted to go with an atom based board for a hackintosh I certainly would not use the 945GCLF2 and instead would use the much superior ASUS AT3N7A-I.

  7. Slick work on the Xbox. My only worry is the heat management — even with the open grid on the sides, there’s not a lot of room for air circulation.

    The video was really well done, too. His taste in music sucks, but the video speaks volumes about his production skills.

  8. the guy has wicked mod skills on that xbox. that’s some awesome finished product there.

    as for the ITX mobo suggestions for the HTPC (well done as well… few bugs to work out of the touch switch though), the intel little falls 2 is almost half the price of everything else out there. I would suggest to anyone using it, to replace the stock heatsink with a custom HSF. My NES-PC (http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=126778581&blogId=512160511) uses that intel board and it works fine (after putting on the custom HSF). I would have liked to use one of the other ITX boards out there to take advantage of dual channel ram, among other things, but those boards would have added another $100-200 to the price of the build. And when you’re going for a cheap build, that’s not helpful.

  9. View from the sidelines: Credit the effort & thoughtfulness to document and share with the community woe to those who merely post negative commentary. Constructive critiques add value, rationale or coulda/shoulda/woulda of mods seems off the mark. dos centavos

  10. This is horrendous.

    1.) It’s not an xbox-intosh. It’s just a hackintosh in an xbox case. WTF.

    2.) He destroyed a dev console. Albeit an older one; Still those are hard to get a hold of.

    3.) He’s going to digi-hell.

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