Modded my Xbox

[Shibathedog]

only took years of wanting to but being too lazy

 

I'm running UnleashX and trying to get all my stuff onto it right now. I got my Genesis emu working fine, my SNES emu seems to be working fine but all my roms got screwed up somehow so im slowly downloading them all again over bittorrent (should be done in about 3 weeks) as well as my NES ROMs (damnit), and FBA-XXX doesnt like any of my Neo Geo roms (damnit again) so i have to get all those all over again too (although those came from weird places anyway, I havent done anything arcade related since mame.dk because i never really got around to finding a replacement resource of decent quality)

 

I also got XBMC working, man that thing is fantastic, its like my DVD player but faster and linked to the intarweb.

 

The only thing i can't really figure out is how to get my emus to appear under the emulators menu, should I just make a folder called Emulators and put them in there?

 

Any recommended downloads/apps/games/etc? I'm going to be glued to this thing for months - and i thought PSP modding was fun when i finally tried it

 

Oh and if i upgrade the HDD, Can i just FTP everything from my HDD now onto my PC, then onto the new HDD and use some app to lock it if i even have to and thats it? I skimmed a couple tutorials real fast and some of them made it seem real easy while some made it seem impossible.

[ken_cinder]

If you like XBMC that much, you should ditch UnleashX. I like UnleashX, but I switched to using XBMC as my dash and I haven't looked back.

 

As for adding a menu item, it's been awhile, but I had to edit the config file manually to do it. Not sure if it's been changed in the later versions of UnleashX.

As for upgrading the hard drive, are you hard or soft modded?

[Devia Eleven]

only took years of wanting to but being too lazy

 

I'm running UnleashX and trying to get all my stuff onto it right now. I got my Genesis emu working fine, my SNES emu seems to be working fine but all my roms got screwed up somehow so im slowly downloading them all again over bittorrent (should be done in about 3 weeks) as well as my NES ROMs (damnit), and FBA-XXX doesnt like any of my Neo Geo roms (damnit again) so i have to get all those all over again too (although those came from weird places anyway, I havent done anything arcade related since mame.dk because i never really got around to finding a replacement resource of decent quality)

 

I also got XBMC working, man that thing is fantastic, its like my DVD player but faster and linked to the intarweb.

 

The only thing i can't really figure out is how to get my emus to appear under the emulators menu, should I just make a folder called Emulators and put them in there?

 

Any recommended downloads/apps/games/etc? I'm going to be glued to this thing for months - and i thought PSP modding was fun when i finally tried it

 

Oh and if i upgrade the HDD, Can i just FTP everything from my HDD now onto my PC, then onto the new HDD and use some app to lock it if i even have to and thats it? I skimmed a couple tutorials real fast and some of them made it seem real easy while some made it seem impossible.

 

You should able to add source, then browse for the folder.

[Shibathedog]

Softmodded, and i mean like in my main menu theres an option for "Emulators" but i cant figure out how to put anything in it, only for "Apps" and "Games"

 

I was actually thinking of using XBMC as the main dash but i didnt think it was considered a "real" dash so there might be some weird reason not to, guess not though.

 

Oh and when i upgrade the HDD, i could give a crap about Live, this Xbox will never see Live again, so if i end up losing everything or whatever im fine with that, i probably wont even play any xbox games.

 

What is with this flocking filename size limit though? Is there any way around that? Its so annoying, and theres no way ill get all my music on there like this (i only bothered to clean up ID3 tags, which is good because if i really had to i could do a batch rename from the tags but id like to avoid it)

[gavin19]

I have my 1.6 softmodded using a hotswap/ndure. I tried upgrading the hdd once before I realised it was incompatible and bricked it! It is easier though if your Xbox is chipped.

 

Pay a visit to xbins on Efnet and grab all the latest emus, Zsnes, FBAxxx Pro, Surreal xxx, xboyadvance, Pcsxbox 1.8, MameOx 128 Plus etc. Hang on to Unleash too because it can open text files unlike XBMC. Handy if you want to keep faqs on your hdd or edit ini files, which you will invariably have to do at some point. But definately use XBMC as your default dash as there is an emu folder already set up for you, not to mention it's wealth of a/v features. There was also a supplementary codec pack for XBMC that added some extra compatibility too. If you can't find it I can send you it.

 

I have a selection of my most played roms on my hdd but keep full sets on dvd as the majority of the emus have a dvd browser so you can play them straight off disc. This way I didn't need to upgrade the hdd to squeeze all my roms on. For mame the roms will need to be pretty old because MameOx uses the 0.84 core, with the exception of a few recent updates. if you can get a hold of BAED 3A then it has the old MameOx and 4gigs of mame ready to go. For CPS 1+2 and NeoGeo, FBAxxx Pro is the way to go.

 

Certainly you could upgrade your hdd if you wish but unless you want to transfer your games to hdd or a load of music/films, it's not a must have. If you are going to upgrade, check the drive's compatibility first. There is a site with a list of working hdds somewhere. I can't rem the link right now but it's out there.

