The XBox 1 Thread

[Hyper_Eye]

I like the original Xbox a lot, especially since you can pick up games for it right now for practically nothing!!! I actually softmodded one of the ones that I have recently, but I can't figure out how to get files over onto it, like emulators, roms, etc.

 

You get what you want from something called xbins and then you get them to the Xbox using ftp. The most popular client in the Xbox modding community has always been FlashFXP but I use FileZilla because it is cross-platform. The login for the Xbox, regardless of dashboard used, is almost always username/password: xbox/xbox

[Hatta]

Yes, if you still have an Xbox, soft mod it now. It's pretty trivial at this point with Autoinstaller Deluxe, and can be done on any model. While you're at it, get a bigger hard drive while you can still find IDE drives. Once you do that, you'll never use the disc drive again.

 

XBMC is awesome, MAMEoX is awesome, loading games from hard disks is awesome. Now that Xbox live is gone, there's no downside to modding your box at all.

[Hyper_Eye]

Yes, if you still have an Xbox, soft mod it now. It's pretty trivial at this point with Autoinstaller Deluxe, and can be done on any model. While you're at it, get a bigger hard drive while you can still find IDE drives. Once you do that, you'll never use the disc drive again.

 

XBMC is awesome, MAMEoX is awesome, loading games from hard disks is awesome. Now that Xbox live is gone, there's no downside to modding your box at all.

 

There wasn't one before either. With chip mods the chips could be disabled and the bios' had built-in blocks that kept Live from being accessed while the chip was active and with nkpatcher kernel based softmods you could "cold boot" (boot the Xbox with a game disc in the drive) to bypass the mod and get on Live. So it has been years since Xbox Live was a reason not to mod. Obviously there is no reason to even care whether or not a mod allows Xbox Live access but any mod worth using would have.

 

Anyway, yes, installing a softmod is very simple to do and it opens your Xbox up to its real potential. When I chipped my main Xbox there were no softmods and when I did my first softmod they took forever and a day to do (every single step of it was manual) and they were nowhere near as good as a chip mod. Now there is no reason to have a chip unless you are interested in loading multiple bios' into banks (very unlikely that you care about this at all and if you do you can load them in software with phoenix bios loader unless you absolutely have to have them loaded from hardware) or need to be able to flip back to a factory boot. Otherwise you will notice no difference.

 

I have something pretty cool headed my way right now that I am going to post here. It should be here in the next week or so. In the meantime I plan on getting my gallery together so I can share pics of my Xbox stuff.

[Chris Leach]

I always loved Burnout 3 on the xbox over ps2 cause you could use the trigger buttons for the gas and break..felt so nice!!!!!!!!

[NE146]

Xbox is worth it alone for XBMC (which is now a multiplatform software oddly enough ). However, On the ol' Xbox 1 it's really starting to show it's age. I'm just coming across more and more videos where it will stutter and not really play well, and I don't mean hi-def content either (which it has never played well). Like for example I have these AVI rips of that "Shaun T Insanity" workouts and they just stutter. I ended up converting them to .WMV's and now it shows up smooth on xbox XBMC. But yeah.. it's becoming somewhat of a hassle especially when I can stream to the 360 using TVersity and it plays fine, and it plays hi-def content.

 

The interface on the XBMC is so nice though. Ah well.

[Austin]

You get what you want from something called xbins and then you get them to the Xbox using ftp. The most popular client in the Xbox modding community has always been FlashFXP but I use FileZilla because it is cross-platform. The login for the Xbox, regardless of dashboard used, is almost always username/password: xbox/xbox

 

That's good information to know.. When I softmodded my system last year, the biggest pain was actually getting files to the unit. The FTP software I had seemed to not like transferring certain files. If I just highlighted an entire folder and dragged it over (say, an emulator), the FTP transfer would stop dead in its tracks if there were any text files (or anything similar) being transferred. That issue led me to have to monitor the transfer at all times, or drag and drop just a few files at a time. I still don't understand why it did that to this day.. Hopefully those above programs don't have the same problem.

[NE146]

That's good information to know.. When I softmodded my system last year, the biggest pain was actually getting files to the unit. The FTP software I had seemed to not like transferring certain files. If I just highlighted an entire folder and dragged it over (say, an emulator), the FTP transfer would stop dead in its tracks if there were any text files (or anything similar) being transferred. That issue led me to have to monitor the transfer at all times, or drag and drop just a few files at a time. I still don't understand why it did that to this day.. Hopefully those above programs don't have the same problem.

