Gaming JTAg Questions

[Gagarin]

Recently I decided to update my 512bb Jasper to Kinect Dash (right now I'm on 9199) but I have a bunch of questions about Jtag in general. I learn new things on my Jtag and I hope that you guys can help me

I bought my Jtag from somebody. The guy didn't provide any software with it. No nand, no cpu key.
When I press EJECT to start my xbox I see a blue screen and cpu key is there. Is that the right one?

What about nand? I use a tool from FSD 2.0 to dump my nand. There is an option over there "full nand" so which one I gotta use for easy freeboot kinect update?

Assuming that I'm on 9199 I have that "fuse fix", rt63 resistor or whatever it's called done, and I can update to kinect, right? Or should I do aud_clam fix first?

Since new dashboard has ap 2.5, what are the options to avoid it? Patching games? Updating drive firmware? or maybe there is some dashboard hack to avoid it?

Actually, are there any dashboard hacks? To do something about loading games process? Is there a way to kind of sort it games in games library?

xexmenu. That' what i'm using to run games. What is better choice? How to update its icons and sort games in the list?




I have much more but this are first I want to deal with.

 

[FAST6191]

CPU key- if it tells you straight away then you have xellous, if not then you have xell and you simply have to combine two lines from the relevant keys. Either way yes that is your key.

I am not overly familiar with the easy build tools- manual is easier to try and debug than "failure to build NAND image". Still if you have a complete NAND dump (as far as I am aware it goes for big block too) then 360 Flash Tool should have you sorted as far as being able to pull the relevant data (and more importantly generate meta files) for use in the freeboot build process- freeboot is much more fussy than the old XBReboot was when it comes to having these files.
You just need to tell 360 Flash Tool to do so in the options panel (settings menu).

Once you have these you can use these files to generate a new NAND.

"Assuming that I'm on 9199 I have that "fuse fix", rt63 resistor or whatever it's called done, and I can update to kinect, right? Or should I do aud_clam fix first?"

I am sure you already know but never ever let official updates touch your 360 (avatar stuff aside). You need to build a new NAND image and flash that to update.

aud_clamp. Simple answer is that there are many ways to get the code to be run on the 360 via JTAG and one of those often means sneaking a wire onto the wifi/ring of light board. This is not the best option as it has issues with various things (lights, some issues allowing wireless controllers to connect, some have fingered it for some E79 issues and a few other things) so some people moved to the aud_clamp (this involves changing solder points for various wires). As it is a new hack method it needs a new SMC.bin, technically you can do this whenever you like but if you want to update to the newer dashboard then you can.
Normally though most people get to the dash they want+relevant hacks and then flash the new SMC and before booting up again change the wire soldering. If it not the end of the world if you mess this up but you will be flashing the NAND by hardware if you do.
If you mean the play and charge kit fix then you need your original SMC.bin for that as far as I am aware.

AP2.5- you can patch the games, you can patch the drive to LT+ and use relevant SSv3 files for the game or you can patch the dashboard (dashlaunch got updated to rid you of AP2.5). I would suggest you keep SSv3 discs handy if you are going to share with friends but if it is just for you then you can stick the drive on 1.6NS still and carry on as you would any other game. Personally I would just install dashlaunch (you can do it like any other bit of homebrew these days as it has a 360 side installer- no more need to add it in during NAND making sessions).

Straight up dashboard hacks...... there are shortcut launchers for USB and the like ( http://www.xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1773.nfo ), the dashlaunch patches are hacks to the dash and custom dashboards (not sure how things sit for the kinect dash mind) but for the sort of change how the menu works type hacks there are none that I have seen.

Xexmenu alternatives, the big two are freestyle dash and dashit (noted mainly for XBLA USB support). xexmenu is fairly compact and text heavy compared to those two. I am not one for fancy GUIs though and I usually opt for GOD installs and the official dash so I will leave it up to you to go from here.

 

[Gagarin]

Ok, I did it. Dumped Nand with 360 flash, using Easy freeboot I installed Kinnect Dash.
Now my Jasper freezes randomly. There is that menu sound and everything freezes.
My friend told me that I probably had bad blocks.
So I should remap them.
Is that the problem? When I was dumping nand in 360flash it didn't do it automaticly?
So what to do now?
I still have a copy of my original nand. Can I remap it (what tool) and create new nand with easy freeboot?
Or maybe install original nand back first (with previous dash) and start from there.

I really count on you tk_saturn and fast6191

 

[FAST6191]

Ahh my bad, this post slipped my attention.

Original NAND means actual one that came from stock I take it, if you have the old 9199 or earlier image that would be good too.

Bad blocks might be the case but I would expect an outright failure to boot rather than random failure (random is usually the fault of bad wiring, heat or impending RRoD- I will tack on bad dashlaunch installs/setups too as that has been known to cause the odd issue as well although less on the random failure side of things).

I will say I do not like easy freeboot- sometimes it is all too easy to mess something up and this big block stuff is often not as well tested as it could be.
Did you use the same SMC file in the donor files or did you let easy freeboot fiddle with it (granted if you did check the wrong box here it probably would not boot)?

First try reflashing with Flash360- xellous USB support has been known to have the odd issue and bigger files are more likely to see it crop up and seeing if that sorts it.
If you can try rebuilding via command line using the regular fbbuild or indeed if you must use a GUI tool then http://www.bestpig.fr/

As for bad blocks it is not as much dumping that remaps bad blocks (especially software dumps like xellous or Flash360) but the tool doing the flashing that auto remaps them. Most of the time you only have to remap if you are flashing in hardware.
As you asked and in case someone else finds this thread remapping is taken care of quite well by nandpro (you probably already used it to dump the NAND in the first place), guide and background info https://docs.google.com/View?id=dnfmv5h_23gw47ddgs Only real thing to note is big block means big block and nandpro is set to only see the small blocks (any errors will appear as 8 bad blocks in a row).