Adding a CCFL To The Jewel!:

This fan, which was generously provided by www.nwca.com is the perfect size to sit just outside the jewel. Thanks NWCA! Now we don’t want the fan just the cathode. The cathode is held on by 4 screws, just unscrew all 4 and off it comes. The protective plastic outside of the cathode itself is actually two pieces held together by the screws also, we cant keep the screws in the cathode due to space restrictions in the Xbox so I used clear packaging tape to hold the two halves together. The tape works perfect.

Cathode removed	Taped together

Now you got the cathode itself all prepped, but there is still a lot of work to be done to the wiring that plugs into the cathode. The wiring goes like this:

Molex > On/Off Switch > Inverter > Cathode

We don’t need to switch and it takes up a lot of space so were going to get rid of it. To get rid of the switch you have to cut the wires leading to both ends of the switch and connect them together. It’s a little hard to explain so look at the pictures and hopefully you’ll understand.

Assembly before	Assembly after	We don't need an ugly switch

The aftermath

In addition to the switch I find the wires in between the two Molex connectors way too long so I decided to shorten them. Just cut the wires, solder together, and heat shrink and all that pointlessly long wire is gone! In the pic you see I used just electrical tape. I later switched it to heat shrink for a much nicer look.

Now the cathode is nicely prepped and all the wire chopping we did will save a considerable amount of space. Now we will mount the cathode and jewel. As I always do I will be using goop brand adhesive since it hold ANYTHING. Now would be a good time to glue the jewel in place too since its right there also. I didn’t glue all the way around just in 4 spots on eth cathode and 4 spots on the jewel. Make sure to place the jewel in right so the picture is forward when you look at the Xbox and you’re going to want to place the cathode to the wire faces the back of the Xbox since we will be showing the inverter back there in a little bit.

If you’re using Goop you won’t need much as this stuff is STRONG. It will dry good enough to handle in about an hour but be gentle, it will take about 24 hour to completely cure so be careful if your handling it prior to that 24 hours. I don’t know about you but I’m anxious to see how this thing looks so I’m going to plug the cathode into the inverter and hook it up to me PC too give myself a little bit of a preview.

Doesn’t that look nice? Now we have to find a place to put the inverter and a way to get it power while still keeping the top of the Xbox still able to close! With the motherboard and DVD drive in you can see there is a good sized gap in between the two. Luckily for us there is more than enough room in there to fit an Inverter and some molex connectors. There are 2 ways to get power to the inverter. One way would be to use the molex that the HDD uses. Another way, the way I chose, would be to add another power lead from the power supply itself. The reason I chose to add a power lead is mainly because it will make the wiring cleaner and easier. It’s a real pain to string another connector to the hard drive lead because of the limited space for the molex directly behind the HDD. It can be done, but I think it is much easier to add one.