 

It is extremely easy to FTP files to the xbox and you really shouldn't have any problems. Stuff should just fly right on in. HOWEVER.. one stumbling block I had in the very beginning (that I didn't realize) was that you could not transfer files that had names larger than.. 42(?) characters in size. So this instantly stopped a lot of ROM's I wanted on there until I could trim them.

 

I'm not sure if the same limitation exists today.. Still though.

[Hyper_Eye]

It is extremely easy to FTP files to the xbox and you really shouldn't have any problems. Stuff should just fly right on in. HOWEVER.. one stumbling block I had in the very beginning (that I didn't realize) was that you could not transfer files that had names larger than.. 42(?) characters in size. So this instantly stopped a lot of ROM's I wanted on there until I could trim them.

 

I'm not sure if the same limitation exists today.. Still though.

 

It is a limitation of the fatx filesystem and so it is a permanent limitation. I have only ever had a couple of ROMs I needed to trim. A good FTP client will skip a failed transfer, add it to a list so you can see what failed, and continue to transfer the rest.

[NE146]

Actually if I'm not mistaken in recent years I could FTP whatever I wanted with regular FlashFXP and it would automagically truncate on the xbox for some reason. So it became zero worries. I don't know if it was a function built into the latest builds of XBMC which I use as the primary dash. Who knows

[Hyper_Eye]

Actually if I'm not mistaken in recent years I could FTP whatever I wanted with regular FlashFXP and it would automagically truncate on the xbox for some reason. So it became zero worries. I don't know if it was a function built into the latest builds of XBMC which I use as the primary dash. Who knows

 

Yes your files may be automatically truncated for you but that is not necessarily okay all the time. When I first worked on getting music going in Odamex I transferred a bunch of timidity files and a couple got truncated. All of those files are referenced in a config file so I had to figure out which ones were truncated and fix them in the config. So it really depends on the situation as to which is better.

[NE146]

Actually if I'm not mistaken in recent years I could FTP whatever I wanted with regular FlashFXP and it would automagically truncate on the xbox for some reason. So it became zero worries. I don't know if it was a function built into the latest builds of XBMC which I use as the primary dash. Who knows

 

Yes your files may be automatically truncated for you but that is not necessarily okay all the time. When I first worked on getting music going in Odamex I transferred a bunch of timidity files and a couple got truncated. All of those files are referenced in a config file so I had to figure out which ones were truncated and fix them in the config. So it really depends on the situation as to which is better.

 

 

Oh yeah of course if the files are referenced explicitely in some manner then you will need to be on top of that . Also I do think if the filenames are long enough and there are multiple versions of the file i.e. "weird snes game blah blah blah..... xenophone1[c1!].zip, and they all get truncated to a point the filename becomes the same, THEN it looks like it's a dupe file and the FTP client will ask if you want to overwrite.

 

Whatever the case, it's nothing a little common sense about what you happen to be doing can't handle.

Edited May 15, 2010 by NE146

[Hyper_Eye]

Alright... it came in.

 

This may look like a standard Xbox:

 

 

That is actually an official Microsoft Xbox Development Kit. It has 128MB of memory as opposed to 64MB, it runs a development BIOS, boots into a debug dashboard, and it does not run retail software. I already had a box setup with a debug BIOS and the debug dashboard, as can be seen in my previously posted videos, but that is a standard Xbox modded and it does not boot into that mode. I run a shortcut on my dash to go into that mode. It also has the standard 64MB of RAM. The memory difference in this kit makes a big difference and allows me to take advantage of more features provided by the Xbox SDK.

 

Here it is having just been turned on:

 

 

And here is the main dash window:

 

 

Also, the package included a spare dev board. I should be able to use this to convert one of my spare Xbox's into another official dev kit:

 

 

There are a couple more images and you can see them in my gallery.

