Xbox Softmodding HELL!!! a.k.a The Adventures of teh Calacera

[Calavera]

The last time I softmodded an original Xbox was probably 2-3 years ago. I used a really old computer for the hot swap trick and had no problem. For those who don't know hotswapping is swapping the ide plug on the Xbox drive with one in your PC then running a program that sets everything up on the drive for you. Pretty simple.

I've got several old computers out in the garage so I bring one in and try it out. It always tells me no drive found no xbox partition found. Hmm, it says most problems are caused by the drive not being unlocked. So it says one way to make sure the drive is unlocked is play a music track then pause and hot swap. No problem I do it and, drive not found. So I figure maybe I should use the computer I used last time to do it. I find it, then realize it has one of those old keyboard connectors. Not PS/2 the older bigger ones. Well I've got the keyboard for it somewhere, I look and look but can't find it. But hey I notice it has a card for PS/2 mouse and keyboard, great! I bring it in hook it all up and the PS/2 keyboard won't work. I'm stuck at press F1 to enter setup.

Ok fine, so I try yet another PC. Do all the recommended steps for unlocking the drive, pause a music track. Unplug the DVD drive , try swapping at the Microsoft splash screen. So I've tried 2 different computers and keep getting the same results, obviously I'm doing something wrong! I decide I'm going to search for the old connector keyboard out in the garage again, and this time I find it! I bring that computer back in again, set it up and for some reason it won't load the program to softmod the xbox. It boots the CD to the main menu but once you pick an option it freezes. Well shit, back to the garage with that.

So I think ok I'll try the PC in the living room. It is new enough that it has Sata ports but still has one IDE channel. Long story short, same results. Drive not found. Ok Calavera you've tried 3 completely different PCs, it obviously isn't the computers it is you! I know I know! I'm thinking the same thing, what in the hell am I doing wrong?!

I don't want to give up so I decide to give the old big style keyboard connector PC another try. I don't bring it in this time, I hook it up in the garage so I don't waste another trip carrying it in. I plug it in and pop the Xbox modding CD in, this time when it starts and gives me a CMOS error I press F2 to set the default values instead of setting it myself for the CD drive to boot first and whatnot. This time it loads the CD just fine! Well what the hell? Ok now I've got to lug it back inside and give it a try with the xbox.

I bring it back in, turn the xbox on and play a music track then pause it (which I've tried with every other PC with no success) pull the ide from the Xbox and plug the IDE from the PC into the xbox drive. And voila! Drive found, xbox partition detected. First time no problem. Around 3 hours or more and I finally get it to work on the PC I wanted to try it with in the first place!

I still don't really understand what the problem was, three completely different PCs with different hardware from different years and none of them would work with softmodding? It would seem I was doing something wrong but it worked the first time with the oldest PC. I've got two other Xboxes that need softmodding at some point. Needless to say I'll be using the old PC!

[Big Boss Man]

I have an old XBox I was thinking of modding to play old games on but it seems it's quite a difficult process. Shame because of its architecture you can't just get it to load a CD R and do it from there. The Dreamcast is surprisingly easy to run homebrew and emus on so maybe in time somebody will make it easier to mod the XBox too.

[Calavera]

I have an old XBox I was thinking of modding to play old games on but it seems it's quite a difficult process. Shame because of its architecture you can't just get it to load a CD R and do it from there. The Dreamcast is surprisingly easy to run homebrew and emus on so maybe in time somebody will make it easier to mod the XBox too.

I remember the first time I found out about DCEmulation, I didn't even understand what I was looking at at first. I found it searching for a Dreamcast emulator like alot of people did. I saw they had NES and SNES emulators, eh big deal what emulation site doesn't. Then after looking around a bit more it hit me.... you can play NES and SNES emulators on a Dreamcast?!?! In no time I had two CD-Rs burn NesterDC and a rom disc. It was awesome! Playing emulators on the PC was alright but with the Dreamcast you could play them on a TV and it was like you were playing the real thing! Then the Xbox came out and in no time had perfect NES,SNES,Genesis CD/32X, N64 etc... I bough a modchip and my Dreamcast emulating days were over.