 

I can't think of much else but if you get stuck I'll probably have been there myself. I have to say I wouldn't trade my modded box for anything. It's like the swiss army knife of modern gaming. Enjoy!

[ken_cinder]

Softmodded hard drive upgrade requires you redo the softmod. You needn't lose your stuff though, just unlock the original drive and hook it up to your PC when you have the new drive done. Then copy everything you need over (Gamesaves etc).

 

Be sure to check the lockable drives list on XS though, not every drive supports ATAPI security features (What you need to lock a drive).

 

I've got a 40GB drive in mine, I find it ridiculous that people put 300GB+ drives in there. SMB is a feature in almost every piece of Xbox software, stream stuff!

 

Oh and you'll need your EEPROM/HDKEY to lock said new drive (And unlock the old one, using XboxHDM). Be sure to get EvoX on there and do a backup, then copy the backed up EEPROM etc to your PC and keep it safe. Once you do that, you're in the clear no matter what you do (Besides something going wrong with your hardware).

[Shibathedog]

I would be perfectly fine with losing everything i have on it right now so re-doing the softmod isnt a big deal, and wouldnt it be easier to FTP everthing from the box as opposed to unlocking it and putting it in my computer? And is there any way i can put .7z files onto this? Theres no real efficient way i can think of to extract all these and only keep one version of each game

 

I was thinking of using this 40GB i have right now (should fit most Gen/SNES/NES/NeoGeo roms which is all i feel like bothering to put on there) and all my movies are burned and music is real easy to stream.

 

This is the drive I have lying around BTW

 

http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list&v_...EB%20-%2000CPF0

 

tore it out of an external USB HDD

[ken_cinder]

I would be perfectly fine with losing everything i have on it right now so re-doing the softmod isnt a big deal, and wouldnt it be easier to FTP everthing from the box as opposed to unlocking it and putting it in my computer? And is there any way i can put .7z files onto this? Theres no real efficient way i can think of to extract all these and only keep one version of each game

 

I was thinking of using this 40GB i have right now (should fit most Gen/SNES/NES/NeoGeo roms which is all i feel like bothering to put on there) and all my movies are burned and music is real easy to stream.

 

This is the drive I have lying around BTW

 

http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list&v_...EB%20-%2000CPF0

 

tore it out of an external USB HDD

 

Actually, yeah it'd be easier to FTP files from the old drive first (I was thinking in terms of something I did recently which required my suggestion).

I don't think anything supports 7zip, as the RAM requirements could easily exceed what is available just for decompression. I compress with Ultra and high word/dictionary size, which requires 1381MB RAM for compression and 130MB for decompression, the Xbox only has 64MB of RAM. Even Ultra with default dictionary/word size requires 66MB for decompression.

 

As for getting the ROMs out of solid compressed 7z archives (Such as a GoodMerge set) without manual hassle, try UnGoodMerge.

[Shibathedog]

fantastic thanks, i knew there was a tool for it but i couldn't remember the name!

 

When i get out of work today im going to FTP everything off my old drive, install the new one and FTP all the files onto it (or should i just plug it into my PC and copy them that way?) and it should work right? Then its just a matter of FTPing all my ROMs/some music for when i bring it to a friends.

 

my next goal is to try and get XBMC as my dash (UnleashX seems kinda glitchy to me)

[Shibathedog]

okay cool so i got XBMC as my default dash, and built a new HDD partition on my other drive, and everything is perfect except one thing

 

i cant get the damn HDD to lock, when i run the linux boot disc on my PC it says i have to disable auto IDE detection in my BIOS, and i tried messing with some things that had to do with IDE channels and setting them to manual, and no matter what i tried it kept saying the drive was frozen and it couldn't lock >_<

 

I'm positive its lockable though i looked it up, im screwing around with some configmagic thing right now but it doesnt seem to be helping (I cant even get it to run, im guessing i have to run it as a dashboard and not off a disc)

 

I'm gonna go try to lock it with the PC boot disc in my other PC but if that doesnt work i hope im not screwed (and i obviously have my eeprom and all that)

 

EDIT: Yeah its doing the same stupid thing in the other computer which doesn't surprise me because its a gateway and the BIOS doesn't let you do anything. I read if you plug it in after the PC boots it wont happen but that doesnt make any sense to me and sounds like it wont work and im too tired now to try it. What is the right way to run this config magic thing? as an app off the HDD?

 

EDIT AGAIN: Yeah i have to run it as a program, and it opens and everything, but im afraid to touch anything and do this hot swapping crap without someone telling me exactly what to do because ill end up screwing myself

[Shibathedog]

flock YES!!!

 

haha i figured it out, Okay heres what you do when you get the HDD is frozen error when trying to lock

 

Plug everything in, HDD as master, CDROM as Slave

 

In your BIOS set the IDE Master to NONE, or whatever setting basically means Ignore whatever is on the primary IDE channel

 

Boot the disc and it works!!

 

I've also read that plugging the HDD in after the menu boots can work, or hotswapping the HDD into the Xbox with config magic can work, But the above method worked for me.