 

All of this was donated to me by Undead of Team Assembly. It was absolutely awesome of him to do that. He could have sold it and I know he had other people interested in it. He donated it to further the work I am doing on game ports as well as the libraries I am working on which should be useful to other developers. Here is the thread in which this unfolded: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=712946

[MagitekAngel]

I never owned the original box, but every once in a while I have a very strong urge to get a modded one to use as an emulator console. There's a guy on Kijiji just down the street from me selling professionally-modded units for 150 bones, preloaded with pretty much every game ever. I'm thinking about it.

[hex65000]

@ Hyper Eye

I have heard that you can install the extra memory into the commercially available XBox units (the solder pads are there, just no ICs), and you can take advantage of the memory upgrade in the form of minor performance improvements in the system. Of course, getting and installing parts with that fine a pitch to them would be a pretty harrowing experience, a better question is it even worth the bother?

 

Hex.

[ Just doing something or another... ]

[Hyper_Eye]

When you are using mame there are games that require the 128MB to play well. It can also be beneficial to a select few games on other emulators. XBMC will take advantage of it as well. Otherwise there is no purpose in having the increased memory unless you are doing development. I have some more pictures I am going to post in a bit where I was going to point out those pads.

 

Another difference on these dev boards is that they do not require a locked drive. You can throw any drive you want at it and use the XDK Recovery disc to whipe it and copy a retail devkit setup on to it. That is a good thing because it means turning that extra board into a second rare kit has been no problem at all.

[SRGilbert]

It is extremely easy to FTP files to the xbox and you really shouldn't have any problems. Stuff should just fly right on in. HOWEVER.. one stumbling block I had in the very beginning (that I didn't realize) was that you could not transfer files that had names larger than.. 42(?) characters in size. So this instantly stopped a lot of ROM's I wanted on there until I could trim them.

 

I'm not sure if the same limitation exists today.. Still though.

 

Another workaround for the long file name issue I found is to gather all the files (roms in this case) into a zip file. Copy the zip file over and then use the file manager in the dashboard to unzip it to the harddrive!

 

This works great if you are setting up a whole set of emulators, you can collect everything together this way and copy it all over at once. Nice if you are setting it up on the fly for a buddy.

 

I've only been at it for about a year now, but softmodded xboxes are a gift from god. I've modded at least 6 now, and it's gets easier every time. So flexable for a number of uses, and so cheap too. Emulation is awesome, XBMC is everything it's cracked up to be. I just wish the damn HD cables were a little easier to come by!

Edited May 26, 2010 by SRGilbert

[Austin]

I never owned the original box, but every once in a while I have a very strong urge to get a modded one to use as an emulator console. There's a guy on Kijiji just down the street from me selling professionally-modded units for 150 bones, preloaded with pretty much every game ever. I'm thinking about it.

 

Save yourself the extra $120 and buy a used console and soft-mod it yourself. It's easy as pie!

 

Man, that sounded corny.

[Hyper_Eye]

@ Hyper Eye

I have heard that you can install the extra memory into the commercially available XBox units (the solder pads are there, just no ICs), and you can take advantage of the memory upgrade in the form of minor performance improvements in the system. Of course, getting and installing parts with that fine a pitch to them would be a pretty harrowing experience, a better question is it even worth the bother?

 

Hex.

[ Just doing something or another... ]

 

I added a bunch of pictures to my gallery. I pulled a retail board with some bad traces from a system and dropped the spare devkit board in it. I unlocked the hdd with the retail board first as the devkit wouldn't be able to lock it and the devkit does not need a locked hdd. You can actually put any hdd you want in it and run the recovery disc to set it up. So everything worked great and now I have 2 official devkits thanks to Undead of Team Assembly.

 

Anyway, here is the retail board on which you can clearly see the 4 pads with only two of them containing memory modules:

 

 

You can add modules to those pads to make the retail board a 128MB board. That does not make it identical to a debug board but it is the biggest difference. You could easily mod the 128MB retail system and install an XDK setup (with a 1MB bootable from media debug bios) to basically have everything the debug unit does but with the added benefit of being able to run retail software.

 

Here is the debug board having replaced the retail board. You can see the 4 pads all have modules:

 

 

If you look in the gallery you will also see the graphics chip up close which is different between the 2 boards.

 

Until the hdd is configured the system will simply freeze halfway through the Xbox logo. Having booted with the recovery disc this is the first screen you are presented with:

 

 

See the gallery for more shots of the recovery.

 

When all is said and done I have a fresh SDK install: