Blogger Profile
XBox360 Blog
MyPage Links
- Mossy Cup Brewing
- MAME Cabinet
- Flightsim Cockpit
- My PVR
- My Lego sets
- Computer Systems Page
- Family Photos
- TheMcClains.net
Blog Archives
Contact me
Jeff McClain's Home Page
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Upgraded my XBox Hack
First, I'm absolutely LOVING my hacked XBox. I've even pulled my HTPC out of my audio cabinet in the main room, and hacked a SECOND XBox to watch movies, play games, DVD (in full 1080i and Dolby 5.1 Digital surround sound), emulators, listen to digitally streamed music off the internet, as well as personal MP3's.
I upgraded my main one to an Xecutor 3 CE chip and a full LCD control panel with USB ports (it shows the name of the MP3 or movie that is playing as well as time indictors, etc). The X3 chip has built in FTP support as well as HDD prep built into it (and a million other cool things). Makes mod-ing an xbox a breeze.
Here are some pictures of it.
Comments:
Just got done doing my 5th xbox mod (this one was a v1.6 box, and was a little more difficult, but the board is much cleaner inside than having the USB daughter board in there cluttering stuff up). Most of these are for friends. I bought 3 "broken" xbox consoles off ebay. Have gotten 1 so far and it had a bad hard drive (looks like the previous owner dropped the console), and popping a 200GB drive in and doing a chip-mod (Xecuter 3 CE) fixed it right up.
Make that 11.
Have really gotten this down to a science now. Have most of the Xecuter 3 CE chips figured out, and the settings in most of the BIOS and dashboards. Also, have learned a LOT about the various versions of Xbox out there, and have even modified two version 1.6's (which are more difficult).
If you can get your choice of xbox's, the version 1.4 ones made around September of 2003 are probably the best ones (Samsung DVD drive, easy to mod, uncluttered main board, and still has space for the 128MB memory upgrade). The version 1.6 boards have problems with the 3.0.0 Flash Bios (especially when using a hi-def cable), and also don't have any place for the 4 16MB chips to expand to 128MB, as well as requiring the dreaded LPC rebuild.
The DVD dongle for the XBox works great in XBMC, and uses standard RCA remote DVD codes, so you can get your universal remote to control it as well.
The biggest problem I've had, has been with the Thompson DVD players. They absolutely SUCK. Causes stuttering and lockups when playing back DVD's (especially when switching to the second layer of dual layer DVD's).
Have really gotten this down to a science now. Have most of the Xecuter 3 CE chips figured out, and the settings in most of the BIOS and dashboards. Also, have learned a LOT about the various versions of Xbox out there, and have even modified two version 1.6's (which are more difficult).
If you can get your choice of xbox's, the version 1.4 ones made around September of 2003 are probably the best ones (Samsung DVD drive, easy to mod, uncluttered main board, and still has space for the 128MB memory upgrade). The version 1.6 boards have problems with the 3.0.0 Flash Bios (especially when using a hi-def cable), and also don't have any place for the 4 16MB chips to expand to 128MB, as well as requiring the dreaded LPC rebuild.
The DVD dongle for the XBox works great in XBMC, and uses standard RCA remote DVD codes, so you can get your universal remote to control it as well.
The biggest problem I've had, has been with the Thompson DVD players. They absolutely SUCK. Causes stuttering and lockups when playing back DVD's (especially when switching to the second layer of dual layer DVD's).
Have subsequently verified that the DVD stutter problem is NOT the Thompson DVD player, and it actually some sort of XBMC bug that many people are experiencing (I've seen it stutter on Samsung and Philips DVD drives now). There is a bug submission on source forge and hopefully it will get ironed out soon. It hasn't as of the Jan 24 2006 CVS release.
In Feb 2006, XBMC crew fixed the DVD stuttering problem. Now the only really issue I have with my XBox, is it tends to lock up within 5 minutes after you power it up from cold. I have every confidence that this is not related to the mod chip, and is stupid microsoft setting the memory timings based on a quick test of the memory at boot up (well, it probably gets set too aggressively when the memory is cold and ultimately fails). I could swap out this v1.6 one with the 128MB v1.0 from my computer room and swap the face plate, but on a v1.0 with the daughter boards, all those LCD connectors get really tight for space in the box. So, for now, I just repower the box off/on once it warms up and never have any more issues.
Post a Comment
