Worklog PS3 Supa Slim Laptop

[Luca]

I have just started this project a few weeks ago, buy haven't had much time to make much progress cuz school 'n stuff. My first idea was to 3d-print a case to fit the ps3 inside of and use a screen I have and stick it on top of that with some hinges. Now I've realized I don't have the necessary skills to do so, so I picked up this Sony (naturally) DVD player that is just the right size for the screen to sit on top of so that it can fold and is high enough for the PS3 to fit in.

Since on the front, there's a panel that opens up and exposes all sorts of ports which I hadn't gutted from the player I thought I could use this to my advantage. So, I wired up the single USB port on the front to one on the PS3.

I am also planning to wire up composite video (maybe s-video idk) to here

to use in an emergency case when HDMI isn't available, but couldn't find a motherboard pinout for the super slim's av.

So, about the case: This is how I will probably fit everything inside of it:

I will need a sata cable that is long enough to go from the sata ports on the PS to the HDD. I don't know if the PS3 can output 12 and 5v from the sata connection, but I'll have to wait and see. It's a 3.5" one, since I had a lot of these laying around and figured I could put one to good use. One problem I ran into with this configuration is that the hdmi cable won't fit inside of the casing if I plug it in. I will need to drill new holes for the board.
Since there were lots of bumps in the bottom of the case, I needed to drill and saw them out which was a grand pain in the arse.

I will not be installing any kind of modchip, and will need to find a way to insert disks into the system.
I do want to install the PS3 led and power button, but haven't found a way to do that yet.
As far as battery life goes, I haven't decided if I want to implement battery/ies yet. My first guess was to make it external and get a 220v battery, but I could also buy multiple batteries and stick them inside of the casing somewhere. However, my screen is a cheapo Chinese one, and battery life will probably be not tremendous. I could also remove the psu and "feed" the PS3 with one battery. Any thoughts? Lemme know.

 

[cheese]

The reason nobody has built a PS3 laptop with integrated batteries is because the PS3 draws so much power, it would be extremely impractical to try and power it with batteries. Since it draws just shy of 200W on 12v, that would mean your batteries would have to supply nearly 16A of current just to power the system at max load. That would mean if you were to power it on 18650 cells that many portables use, you would need 16 cells to get 1 hour of play time. Also, the 110-220v input for the power supply is AC not DC, so powering it on a high voltage battery wouldn't work either...

If you do still plan on powering it on a battery, avoid the cheap chineese ones (they're usually wrapped in blue plastic). They almost always lie about their capacity. Stick with the 18650s in the BOM or make sure the battery is from somewhere reputable.

 

[Shank]

Since it draws just shy of 200W

The original was around 180 watts, but the latest 64nm/45nm revision uses under 80 watts. These numbers could be reduced through things like using a hard drive instead of the disc drive, but cheese's point stands: power consumption is too high for battery power to be practical.

 

[cheese]

but the latest 64nm/45nm revision uses under 80 watts.

WATt that's cool, so you'd need around 8-9 cells for an hour then, still crazy big and heavy

 

[Luca]

WATt that's cool, so you'd need around 8-9 cells for an hour then, still crazy big and heavy

When starting this portable I didn't have a battery in mind, this was a recent idea. Powering it from an AC outlet seems fine to me also. If I decide to make it truly portable, I'll propably cram it full of these cells or get something like this, https://www.amazon.com/Omnicharge-P...09-20&linkId=dc0e43615e8dbcc9b72ef4ece32ecc6f
but that depends on how much I want to spend on this project . I know it's been done before, so why not at least give it a try?

 

[Shank]

Why spend $300 on something like that for a portable? At 20,400mah it's equivalent to exactly 6 Panasonic 3,400mah cells, which you can get for less than $40 total. That's 75 watt hours, which would mean your portable would still have less than 1 hour of battery life.