Thinking about getting a Xbox and modding it (again)

Fahrenheit

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Few years back I had a soft modded Xbox and some burnt games. Some of them Xbox only games are good and no way to play them as Xbox emulation has not taken off. Thinking of getting another Xbox soft modded it and then putting in a bigger hard drive. XBMC4Xbox seems like it has a good guide for getting a sata drive in it but its from 2012 and had dead links. Same goes for the soft modding guides. What is the new up to date info on soft modding and swapping hard drives?
 

DinohScene

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Softmodding it has always been the same.

I advice you to flash your TSOP as soon as it's modded (you can do that with the Evox dashboard, 1.0 and 1.1 need a 1MB BIOS and 1.2-1.5 need a 265kb)
That way you can boot from the DVD drive and install a bigger HDD with Slayers CD.
 

mercuryshadow09

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Softmodding it has always been the same.

I advice you to flash your TSOP as soon as it's modded (you can do that with the Evox dashboard, 1.0 and 1.1 need a 1MB BIOS and 1.2-1.5 need a 265kb)
That way you can boot from the DVD drive and install a bigger HDD with Slayers CD.


What? You don't need to TSOP flash it, I've installed almost a dozen or so with Chimp on soft mod only.
 

Sicklyboy

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What? You don't need to TSOP flash it, I've installed almost a dozen or so with Chimp on soft mod only.


And when you don't TSOP flash it, you have the chance of going through the same multi-months process of getting it re-modded when XboxHDM doesn't work on <5 year old computer and everything else goes tits up, when literally every thing that could go wrong with it, did.

Dead laser, replace laser. DVD drive dies entirely. Buy second xbox for dvd drive. Same type, but works. Make flash drive adapter. Not a single flash drive or micro/SD card or reader I own works on the xbox. VM won't see memory card adapter to transfer saves to. Eventually get it to work, transfer linux launcher and softmod installer to memcard, then to hard drive. Boots to a black screen or error 21. After trying ~8 different softmod packages. ActionReplay memcards can corrupt large saves. Order official Microsoft memcard. Guy shipped it to someone else on accident, order is cancelled. Try to hotswap hard drive into live Windows environment to read with Xplorer360. Electrocute self on PSU. Erase C drive. Xplorer360 won't write files back. Try different Xplorer360, works fine. Flash TSOP, still won't boot without DVD drive. Fucking around with the settings for ~2 hours, it finally works.

Alternatively, if I had flashed my TSOP the first time I softmodded it, I could have just formatted the hard drive with a Linux liveCD when I ran into a PEBCAK error, loaded my files on, and been done with it. In a few hours.

Ask DinohScene. He'll vouch for my story, I pestered the ever living hell out of him through the entire ordeal lol.

tl;dr - flash X2 5035, good bios, no reason not to tsop flash, murphy's law, etc
 

DinohScene

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What? You don't need to TSOP flash it, I've installed almost a dozen or so with Chimp on soft mod only.

I'd... flash your TSOP if I where you.
It makes it nearly "unbrickable"

Like Sick said, recovering it without a flashed TSOP is a hard and tricky process.
Not only that but flashing your TSOP also allows you to use non locked HDD's and boot from the DVD drive (rescuing a corrupted dash)
 

mercuryshadow09

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It's best to flash the TSOP, ofcourse it's not needed but it makes it easier to recover from a corrupted drive ;]

Right and the only reason I responded in the first place is because you made it sound like the only way OP would be able to boot from his DVD drive or replace his HDD was to TSOP flash it, I was just clarifying that that wasn't needed and to the point that OP was asking about soft modding his box, not hard modding it!
 

DinohScene

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TSOP flashing can pretty much be done without hardmodding.
If you got a windshield trace repair pen then you can draw a lil conductive line between the bridging points.

However, Like I said, I ADVICE to flash the TSOP.
It makes replacing the HDD easier.
It's not needed ofc but it makes things easier.
 

DinohScene

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Better source for homebrew for the original Xbox is Xbins.
You can get Auto Xbins that will automatically connect to the IRC channel.
Xbins is however software only.
No tuts no instructions.
 

DinohScene

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I don't know if you are just trying to be argumentative but I'm going to point out that TSOP flashing IS a hardware mod, not a software mod.

Just being informative ._.
No need to be insensitive about it ._.
 

Fahrenheit

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My new (to me) Xbox just came in the mail. Quick baseline test looks like its working fine. Gonna do a more in depth test with my HD cables to make sure my Ebay unit is 100% good to go before I open it up to see what model I have. While i'm not the best with a solder gun it looks like its just bridging contacts. Though I'm gonna need a better pic of the 1.2 to 1.5 motherboard to tell what i'm doing. Might even use the Conductive Trace Pen. Now once them traces are made the flashing of it looks tough. Like changing my computers IP and Telneting into it. That part is confusing to me.


Also is it worth while to look into mod chips? I see ones that are solderless, are they worth my time? Will a chip make a hard drive swap more easy?
 

mercuryshadow09

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Also is it worth while to look into mod chips? I see ones that are solderless, are they worth my time? Will a chip make a hard drive swap more easy?

Contrary to what has been said in this thread, you do not need to hard mod your box to swap the hard drive, and no a chip will not make it easier, soft mod your box, put Chimp on your hard drive and follow the tutorial, a Chimp could do it! I can direct you to a more knowledgeable forum if you PM me, there seems to be a lot of confusing information here and it's not helpful to anyone who doesn't know what they're doing!
 

Plstic

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A when you TSOP your xbox you flash a modchip bios so it essentially has a modchip. There's really no need for modchips anymore unless you did a bad TSOP flash. and the TSOP is probably the easiest hardmod I've everdone. Well worth it to not have to mess with a legacy PC and Chimp. Just pop in AID and have it partition and format your harddrive and BAM you're done.
 

gruven42

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Contrary to what has been said in this thread, you do not need to hard mod your box to swap the hard drive, and no a chip will not make it easier, soft mod your box, put Chimp on your hard drive and follow the tutorial, a Chimp could do it! I can direct you to a more knowledgeable forum if you PM me, there seems to be a lot of confusing information here and it's not helpful to anyone who doesn't know what they're doing!
Is there an advantage to using Chimp over this method?

http://www.techfreaks.org/articles/modxbox2.shtml
 

gruven42

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Thanks, I was able to use the Chimp method shown here:

http://www.theisozone.com/tutorials...se-chimp-to-install-a-larger-hd-in-your-xbox/

One thing to note is that it doesn't specifically tell you which app to open from dashboard and the word "Chimp" is not shown anywhere. You're supposed to open the Linux (?) launcher and then select "FATX".

Also, when you are selecting the "Full Disk" and the transfer method, you can't just highlight and press A or B, you have to press the left analog stick button to select them (the "X" will appear on that option).

And in a bit of human error, instead of using a Molex splitter, I used power from my PC. When I was testing the newly-cloned drive (WD1600), I didn't shut down the power to the drive between Xbox shutdowns and it didn't work. Once the drive was using the Xbox power, it worked perfectly.
 

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