Xbox mods
 

*mods, not sure if this is illegal or not, but feel free to close thread if it is*

I was interested in purchasing an Xbox from one of my buddies for a decent price. I am not really interested in many xbox games since I have a ps2 with a few games but I was wondering if anybody has modded their xbox. Some of my friends say you can upgrade the 8gb hd upto a 120gb hd and thats what i would be most interested in. I am not interested in burning or copying games, but I would use it mostly for emulator purposes. They also said you can have any nes,sega,snes,genesis,gameboy and n64 games on their.

Anyone have any experience?

If nobody can answer this question due to forum rules and regulations, does anyone have experience of upgrading hard drives, is it the same as a pc?

www.xbox-scene.com

Very easy to do. All you need to do is create a boot disc that reformats the HD after you install it.

Tech TV Tutorial

Any idea where to get a pre-modded xbox?

Do I need a DVD burner to do this? In the tech tv article, it says you need to burn EvoX to a dvd-r

No, it will fit on a CD-RW (most X-boxes can not read CD-Rs but have no problem with CD-RW's)

<i>You are getting into iffy territory - GP</i>

I would love to get a pre-modded xbox but I am getting an excellent deal on one.

you don't need to upgrade the HD since most emulated games are pretty small. So far I have run a c64, mame, and gameboy emulator, and they all worked relatively well. Many emulators will allow you to run games off a dvdr or cdr as well, which is another reason you don't need the big HD

Sorry, the reason I mentioned that was that I seen websites that have the mods right in them already. In order for the hard drive to be upgraded, you need a modchip (i believe) and thats why I was not sure if this would be a violation or not.

You do NOT need a mod chip to install EVOX. The boot disk will do everything for you. However the claim that xboxs have no trouble reading from CD-RW is FALSE. It may work, but there is no way to be sure. The first generation box has an inferior DVD drive that has more trouble than the rest. Some have had to modify their DVD-drive's laser to get that to work. Give the CD-RW a try first (many resets may be necessary) then look for a DVD copy if you need it.

Question:
What steps do I need to take to be able to run a SNES emu? What will it cost? I need to be able to still play on Live.

You can't mod the Xbox if you plan on playing on Live unless you remember EACH AND EVERY TIME to turn off the modchip (there are switches made for them to turn them on and off) when you want to play a Live enabled game. The switch being off lets you run the original dash. If you log onto Live with the modchip on you are immediately (and I do mean immediately) banned from Live.

Just something to ponder. If you're going to play the mod game, I would recommend buying another Xbox for that purpose only and leaving the original one to play Live on.

Heh.. yeah I thought so.. I just found out I may actually be getting my SNES Game Doctor finally so I guess it's a moot point.

I'm also interested in using emulators on the x-box such as NES, SNES, genesis, master system, GBA. Anyone have easy to understand instructions on how to do this. I know you need a modded x-box, but what next? Do you burn the emulators and roms onto a CD-RW/DVD-R and put them on the x-box? Anyhelp is apprciated. Also would the modded x-box from sytem-mods.com work for this purpose. Reading the description they have posted it is not quite clear. Thanks

Interesting note, a friend modified his a bunch. But he said there is something you can do with mechAssault that allows to to FTP the Xbox from your PC. This allows you to backup your save games and whatnot. He might have also said it allows the transfer of MP3's, I can't remember. But the thing is that this doesn't effect XBox Live at all. You can still use it. Interesting. Don't have to crack the case or anything.

I highly recommend you guys check out the emulation forum at www.xbox-scene.com

Agreed, that site has been excellent so far with its easy, detailed descriptions of everything possible to get out of your xbox and decent help forums.

Does any hard drive work with xbox, how about a Western Digital 40gb

I would love to add on another HD to my XBOX but I would never bother with the modding. I'd never trust myself to do it and I don't have faith in other people even if they have done it a ton of times.

I find myself wary of replacing the hard drive as well, but was able to mod the box for no more money than the cost of a breakaway cabe, an old USB cable, a crossover cable and a cheap memory card (using a gamesave hack). Never have to open the box, and with the right software, you can serve via LAN from your PC to the Xbox. So the need to upgrade the hard drive is also unnecessary.

Plus, if you have access to a DVD-ROM drive or if your box is CD-RW friendly (the ones with Thompson drives aren't so friendly), you can just run your software off of the discs.

Again, much useful info at xbox-scene.com

The hacked dashboard you run on your modded xbox has a ftp server built in. The easiest thing to do is connect your xbox up to your network, then ftp your emulators and all your roms over to the xbox harddrive.

Yeah my xbox is running ona 120gb HDD, (and pixy you will love this) I have EVERY Nintendo, SNES game ever released in the states, plus games from other countries, as well as wierd games like naked mario (just SmB with anaked mario) rotfl

I also have emulators for atari, GB, MAME, lynx, gensis and more

plus you can just ftp mp3's over to your xbox,

I have also mods that have temp. gauge on the front of my xbox, so I know the temp aorund the HDD.

I have the xecuter2 lite, witht he switch but I own another xbox for live, because I do not want to risk losing allof th esoftware I have on my xbox, if god forbid MS has something going out across lIVE that can somehow dectect live even when I have the switch off

Naked DOAX :up:

About the Mechassault/linux hack... my understanding was that there was a bug in a few games, Mechassault included, that allowed people to do things such as load Linux onto an Xbox without a modchip. But if you have Xbox Live, they "fixed" this flaw automatically with one of the firmware updates.

xbox-scene is definitely the place to go to if you want to learn exactly what you can do and how to do it. The problem is that it's somewhat poorly organized and it'll take quite a bit of reading to get up to speed.

The end result is well worth it, though. I went the HD hot swap, font exploit, TSOP flash route. Not the easiest, but definitely the cheapest.

I put it together just to run XBMP and it is by far the best network enabled media player available. Nothing else I'm aware of even comes close to providing all its features at even double the price. The fact that it can also run emulators and some pretty cool homebrew software is just icing.

I agree, XBMP (XBox Media Player) is well worth the price of all the upgrades. BTW, if you havn't seen it there is a new release of XBMC (XBox Media Center) that you might want to take a look at.

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On another note, I've heard different things about using the controllers In Game Reset feature while playing. Many places say if you use this, it doesn't clear the Xbox's internal cache written to the X,Y & Z drives for the game you reset. This means if you keep doing it and don't manually purge those drives, you will eventualy run out of space. I'm not sure if this is the actual case, I sometimes use it, but have never checked those drives for leftover files.

Dang, reading xbox-scene gave me a headache... :) Ok, how do I find out what version Xbox I have? Xecutor2 Lite + (no soldering for me!), Evox dashboard, and bigger HD....? And doesn't the mod chip come with it's own BIOS? What's all that stuff I'm reading about having to flash the bios? Don't want to clutter this thread, someone can e-mail me if they care to help. :)

Edited to add: Found the version, 1.00.4034.01 where 4034 means V 1.0 apparently.

This thread is keeps going in the wrong direction... closing...