Xbox softmod advice??

[Thomas83Lin]

Looking for the easiest\safest way to mod a Xbox (first time modding one), I'll be purchasing one soon but haven't yet. so a link or something to a updated tutorial would be nice, most stuff I've seen looks outdated. I can't really tell.

I do already have a Memory card to usb cable (action replay) if needed.

Thanks

 

[DinohScene]

Next thing you need is a retail copy of 007 Agent under Fire, Mechassault or Splintercell.
They must be originals and not platinum huts.

I'd search for a tutorial about Ndure.
I'm prolly going to write a softmodding tut for Temp soon but I think it'll be to late to be of any use for you ;p

 

[Thomas83Lin]

thanks, I'm in no hurry (I could wait) I like reading up on everything before purchasing just in case. Its a shame I used to own that particular 007.

 

[DinohScene]

Aye aye, I'll try and write it asap.
If you do obtain one of the games before I finished it all, feel free to PM me.
I'll try and help you as much as I can c:

 

[Thomas83Lin]

Thanks alot, but please don't be in no hurry
I guess I'll be getting 007, any particular model Xbox I should be on the look out for.

 

[DinohScene]

Any will do fine.
Altough a 1.5 one would be better (has the ability to flash the TSOP)
Just get one made around 2003 and you'll be good ;]

You could also get Mechassault.
I'd favor Mechassault over 007 since Mechassault is a pretty fun game as well ;]

 

[Thomas83Lin]

Sounds good. I'll start getting what I need. Looking forward to your guide.

 

[DinohScene]

Aye aye.

I'll do me best!

 

[Thomas83Lin]

Being cheap I found a 2005 model Xbox locally for cheap $10.95 "said it needed repairs". Figured I'd take a chance and got it home to find the only thing wrong with it was a faulty dvd drive. I tried cleaning the laser and then pot tweaking it with a voltage meter, But I never could even get it to read a music cd. Anyways long story short since it couldn't read any disc I figured hotswapping was my last option to softmod it.

The method I used had me disconnect the dvd drive to produce a error 12 to unlock the hdd then swap it while running a custom boot cd (pc side) with my specific kernel files iirc. Anyways everything went fairly smooth and I ended up with a Unleashx modded Xbox.

Here's were things went bad, I was needing a larger hard drive cause the stock hdd is extremely limited, well I had a 160gb western digital laying around, figured I could use that. Followed a tut with backing up C:\ E:\ and my eeprom.bin then on to another custom boot cd. Everything seemed to go well and after everything was done I was told to lock the drive which I did.
After sticking the new drive in the Xbox and turning it on. I was presented with a Error 13 (something about the dash) Anyways I figure easy I'll just try again right?? Wrong since the drive was now locked nothing would read it.
After afew hours reading searching I found a program called MHDD "to try and unlock the drive" in which I ran from my old Win98 machine but I still needed the unlock key, I thought easy I backed up all my keys. Well apparently all of the backed up keys was not the keys it was looking for.
It wanted a Master Password which I had no clue what that was. After much searching\reading I found out the Key was "XBOXSCENE" which unlocked the drive then I used another method by setting the new hdd drive to slave and swapping with the xbox's dvd drive and cloning which worked good. Now I have a Softmodded Xbox with a larger hard drive and its all working good. Most of my problems came from figuring out how to unlock my botched hard drive and finding the password.

Spoiler: Xbox /w Game Pic

 

[Jayro]

My Xbox in my sig only has the stock harddrive, and the clock wants set every time i plug it in because the battery is dead, but I'm running UnleashX dashboard, XBMC, N64 emulators on down to SNES, NES, GBA/GBC/GB. I find plaing Goldeneye on this machine to be amazing, with the only flaws being the lack of color in the explosions, and the usual black sky problem. The framerates for Zelda 64, Goldeneye, Mario 64, and Starfox 64 are superb. I used a Gameshark memcard-to-USB adapter to install the dashboard using the splintercell exploit. I was amazed that my brother actually had the game to accomplish the softmod.

 

[DinohScene]

Thomas83Lin
That's quite a ride.
Glad it all worked out!

JayRo
There's no battery inside the old Xbox.
It has a capacitor which keeps a current supplied to the clock counter.
That thing is prolly dead so if you want to fix the "timeset bug", replacing the capacitor is your only option pretty much.

 

[Jayro]

JayRo
There's no battery inside the old Xbox.
It has a capacitor which keeps a current supplied to the clock counter.
That thing is prolly dead so if you want to fix the "timeset bug", replacing the capacitor is your only option pretty much.

Damn... I'll have to solder a replaceable battery in it's place then...

 

[DinohScene]

I'd just stick with a capacitor.
Putting in a battery wouldn't be that good of a plan.

 

[FAST6191]

XBMC should be able to pull time from a ntp server so stick an ethernet cable in, if you do not have one nearby then the ethernet over powerline gear is very good these days.
Bonus is it can also be used as a halfway nice media streamer, though it will struggle with the H264 most groups have gone to these days.