Xbox hard drive upgrade options?

[raynor_ni]

Hey guys, decided to fire up my old xbox, and all I can find for it is the original hard drive.
So I decided to upgrade that, but all I have spare is some sata drives,
which I have managed to get working and move all the save data to it.

It boots in the xbox just fine but just to the plain ms dashboard.
I used Mechassault to softmod it originally but sadly the dvd drive refuses to read it.

I do have the eeprom backed up and i tried using xboxhdm with my sata-ide adapter. but my current pc has 1 ide port and refuses to boot from dvd when the sata-ide adapter is in.

What's my choices here? I'm more than a little out of the loop when it comes to the Xbox.
As far as I can see it I have 3 options:

Suffer with the 8gb HD,
Buy a replacement DVD,
or try to find a decent IDE drive somewhere

Any options would be appreciated.

 

[DinohScene]

You can connect the SATA drive to a Kingwin SATA-IDE adapter.
Be sure to look up the exact model on the XBMC forums.

You could tweak the laser POT on the DVD drive a bit to get it to read again, enough to boot up an exploit game.

Or you could flash the TSOP if you have a 1.0-1.5 Xbox

 

[raynor_ni]

Yeah I have a sata-ide adapter, it's not a kingwin as you've mentioned though.
The Xbox is 1.4 but I've never soldered nor even own a soldering iron but I completely forgot about a pot tweak.
Cheers.

 

[DinohScene]

You technically can even do it with a trace repair pen.
Only thing you need to do is bridge a few points to make the TSOP writable.

A hacked BIOS can accept HDDs without a HDDKey.

Good luck tho!

 

[raynor_ni]

Weird update: I bought some component cables over the weekend so thought I'd give them a test,
so I put back the original (and modded) hard drive back in, accidentally left the Mechassault disc in and... it booted.
It even let me load the "run linux" save and everything lol.

Powered off, put the sata hard drive in annnnd.... it refuses to boot again.

I swear this Xbox is taunting me

 

[DinohScene]

SATA HDD locked with the Xbox's HDD key?
IDE bridge working fine?

 

[raynor_ni]

it boots to MS dash fine, no error codes or anything. I do get an error code 13 if I use a 40pin ide cable though. Needs to be 80pin for it to boot.

 

[DinohScene]

Swapping to an 80 pin would be the thing to do then.

 

[raynor_ni]

Tried with 4 IDE cable's (2 40 pin, 2 80 pin) and my results are:

With 40 pin AND sata hard drive either error 13 or error 21, if I use original 8gb ide hard drive all is fine including booting discs.

with either 80 pin and sata hard drive boots fine to dash but dvd drive (it's a phillips) refuses to load any disc (tried multiple games, music cd's etc..)

This thing has won lol, at least until I try a pot tweak or solder to enable a TSOP flash.

 

[DinohScene]

Flashing the TSOP eliminates the need for HDD keys.
Also making it virtually brick proof.

 

[raynor_ni]

soooo... I gave soldering a go.

My (current) problem is this: as I have a 1.4 Xbox with a winbond chip, I'm using HeXEn to attempt to flash it,
following the guide on this very forum, I get to the point where it asks me to pick a bios to flash (from Gentoox)
and it says "no bios files in C:\BIOS"

The files are there if I use a file manager to browse to it, so I dunno what gives.

 

[tbb043]

You technically can even do it with a trace repair pen.

It's possible you could even do it with a pencil. That's how I unlocked the multiplier on an old computer (that I'm still stuck with as my desktop) once.

 

[DinohScene]

It's possible yep, but I don't recommend it.
Easy to fuck up and a bricked BIOS means you'll have to hardmod it.
Or chuck it in the bin and get a new one.

 

[raynor_ni]

Tried flashing with Slayers and it froze on erase for some reason,
I felt for sure I had a brick but I don't

 

[DinohScene]

You're lucky then.

Did it work in the end or didn't you put in a hacked BIOS in C:\BIOS.?
You can obtain BIOSses from the usual places.

 

[raynor_ni]

yeah there are. As I posted above, Gentoox doesn't see any files at all in C:\BIOS, and I presume slayers simply crashed (otherwise if it had actually erased surely I'd have a brick?)

I presume I'm doing something wrong here but I don't know what.
If the solder wasn't done right, wouldn't it report that write isn't enabled or similar?

 

[DinohScene]

You'll have to download some hacked BIOSses and place them in the BIOS folder on the root of your C drive.
Then try it again.

It should work then.

 

[raynor_ni]

I have. For some reason Gentoox doesn't see them, it reports "No BIOS files in C:\BIOS.". Is there a recommended programme to do this other than Gentoox?

 

[DinohScene]

http://www.biline.ca/xbox_mod.htm

First hit.
There's a few ways to flash the TSOP.