Beginner questions

[Chemowski]

Okay, so I might buy a used chipped Xbox this weekend, for only 51 usd. I was planning on using it with playing some games, and just play with as it seem like it has quite a big homebrew community. Installing emulators and Linux etc. I have some questions though.

1. He said he didnt knew what Chip it was, I asked him if it was a hardmod or softmod, but I havent recieved a answer yet. If it is a hardmod, is there any way to identidy the chip?

2. How do someone edit the content on the HDD?

3. To be added soon lol, thought I had more questions.

 

[FAST6191]

51USD is a bit steep for an original modded xbox unless it does have a hardmod (I will take TSOP), a larger hard drive or comes with a bunch of controllers.

1) You might be able to infer from software, hacks and dumps of various things. I am not sure of any run this and it will tell me programs though so it is probably best to look inside (it is not that hard to remove the case and you will probably want to clean out the dust anyway).
2 types of hardmod- chips and TSOP and aside from some chips having multiple sections they both do the same thing. TSOP is done on older models and amounts to soldering a few things and rewriting the BIOS where chips are physical things. There were a few chips but chances are it is an Aladdin or a Xecuter or a clone of them.

2) There are other ways up to and including running linux on the xbox itself and pulling the hard drive out to use on a PC* but the vast vast majority of people moving around in these circles will be using FTP- every hacked dash worth anything including XBMC will have an FTP server built in that accesses every partition inside the hard drive (give or take shadow C protections and some might miss out the data cache partitions.

*this is where the softmod vs hardmod stuff comes in. Hardmods (chips or TSOP) will bypass the protections on the hard drive meaning you just get to run in an a compatible tool for the filesystem (there are nice ones these days aimed at the 360 but with original xbox compatibility but the best is the linux liveCD XboxHDM) where softmods either need you to get the EEPROM and have it available for XboxHDM or do the hotswap trick (do not do the hotswap trick unless you are actually modding your system) before unlocking it an carrying on as before.

3) Guessing you will want to know this. You will need to know how things are partitioned
It runs a variation on windows as a kernel so drive letters time
C - a couple of hundred megs at best and what houses the actual original dash. There is a protection method known as shadow C that takes some space and means what the console displays as C is in fact something else. Mainly made to stop people from messing with the C drive.
D - the DVD drive (depending upon the dash/program it will support various flavours of xbox formats, iso 9660 and UDF)
E - usually a couple of gigs (just shy of 5 if memory serves)
F - usually only seen when you install a larger drive or do the extra 2 gigs mod (older xboxes had an 8 gig hard drive where newer ones had 10 gigs formatted as 8 and you could get the extra 2 gigs if you wanted).
higher- we have things that dodge size limits (see LBA48) as part of the hacks really so not much exists here save for X,Y and Z that are the cache partitions (750 megs or so) or you do something insane like figure out how to install a drive larger than 1TB.

Edit
4) What software do you suggest?
I suggest a copy of AID aka auto installer deluxe.

 

[Chemowski]

Wow dude nice! Thanks!

The guy replied now, he said that he didnt know how the chipping was done. He said that it ran games from the harddrive perfectly fine. The HDD was also 80 gb, so I take it it has to be hardmodded right?

And also, is it a good deal? 50 usd for a xbox, 2 controllers and some 10 games that I dont know if they are original or not, not that it really matters

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah that deal is OK (I assume they are controller S models- the back button will be on the left hand side http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Fi1VkzcboNQ/TvOGCsOg9SI/AAAAAAAAAV4/4JAFtkC_Jag/s1600/xbox+comparison.jpg )

Softmods and larger hard drives.... they can use larger ones but the drives have to support a little used and not always implemented part of the IDE spec known as drive locking. A list of such things http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list

Frankly though if it is done then it is all good- other than the hard drive thing there is no downside to softmods as far as things most people care about (running games and homebrew mainly).

 

[Chemowski]

FAST6191, I call for your assistance once more! I got my Xbox now! When I started it for the first time, I got furious since it sayd that I had to call Support, but I called the guy I bought it from, and apologised and told me that to launch it the right way, I had to press the power button on for a couple off seconds, and I did, and tada! It launched something called Xecuter2, and on the background it says EvolutionX, Superdisc 3.7. Now! What I want to do is:

1. Can I change "Dashboard" to something like XBMC4XBOX? Can I install something that makes so that I do not have to press the button down?
2. What program do you recommend to use as a FTP to edit the isos and hdds and such?
3. Is there anything else you recommend me to do?

