Equip 2BOX with an external accessible SD Card
Quite handy to have a SD card reader on the 2Box unit.
I wanted in this post just show how I made it and created/added an internal SD-Card reader.
Warning – If your box still is under warranty – don’t do this patch. I have myself a real old box which I bought second hand from a music store to a great price. (So I have no doubts to make changes in the box)
The goal with my implementation was to get a neat and nice way to access the SD card and be able to add/change samples on my 32 GB SD-card without having to disassemble the 2Box all the time.
So my project included
- I bought a SD SDHC SDXC Card Extender Extension Cable from Hong Kong on eBay.
- Disassembly the 2BOX unit according to this guide.
- Verify the external SD cable function in my 2Box using the 32 GB card before start cutting the plates.
- Find the optimal place for a SD-card on the rear panel. (With good help from my Dad)
We were evaluating a couple of different ways to add a SD-Card reader in the 2BOX. Finally we took a decision to place the SD card below the location of the BAR CODE, seen from the rear. The reason for this was that it would be easy to open the box…and the card reader wouldn’t interfere with any other electronics or heat parts. This mod/patch would also look nice. The rear plate is also only 2mm thick in aluminium metal, so it would be quite easy to make a hole for the SD-Card at this location compared to the thick orange metal plates.
A disambled rear panel from 2Box
A SD Card is about 25 mm wide and 2.5 mm thick. We found that 2Box barcodes digits was about 25 mm between the first and last digit. So that was our place of the SD Reader!
The SD card extension cable included a plastic housing which was disassembled by losing the 4 screws. The housing was not needed for this implementation. The SD Cards dimension height was about 4 mm.
The needed horizontal hole for the SD-card reader was determined to be about 3 mm thick and 25 mm wide.
We placed a 1mm thick rubber sheet on the 2Box rear plate bottom (covering the SD card reader) which would isolate the electronics on the SD-card reader and also lift the SD-Card reader up a bit from the 2Box bottom plate.
So measured from the bottom you get:
- Bottom plate – 2 mm
- Rubber sheet – 1 mm
- SD-card reader – 4 mm
- All together – 7 mm up on the 2Box rear from plate. (It is actually inline with the top of the barcode digits)
So creating a horizontally 25 mm wide and 3 mm thick hole between the first and last digit in the bar code starting at the top of the digits and cut it 3 mm below this position would do the trick!
Cutting the hole!
The idea was to use a milling steel and do the cutting. But we ended up with using a circle base milling steel instead to do the cut. The reason for this was that is could be hard to use such a tiny vertically milling steel for doing a 3 mm cut. The circle based milling steel was about 1 mm thick so we vertically actually cut the plate 3 times to get our SD-card hole.
Circle based milling metal
Tiny rasp…
The finishing part to assemble the solution and mount all parts together. I did some paint job (using black metal color) around the whole and inside the edges of the hole to make the look nice. Then we glued the rubber sheet using Loctight. (Note: Metal and rubber dry’s very fast – about 1 second)
Rubber sheet have been fixed.
Card reader mounted in the bottom of the rear plate.
Insert the SD extension cables other end at the 2Box’s motherboard. Try to place the cable in a nice way before assembling the 2Box. Test it!
ReadY!!!
Power Hell 
Way to go Anders! This really is class.
Thanks!
Hej! Snyggt jobb med SD kortet! Tänkte göra samma manöver. Hur placerade du kabeln invändigt? Bilder?
Jesper
Hej! Kul!
Jag har nog tyvärr inga foton inifrån lådan med kabeln. Vill minnas att jag bara vek den några gånger fram och tillbaka och fäste ihop dem med lite tejp. Min kabel (50cm) var ganska lång så det blev några vändor inne i lådan.
Har kört denna konstruktion ca 7-8 månader…funkar kanon!
Angr77
Hi guys! Excellent presentation.
I am really puzzled by the amount of cards that are on the don’t buy list but can’t find a list of 32gb SD cards that will work in the 2Box system. Do you have a reference list of cards that will work in the 2Box module?
If you don’t have a list can you direct me to a list other than the one I find on the Unofficial 2 Box forum?
Thanks for your help!
Sorry. The only list available is on the un-official 2Box forum. I don’t think we ever cracked the code to determine which cards work or not. Some do..most don’t …you can almost see when booting up the system if a card work or not. If the boot time is near compared to the original card…then it will work.
[…] card access for a friend. We do this in a rather special way – see my other old post at powerhell.se. Then we had a great brainstorm about another found issue on the original 2box hi-hat. We will see […]