The Xbox really isn't too bad to mod in theory. If everything works right it takes no time at all, but as you can see from my story sometimes nothing goes right at all and it takes all night! It didn't end there either, after I posted that I had some more......"fun"


SOFTMODDING HELL PART 2
So the Xbox was softmodded finally, thats great except the stock 8gb drive doesn't give you alot of room for stuff. I had a 250GB drive that had been sitting in a drawer for nearly 10 years so I figure I'll put it to use. I FTP the stock drives contents to my PC (which is only about 550mb) and burnt a new ISO that would basically clone the stock drive onto the 250GB with alot more free space of course.

Everything copies over no problem at all. The final step before you can put it in the Xbox is locking the drive. To do this you need a copy of your EEPROM which I had and placed in the correct folder on the CD. Only it is telling me it can't find the EEPROM.bin, here we go again! But it has an option to search for the file on a floppy. Well the PC I was using was old and had a floppy and I just happen to have a USB floppy so I'll just put it on there. I put the EEPROM.bin on the floppy and put it in the PC, it fines the file but tells me "this drive does not support the ATA security spec" You gotta be kidding me! So I look online and find a database of hard drives and if they are lockable for use with the Xbox. The exact drive I'm using is on there several times with the status that it is unlockable.

Well the PC I was using was pretty old (around 1995) so perhaps it just doesn't have the ability to lock the drive. No problem I'll stick the drive in one of the PCs I was using before and lock it. So I do that and it gives me a new error that the drive is frozen. That error is caused by the computer not the drive so shit I guess I'll try yet another PC! I pop the drive into an old Dell Optiplex, pop the floppy in only to find out the floppy drive seems to be dead on that machine! I'm in too deep to quit now, I'll simply pull the floppy from the PC that gave me the frozen drive error and use it.

I go to take the drive out, hey only one screw and then the drive is free! So I go to slide it out and find out that the CPU cooler is in the way of removing the floppy. Everything that could go wrong pretty much did, and I'd about had it. I not so carefully ripped the cooler off and got the floppy drive out. Now to put it in the Dell and more than likely get the same damn error! I boot up the CD, put the EEPROM floppy in and........it worked. The drive had successfully been locked. I put in the Xbox and holy shit it works! I copied a game over to test it out, works great so I finally put everything back together and it is done.

The final step is to install Coin-Ops 8, but that is as simple as copying it over FTP. Atleast it should be, seeing how everything else went who knows!

[melancholy]

I remember the days of hot swapping hard drives to mod my Xbox. I don't have to worry about that anymore, though, because my cousin bought an Action Replay and an exploitable Splinter Cell that he later gave to me.

[Skynet]

I remember the days of hot swapping hard drives to mod my Xbox. I don't have to worry about that anymore, though, because my cousin bought an Action Replay and an exploitable Splinter Cell that he later gave to me.

Same, I have that with one of the exploitable games and a save permanently on my memory card. So easy to do

[Big Boss Man]

I think the Action Replay/game save mod is much easier and one I'd rather try. The other seems that unless you have the right equipment you'll get stuck at stage 1. I know that the 360 can read USB drives so if the XBox can too it would be simpler to mod that way. I think the PS2 is quite easy to softmod as is the Wii if it's firmware is 4.2. The PS3 did allow you to install Linux on it at one point and it's a shame now its not as prominent as it was that they could allow you to do it again and use it with a Mouse and keyboard as an alternative to a desktop PC.

[melancholy]

Yeah, but the reason we all did the hot swap method back at the height of Xbox modding days was because it was a free solution. Buying an Action Replay and Splinter Cell back then would have set you back at least $50, usually more.

[Roofus]

Yeah, but the reason we all did the hot swap method back at the height of Xbox modding days was because it was a free solution. Buying an Action Replay and Splinter Cell back then would have set you back at least $50, usually more.

If you knew enough people who had Xboxes that wanted to mod them, you could make that back fairly quickly though.

[pixel]

Oh boy, Xbox softmodding. Ten years ago, I was modding all the consoles on my dorm floor and giving people emulators. Weird custom Halo 2 maps made our LAN parties interesting, too.

I did the IDE swap trick a few times, but the Splinter Cell exploit was the best. I still love how unabashedly PC those consoles were inside.

[Code-Red]

I did the hotswap a number of times back in the day when the old hardware was easily available and trustworthy. Tried buying a few computers off kijiji a year ago to do a bunch of softmods and none of them worked properly - so I just shelled out for a 007 Nightfire softmod kit with the mem card. Makes everything extremely painless.