kaputnik said:Rubedo said:Well, actually BOTH of my Xboxes have that huge hard drive, but as far as I can tell, neither one is modded as they both have the normal BIOS. Unless there's a way to mod them and have them display the normal BIOS? Is there any way to check if it's modded or not?
Well, we have no idea how big those blocks are, and the xbox just stated that it had more than 50000 free ones, or whatever number it was. It's impossible to tell if you got the original drive or a bigger one installed that way. The easiest and most accurate way to identify the drive would probably be to just open up the xbox and have a look at the drive, but since you're talking about the disk size in these blocks, I'd say you boot into the original dashboard, and there's no reason why a modded xbox should do that by default. It's probably safe to assume that your boxes aren't modded, and you got the original drive installed
It's possible to configure a hacked BIOS to look exactly like an original one when booting. Normally there is some logo that the team that hacked the bios added though, and most ppl that mod xboxes are either too lazy to do that configuration, or want some way of distinguishing the bioses from eachother when booting if they have an alternative method to boot the original bios for playing original games on Xbox Live. Nowadays there's no official online services for the original xbox though, so there's no point in keeping the original bios/dashboard when modding.
Okay, so with Gamecube all I have to do is look for one that has the audio fix, right?FAST6191 said:PS2 stuff- I say pretty much if it can play games and you can find one in a good shop go with it.
Other options are network adapter and freeMCboot. These are less compatible in some cases but most games work and have advantages too.
HDD loading via network adapter is compatible with just about everything you'd want to play. Sure, there are a few obscure games that won't work, but if you go with a chip in addition to the HDD (which you really should anyways to launch HDL as easy as possible), you can play those off a dvd if you want
FAST6191 said:Xbox- All versions have chips, 1 to 1.5 can be TSOP flashed. You also have softmod which if you do not want games (which by the way go for about $1 USD on amazon and the cables can be home made with less skill than it takes to solder a mod chip http://www.aideluxe.com/index.php?title=SI...h_Action_Replay ) can be done for nothing with the so called hotswap method http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Hard_Disk_Hotswap_HOWTO.
Ah, good you mentioned it. Totally forgot that TSOP flashing won't work with 1.6 boxes :>
The hotswap method is really the easiest anyways. The only downside is that there is a really minimal risk that you fry computer, disk or xbox when doing it, so don't do it using some old computer you don't care a lot about just to be safe.
GC has three main methodsFAST6191 said:I agree you can screw up softmods (although it became ultra simple towards the end) and have to pull it back with odd discs/methods (slayers disc has saved my arse when fiddling with things on many occasions) but if you have the EEPROM data and you have an IDE port on a machine available to you then you can write anything you like to the hard drive thus fixing it (the standard setup is a couple of gigs at most so stick it on a DVD if you are not inclined to stick it on your PC drive somewhere).
The main disadvantage then for softmods on the xbox is that not all IDE hard drives will work (only those that support locking), there is a nice list of tests on various models http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list though. You can get away without replacing the hard drive but it is far nicer when you do.
The last softmod I did I used Ndure through XboxHDM. It wasn't all that hard (except for some headache over relocking the drive), and I don't know if there's any more recent methods that are easier, but I wouldn't call that method dead simple in the sense that you can teach a monkey how to do it. I give you that it's way easier than what we had before we had XboxHDM and Ndure though
If you don't do the softmod on the original disk, you can always dump the eeprom data from it later in case you lose the backup or something like that.
QUOTE(FAST6191 @ Feb 6 2011, 04:37 PM)
1) Modchips- your main issue with any GC modchip will be lack of support for streaming audio games ( http://wiki-scene.com/Audio_Fix ). Check to make sure yours supports it (most of the GC specific stuff does, it was mainly the early wii chips that tacked GC support on that troubled things), there are workarounds but they are not ideal.
Many of the homebrew wii chips also saw something of a backport to the GC as well.
Likewise you are limited to miniDVD discs- there were casemods that allowed for full size DVDs (granted you could still only use GC disc data sizes)
2) Memory card/AR hacks SD-boot being the main one- you might have seen them for the wii as they got pretty popular since the downfall of wii chips and drive hacks.
Nowhere near as compatible as chips.
3) Modem hacks- this is old and deprecated so ignore this.
There are alternative methods like DVD emulation- people made DVD to hard drive adapters but no simple instructions exist.
In my opinion chipping is the only viable option for GC. That might change with the imminent release of Swiss and the fact that the Swiss author has started manufacturing IDE - EXI adapters though.
It's nice to see that the GC scene is still alive and kicking btw
I've seen the Icedcube case for sale just recently, so they might still be in production. It's a factory made case to allow usage of standard 12 cm dvd:s with the GC, no modding the original case needed. But personally I think it's better to just use 8 cm dvdr:s.
Rubedo
It seems complicated to do Xbox modding though...
I mean I'm not exactly looking for any complicated features for any of my console mods, all I want to do is play games and nothing more. I can run everything off DVDs.
The xbox modding won't be less complicated just because you're fine with using dvd:s, the only thing you might save yourself is getting a bigger hard drive. But really, once you start loading your games from the HDD you won't want to go back, it's so worth it getting that bigger drive. And FAST6191 has a very good point when he says that xbox is the ultimate emulator platform, you'll want to install a bunch of emulators and a crapload of roms. Actually I prefer to play retro games on my xbox over playing them on my real hardware, my retro consoles are just collecting dust nowadays :>
1. How do I figure out what version of Xbox I have?
2. I have a perfectly good computer capable of emulating everything PS1/N64 and below, so emulation on Xbox is kind of pointless. Plus I can't even imagine trying to play 2D games with an analog stick *Shudder*
3. Okay so, if I were to mod my PS2 with the HDD Loader/Network Adapter, where can I get all the required parts, and can you link me to a step by step tutorial to do it?
if I go with the PS2 HDD option, do I have to connect it to my PC every time I want to add a game? That seems kind of ridiculous... I'd rather just stick with discs...
