Hey, a community that still has an active xbox section!

[scrfta]

Hi all, I've been looking for a site with an xbox original section that isn't completely dead.

Yeah yeah, the xbox is old, outdated. Well so am I.

I dug out my original because I prefer the old school stuff to the latest games. I also like the emulation capabilities on the original.

Now to my problem. Everything in my xbox is original including the old 8gb HDD. I have a duo x2 lite mod chip installed so I decided to upgrade the HDD so I could put a lot more emu stuff on it. I only have sata drives lying around, a WD caviar blue 320gb and a seagate 500gb. I ordered a PATA to SATA converter off fleabay and ended up with model JP103-5. Great I thought, swap out the old drive, put the new drive in using an 80 pin cable and fire up hexen.

Not so fast buddy!! Xbox now only boots to the splash screen. Hexen won't load, no error message unless I swap the jumper on the converter board then I get error 9. Swapping back to stock drive and I can boot up just fine.

Neither drive works so I'm guessing I would be very unlucky to find 2 drives which have been stated as compatible that just won't work with mine. Have I just picked up a lousy converter?

Is there anything else I can check before I just go out and buy an IDE drive.

 

[eracet]

I did the same thing a few months ago, took it out of storage.
Noticed myself that the mod chip has moved. I dont know if you did solder or not.

Can you use your old HDD>?
You can probably find a used or old IDE drive from ebay if needed. (I have about 10 laying in a drawer)

Did you ever copy data from old HDD onto new HDD?

From your problem it sounds a lot like the mod chip itself not reading properly and not a HDD error.

 

[DinohScene]

I know a Kingwin SATA - IDE converter does work.

Is your chip still functioning?

 

[scrfta]

I did the same thing a few months ago, took it out of storage.
Noticed myself that the mod chip has moved. I dont know if you did solder or not.

Can you use your old HDD>?
You can probably find a used or old IDE drive from ebay if needed. (I have about 10 laying in a drawer)

Did you ever copy data from old HDD onto new HDD?

From your problem it sounds a lot like the mod chip itself not reading properly and not a HDD error.

No, mod chip is working just fine. If I put the original hard drive in I can play backups, homebrew, emulators etc. I didn't copy anything from my old drive because online tutorials suggested it wasn't necessary with a mod chip. I have backed up my old HDD to my laptop though.

I know a Kingwin SATA - IDE converter does work.

Is your chip still functioning?

Chip is working just fine, if I start the box with the power button I get the evo x dash (with my old hard drive plugged in) and if I start the console with the eject button I get the ms dash.

With any new hard drive though I get the logo screen with evo x in the corner and nothing else happens, not even Microsoft at the bottom!

I've heard the kingwin boards work but they seem impossible to find in the uk, unless I'm looking in the wrong places.

 

[DinohScene]

Well, the thing is, softmods work without modchips.
Could be that it literally is the softmod that's working and not the chip.

Try Slayers CD perhaps?
Otherwise bypass the chip and use Chimp to initialize the HDD and prepare it.

 

[scrfta]

Well, the thing is, softmods work without modchips.
Could be that it literally is the softmod that's working and not the chip.

Try Slayers CD perhaps?
Otherwise bypass the chip and use Chimp to initialize the HDD and prepare it.

If the chip wasn't working then surely I wouldn't get evo x on the splash screen when booting without the original hard drive attached. I'm just guessing though.

I'll need to look up some tutorials for preparing the hard drive first. I heard that chimp doesn't play nicely with non oem controllers, I only have third party controllers so I may have to track an original down if they don't work.

 

[DinohScene]

If the chip wasn't working then surely I wouldn't get evo x on the splash screen when booting without the original hard drive attached. I'm just guessing though.

I'll need to look up some tutorials for preparing the hard drive first. I heard that chimp doesn't play nicely with non oem controllers, I only have third party controllers so I may have to track an original down if they don't work.

Phoenix Bios Loader can load up BIOSes.
Tho idk if it does that in coldboot or not.. to long ago ;/

Only way I can quickly suggest is to use Chimp.
Only advantage modchips have is that one can boot the Xbox without HDD content off off the DVD drive.

Well, you can always try it.
Chimp doesn't touch the original drive unless you tell it to.

 

[eracet]

If the chip wasn't working then surely I wouldn't get evo x on the splash screen when booting without the original hard drive attached. I'm just guessing though.

I'll need to look up some tutorials for preparing the hard drive first. I heard that chimp doesn't play nicely with non oem controllers, I only have third party controllers so I may have to track an original down if they don't work.

You will still get Evo Screen just not going anywere from there.
Try cracking it open and seeing if everything is connected right.

 

[scrfta]

Only way I can quickly suggest is to use Chimp.

I've been struggling with this for the last couple of hours. Chimp refuses flat out to load once I plug the ide cable into the new drive.

I've tried just about all variations of jumper settings, tried loading from slayers, dashboard and it just will not load. Last launch was from the dashboard and it's been stuck on the evolution x logo for 10-15 minutes! It will if I don't swap the ide cables though so I'm now assuming that either the adapter is bad or the hard drive is the issue.

Any further suggestions? Or would I be wasting my time trying any other method?

Might just give up and try to source an old ide drive if I can't figure this out!!

Oh and I found an old original controller anyway so that won't cause any issues.

 

[scrfta]

Only way I can quickly suggest is to use Chimp.

Oh and one more thing, the light on the eject button turns orange when I try to load chimp, is that normal?

 

[DinohScene]

Made sure you're not running Chimp 1.6 on a lower revision xbox?

 

[scrfta]

It is a 1.6 xbox, I have installed chimp 2618 from slayers which apparently is supposed to work with all xbox versions.

It's just the loading issue, after swapping the cable chimp just will not load at all.

 

[DinohScene]

Hmm, try switching the IDE cable before booting chimp?

 

[scrfta]

Hmm, try switching the IDE cable before booting chimp?

That's what I have been doing. I followed THIS set of instructions which tells you to switch the cable before loading chimp.

All the instructions I have read tell you to swap the IDE cable before loading chimp.

Can you swap the cable after loading chimp?

 

[DinohScene]

You can also try that yes.

I've never really ran into issues when using chimp and in all honesty, 9/10 problems is usually user related.

 

[scrfta]

Ok so I tried that. Chimp freezes on gentoox loader as soon as it says booting and starting comes up at the bottom of the screen.

Think I'm wasting my time with this, I'm fairly sure now it's either the converter or a hard drive issue.

I think I'm going to look for an ide hdd. The sata drive is only 500gb so I can get an ide drive with the same capacity if I can find one for a decent price.

They're just so damn expensive though compared to sata!!

 

[kumikochan]

Also if you have a chip installed read a bit up on flashing the bios. You can just put a new HDD in without all the extra hassle if you do that.

 

[scrfta]

Also if you have a chip installed read a bit up on flashing the bios. You can just put a new HDD in without all the extra hassle if you do that.

There is a chip installed but whether it's actually functioning any more is anybody's guess. I have no idea how to test this.

It certainly wouldn't allow me to boot from cd with a new hard drive attached so it's either the sata adapter or the chip that's at fault.

 

[DinohScene]

It's likely the SATA adapter then.

 

[scrfta]

It's likely the SATA adapter then.

Thanks for all the help. It turns out it was the sata adapter, went out today and bought a 250gb IDE drive. Popped it in and booted, detected a new drive straight away and formatted it, loaded hexen, added dashboards and I'm up and running with a much larger HDD now.

Currently FTPing all my emulator games over. 250gb should be enough for my needs anyway.