 

[Armadillo]

Sounds like it's chipped and that happens to be the method to boot with the mod active, different chips, different methods to switch the chip on. Some had physical switches, others were eject for non-modded, power for modded, hold button for different periods of time and so on. At a guess I'd say something is wrong with the non-modded setup. Maybe hdd not locked or stock files are screwed, so it can only boot with the mod on. Not much you can do about, if that's how that chip works. Can fix the stock side, but would still have to boot like you are to use the modded functions.

Evolution X has an ftp server built in. As for changing to something else, as it's coming up xecuter 2, I'd assuming it's using xecuters bios (they were not locked to just xecuter chips). The hacked bios normally had either a boot order or were set to look for a specific .xbe, quick search says xecuter bios (unmodified is)

- 1. avalaunch.xbe
- 2. evoxdash.xbe
- 3. mxmdash.xbe
- 4. nexgen.xbe
- 5. xboxdash.xbe

So easiest way is probably just to ftp in, find evox, stick xbmc where it is, and rename it's .xbe to what evox was. Chip doesn't care what it actually is, just file names.

Been a long time since I messed with my box, so there might be an easier way now, but what ever it is, if it's set to boot evox as a dash, it's probably easiest to just do a swap and rename to get it booting xbmc as dash.

 

[Chemowski]

Ok. I can live with holding the power down. I just want to get into the FTP and remove his games and save files. I have some problems with that. I have set the Xbox IP to 192.168.0.3 and the password to xbox but flash ftp wants a username and I don't know of that one. Hmmm.

 

[Armadillo]

Both the username and password are normally xbox.

 

[FAST6191]

Can't fault Armadillo really other than AID includes some nice installers to save fiddling with FTP installers.

Truth be told I never really went into xbox chips that far/enough to learn all the various quirks (and there were quite a few you could employ to great effect) as softmods were doing stunningly by this point in time. I would start by looking at Xbox-HQ PC Essentials (one of the other things I should have mentioned along with AID, to finish to list see also Slayer's rescue disc) as it should allow some customisation of things.

Afraid we are going to have to find out what model the chip is to do much though- xbox live was quite popular on the original xbox and modded boxes did not really make it onto live or if they did they lasted a very short amount of time with nobody that could do anything really interested in getting it working (many games had system link giving rise to things like xlink kai) hence the chips and options to still boot to stock dashes as and when.

 

[Chemowski]

For some reason, I have a very big problem with this

I have set EvoX to use a static 192.168.0.3 ip adress, but I cannot ping it from my computer, or connect to it via flashftp. Argh its always something.

 

[Chemowski]

Nevermind, got it to work. Going to try the change launcher thingy

 

[Armadillo]

Is there some reason you want to set it manually? rather than letting it set the ip automatically. Get it working while letting it set everything up for you and then once you have it working fine and as you want, play around with the manual settings. If your setting it manually as well, then I think evox expects you to set the subnet and default gateway as well.

Edit:lol never mind then, see you got it sorted while I was typing .

 

[Chemowski]

Great. I renamed the default.xbe to evoxdash.xbe and overwrote the old one and now I have fatal error. Need to get the old thing back.

---

 

[Armadillo]

If xbmc is giving the fatal error, then it's at least trying to load. Must be a setting or possible bad copy of xbmc. If it wasn't trying to load/can't find .xbe it should go to the xbox dash. No need to panic anyway. Disc takes priority over hdd. So you can just get a copy of evox/xbmc or anything that has a ftp server, put disc in, turn box off and back on with disc in and disc should load and you can just play around until it works .

Edit, Did you only copy the .xbe and nothing else for xbmc? Needs more than just .xbe, you need all the files and stuff that go with it.

 

[Chemowski]

Oh, but the thing is, I cant find a guide anywhere. I havent done anything yet I have the folder with all the files. xbmc4xbox folders and everything. Dont know what to transfer or anything.

 

[Armadillo]

You need the default.xbe and all the files and folders that are in the same folder as it.

 

[Chemowski]

I found a guide, followed it, and now I got a different error. This is going to be a loooong night *opens a can of red bull*

 

[Chemowski]

Omfg I did it, its so, its so, beautiful...