Modding my Xbox
 

A friend of mine got frustrated while playing Halo II, kicked his Xbox, and killed the hard drive. Like a good friend, I then took advantage of him and bought it for 20$ before he had a chance to cool down and realize that replacing a single part would cost him 10$ on eBay ... rather than replace a hundred dollar system.

So I was sitting there with my new toy and a new hard drive that took Forever to get here, and I realized that this would be the perfect opportunity to build a mod chip for it.

But the more I searched, the more I realized .... Micro$oft has released nothing on the Xbox's architecture. Well, maybe not 'nothing' but nothing beyond what isn't obvious to the kind of people who'd want to open it up when they open it up. Upon a bit more digging, I found a few tidbits/projects/bragging, but no real compendium of knowledge.

Now to the point .... anyone out there have some good links/resources on this system's guts, and furthermore would anyone like to help me create the authoritative compendium?

I'll help...I been modding X-box and PS2's for awhile now...i'm pretty knowledgeable about this stuff

Why make/install a modchip when you can simply softmod it which runs pretty much the exact same thing?

I don't understand what you mean, when you say you want to build a modchip. There are several excellent chips on the market if you want to fit one. It's a shame your original hard drive is dead, or you could have softmodded. It still might be possible to do so, but not nearly as easy. Without access to your xbox's eeprom key, you're on a long road unless you go with a modchip.

Just to check, we are talking about the first-generation xbox, are we not? If you mean the xbox 360, then I can't tell you a damn thing except that many have tried. Sucesses have been limited.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php

That link should tell you everything that a person without hardcore scene access can learn. Some of the people who are really big in the scene do post there, so if you've got the skills, then you could easily get in with the big boys.

The SDK for xbox has been pirated, so you can find that on the net. Andrew "Bunnie" Hwang did the initial exploration of the hardware, and other hackers have followed. Bunnie is still one of only a few who could do what he did though. Such documents as exist are available on the site I linked you to. They may be buried deep in the forums though.

I know all about the practical side of using and installing softmods, but that's about it. The theoretical stuff, and the coding is just a hint above my level. I can understand some of it, but not enough.

With the original HDD busted, that's going to be a problem. In order to extract the eeprom key, you need a working hard drive. In order to have a working hard drive, you need to lock it with the EEPROM key.

It's a chicken-and-egg situation. Normally the stock HDD would do the job just fine, but since it is dead...

Ah, this is true. I must have just put aside the detail about the HDD being busted in the first place.

Speaking of xboxes, I have one which I never use. It has a 120 GB HDD in it which I'd like to stick into my own PC.

How would I go about doing this?

I imagine you just open the Xbox and rip that sucker out of it. Unless the Xbox formats it differently which I'm sure it doesn't all you'd have to do is take the harddrive and hook it up to your computer. You might need to change the pins to slave or cable select. I remember hearing people put stuff on those harddrives via computers so they must be able to talk to them.

Also depends if you locked your hard drive to the X box itself which in this case you would have to unlock it so u could use it for PC access...I remember trying to put an X box hard drive into my PC and it was being a huge bitch with me. I don't think you could plug it in and out as if it was a normal HDD. Also transferring files to a X box deals with FTP'ing it over...no other way except burning DVD's or CD-RW media

Ah, in that case, if you had no files you wanted to keep on the Xbox then it's just a simple matter of formatting it or just writing zeros to the whole damn thing. If it's using an IDE harddrive like I suspect it is then it's just a matter of one of those two.

Yeah I'm fully capable of adding stuff to i via ftp, I just don't feel like it. I rarely use it, and I don't want an 8 pound HDD sitting around doing practically nothing apart from storing games which I don't play, and anime which I don't watch.

I'll contact the guy who put it in, and see if he can do something about it.

Is it a chip inside of your X box or is it soft-mod?

If its a chip I think i could help you go through it...soft mod...i don't think i could do anything since I never soft-mod anything. Also if you don't want your chip I would be glad to buy it off your hands ^_^. Only if its a chip though

It's very easy to remove the HDD from the xbox. You need Torx screwdrivers in sizes 10, 15, and 20 to actually remove it from the box, first of all. Then you just need to use xboxhdm to unlock it, if it has been locked. Then you can partition and format it. Acer is right that it's a perfectly standard IDE hard drive.

The process of unlocking requires your EEPROM key, which is easy enough to obtain. It should have been in your E:\Backups folder as part of the process of modding the box in the first place, so check there.