Lazarus Project - Introduction

I've resumed work on a major case mod, which I have decided to call "the Lazarus Project." I borrowed the codename used by Cerberus in the Mass Effect games for the project of treating the grievously wounded Commander Shepard, which itself was named for a biblical character whom Jesus raised to life in John 11. In this case, the subject to be 'raised from the dead' is my 1st-generation PlayStation 3, which had experienced the fatal Yellow Light of Death. I decided that the best way to reanimate it was to populate the case with a desktop PC motherboard.

Apologies to James Martin for appropriating his art.

 

Project Goals

As much as possible, the device should be indistinguishable from a PlayStation 3, and as many of the peripherals as possible should be functional. Specifically:

  • Optical Drive
  • Mini speaker and appropriate beep patterns (power-on, power-off, disk eject, error code)
  • Status LEDs
  • Capacitive touch buttons
  • Memory card readers
  • Front panel USB ports
  • Activity indicator LEDs

 

Some stretch goals for this project are

  • Re-use as many PS3 parts as possible to maximize similarity with the original PS3
  • Make the design repeatable so that others can repeat my work at home, or even sell my own kits as an exercise in product design

To achieve this, I will need to design a printed circuit board (PCB) that will allow the PC motherboard to interface with the peripherals, and determine how best to mount the PC hardware to maximize structural stability and cooling. Since I don't have a specific workload in mind for this hardware, I won't bother myself too much with selecting cutting edge hardware, and instead prefer something cheap, and preferably hot so as to force myself to design for cooling.

The PCB will meet the following functional requirements:

  1. Basic PS3 interaction paradigms must be preserved. This includes the following interactions:
    1. Power Button:
      1. Short-press to activate
      2. Long-press to reset
    2. Eject Button:
      1. Short-press to eject an existing disk. If the machine is powered off, power on and then eject.
    3. Status LEDs
      1. Red: plugged in, but inactive
      2. Green: powered on and active
      3. Yellow (Red + green): hardware error
      4. Blue: a disk is in the optical drive
    4. HDD/WiFi indicators should illuminate to indicate activity on their respective devices.
    5. Audio feedback: a mini-speaker must play the following beep codes:
      1. Play a single short beep in the following circumstances:
        1. Power button short-press
        2. System power-up (if started by other means than the power button)
      2. Play a triple beep in the following circumstances:
        1. Power button long-press
        2. Eject button press
  1. PS3 hardware peripherals must function correctly.
    1. The trio of memory card readers must function as expected: they shall allow a user to read/write data on compatible flash media.
    2. Front-facing USB ports must function for device interactions (e.g. USB gamepad controllers)

The PCB will have the following inputs and outputs (I/O):

  • 5V or 12V Power supply input (choose a connector that is convenient)
  • Human Interfaces:
    • USB 2.0 ports
    • Activity LEDs that align with light guides on the case
  • Zero-insertion force (ZIF) connectors to daughter boards:
    • Connection to daughterboard implementing capacitive touch buttons and status LEDs
    • Connection to memory card reader
  • Mixed I/O:
    • USB 2.0 pin header to connect to motherboard
    • ATX front-panel inputs:
      • HDD/WiFi indicator signals
      • Power indicator signal
    • ATX front-panel outputs:
      • Power signal to pass to motherboard
    • Optical Drive:
      • disk_present input signal from optical drive
      • eject output signal to pass to optical drive

This embedded system must consume no more than 5 W of power (with no USB devices attached)

This embedded system must respond to user interactions within 200 ms, so as to not appear sluggish to the user.

Literature Review

Like any good academic, before I begin any interesting project, it behoves me to see if other people have attempted to build something like this in the past, and if there are any mistakes of theirs that I might learn from. I found a couple of build logs online where people had tried to build ITX PCs in the PS3 housing, and noted several limitations.

Source 1 

Part 2 of 2. Computer/PC in a PS3 (Build, Mod)

This is a pretty nice build that functions pretty well, however it suffers from a few critical limitations:

  1. It does not actually use the capacitive power/eject buttons
  2. The optical drive is not present
  3. The memory card unit does not work
  4. The USB ports protrode from the front in an ugly hack

Source 2 

https://extreme.pcgameshardware.de/threads/pc-meets-ps3-gaming-htpc-mit-core-i3-gtx-750ti-im-ps3-gehaeuse-belueftung-wird-ueberarbeitet.284133/

This German person did a great job with available tech. This particular build is my personal favourite, since it most closely captures feature parity: he designed a custom circuit to interface with the capacitive touch buttons, routed the hard drive indicator LED, and sourced an optical drive. The chief limitation of this system is that it suffered from overheating due to the builder's choice to use a dedicated GPU.

Source 3 

http://forums.shoryuken.com/discussion/139295/so-i-built-a-htpc-into-a-ps3-case

This person opted to use an Atom-based architecture, and went for an ugly hack for a push-button. This particular build was a very quick turnaround though, and likely was finished over the course of a weekend.

Turning an Old PS3 Into an RGB-Adorned Ryzen Rig

I like the cooling solution this guy devised. Hinging the top cover allows for improved cooling in case heat becomes a big issue. I like this as a backup plan.

Analysis and Conclusion

The most common issues people seem to struggle with are implementing the finer details (i.e. the capacitive buttons/status LEDs/optical drive) and the issue of thermal management. I decided to tackle the second issue first: if I were to design a PC in a PS3 case, I would need to take thermals into account, even moreso than with the Pink Fury. I toyed with the idea of water cooling a GPU, but the small dimensions of the PS3 mean that even though the waterblocks/tubing could theoretically fit, I would be limited to very small radiators if I wanted to enable vertical/horizontal operation.

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