Modern handheld game consoles are impressive feats of engineering, featuring full fledged computers in near pocket-sized packages. So what happens if you take an original Xbox and sprinkle on some modern electronics and create a handheld? Well, if your [James] of James Channel, you end up with this sandwich of PCBs held together with hot glue and duck tape. 

The first order of miniaturization in this Xbox was replacing the hard drive. Because a CompactFlash card uses serial ATA, that could be a simple drop in replacement. However, the Xbox locks the hard drive to the system requiring a mod chip for the CF card to work. Fortunately, the sacrificial Xbox came with a mod chip installed. After using an arcade machine to flash the card and copy over the contents of the drive, the CF card install was a breeze. 

For the screen and batteries, a portable DVD player that had remained unused since 2006 was repurposed. The battery cells were rather unhappy, but managed to get resurrected with some careful charging. As it turns out, the iPod 30 pin connector inside the portable screen contains an S-Video line. By taping into that and adding in some power management for the batteries, the Xbox became a pile of PCBs that could maybe be taken places.

However, the form factor was not yet complete. With some careful angle grinder work, the controller got split in half, with jumper wires going between the two sides. By cutting slots into the housing, the Xbox mainboard could now rest between the two controller halves, along with some hot glue for good measure. By using hot glue as an insulating layer, the PCB sandwich started to resemble a handheld console.

A few gremlins still lurked inside, namely, inside the optical drive. The first issue was the mainboard supplied 2.5 V where 5 V is needed, so instead of debugging the issue, [James] simply tapped directly into a 5 V line. But the drive was still uncooperative. As it turned out, the hastily refurbished unit was broken, so a fresh one replaced it. Yet that still proved unsuccessful. Eventually, after testing eight drives, it turned out seven were broken, and the IDE cable needed to be re-crimped.

But at last, the portable Xbox could be used, so the build was finished off with a bit more hot glue and a case made of duck tape. While certainly not pretty, it does, in fact, work, with nearly 10 minutes of battery life. It’s not very handheld, or very portable, but it does meet the definitions of both while maintaining a CD drive, something likely never done before. Just keep your fingers clear of the spinning disc.

Looking for something that might actually fit in your pocket? Turns out the Wii can be turned into an incredibly compact handheld with some careful cutting.