How to softmod your Xbox and install XBMC for free

Black_Knight

Lets hope they work in the xboxs : /

And if they dont

vibe666

call me old fashioned but is that not more of a "check BEFORE you buy" sort of thing?

as long as they support the ata security standard they should be grand.

most drives do these days.

last drives i had that didn't were 40gb western digitals.

and if they don't work, I'll buy 5 of those 1tb drives off you for my new NAS.

witnessmenow

Well I kinda did try, I seen that the drives were lockable and i bought a Sata to Ide converter from dealextreme and I tested it with a drive from my Pc.

some bad news so far:

First of all I was doing the Xboxhd stuff on a old pc I have lying around,(not the one i normally use because thats up in college), except it didn't want to reconise the 500gb hard drive via the converter i was using, It wouldn't even reconise it windows so i figured maybe the Pc is too old, So i went over to my dads house and grabbed the pc from there and brought it back and that reconised it fine

So i get 2 500gb ones done and dusted so i said to myself it was time to do a tb one. I finally got the bloody thing working! I partioned and built all the drives and succesfully locked the xbox. put it into the xbox ... flashing red an green displaying error 09

(Its actually kinda funny, Im using google chrome and it has an automatic spell check, this whole post was full of underlined words and as soon as i put the sad emoticon they disapeared , google feels my pain)

Have tried 3 diffirent convertors, and two hard drives to no avail. That can only mean two things

a) 1tb + and particualr converter in xbox is a no go
b) this xbox has something wrong with it


On other news I hacked apart another xbox to try put one of the wifi routers into it earlier today. Seems like it will fit but only if I put it coming out the side of the xbox, which doesn't bother me. I've all the holes dremmled and everything is fitting in, I just need to solder in some power, attach it down and try it out. I also need to configure it I suppose

Black_Knight

Good work witnessmenow, I had a similar experience tonight
Time to go shopping for different DX SATA -> IDE coneverters! DXs new search is good, but just you try search for "SATA to IDE converter which works with 1tb hard drives and an xbox".....


Darn, I was expecting
Results: 0 but no no, 199 results, probably not an exact match though

Black_Knight

And as regards them not working.... I promised a paddlin!


[SIZE=-2]apologies if the image is too big (or if gifs arnt allowed), I couldnt see where the max image size is defined. Remove if need be[/SIZE]

tdow

I followed the guides here and managed to soft modded my xbox and put a 500 gb harddrive in. I then partitioned the drive so that the F drive has 120 gb and the rest is on the G drive. I then formatted the drives using EvoX dashboard. Does the G drive need to be less than 137 gb too or am i ok with a 300+ gb G drive?

witnessmenow

Not with out changing the cluster size maybe evox does take care of that, but for some reason i doubt it

download xboxpartioner, It will automatically set the cluster size for you

tdow

witnessmenow wrote: »

Not with out changing the cluster size maybe evox does take care of that, but for some reason i doubt it

download xboxpartioner, It will automatically set the cluster size for you

when i was partitioning the F drive into F + G, i used xbpartioner. I can't remember what cluster size it used or if it took care of everything automatically. Is there anyway to confirm what cluster size your hard drive is formatted with ?

SirLemonhead

Has anyone got a spare xbox they'd be willing to part with? Gamestop are all out of them now, and I need a second to test some networking code..

or, where else could I buy one for cheap?

witnessmenow

Not that i know of sorry. I'm pretty sure it looks after things for ya automatically.

vibe666

SirLemonhead wrote: »

Has anyone got a spare xbox they'd be willing to part with? Gamestop are all out of them now, and I need a second to test some networking code..

or, where else could I buy one for cheap?

they get them in and out of stock periodically in game and gamestop so you just have to keep trying.

one of the lads i work with got 2 new ones for 20 notes each somewhere in town the other day, he might well be trawling this thread before long trying to figure out how to do the softmod (he borrowed my splinter cell disk and mem.card) and let everyone know where he got them.

witnessmenow

Just a small update.

I turned on the xbox with the hard drive not attached and plugged it in after a second or two and threw up the error, but the next time it turned it on fine! So the converter and the hard drive do work together in the xbox, I just need to figure a way of making it work more consistently!!

Sleepy

Anyone got Splinter Cell and a memory card with the game save they'd let go of cheaply or lend me?

Finally picked up an xbox in GameStop this afternoon (after trying virtually every store in the Dublin area over the last few months!).

SirLemonhead

Anyone know if its possible to save/read files from an xbox memory card plugged into a modded xbox, via the pc?

Would save me making/buying/butchering an adapter to to hook the memory card up to the pc directly.

ongarite

Yes the memory card should mount as a removable device which if your XBOX is modded can be read, write over FTP.

witnessmenow

If the xbox is already modded you can no bother

Boot into the MS dash

Go to memory and select your memory card

Copy each of the files you want to get to your hard drive

Reboot the xbox to your modified dash board. FTP into your xbox, And the fiels should be in your Udata folder (somewhere :pac: )

Edit: Or do Onagrites easier way

SirLemonhead

I tried the hot swap method with my first xbox and couldn't get it working at all.

I know two people at least with splinter cell, so all I need is the memory card in this case. cheers for confirming that for me

vibe666

if you can find someone with a modded xbox who can do you a savegame and then find a copy of splinter cell or one of those other games (007 or mechwarrior afaik) that's always been by far the best/easiest method and once you have one xbox done it's a piece of cake to do others.

m8

Did you play a music track that was saved on the HD and pause it before hot swapping?..that workrd for me first time.

SirLemonhead

I can't remember to be honest, It was 3 years ago. I was reading up on how to do it for a while so I imagine I was doing it the right way.

I just need to get hold of a memory card as I can copy the save over using my modded xbox

m8

Just copy a misic track to play and pause and use the latest software..nothing else needed. Done one a few weeks ago with no probs.

witnessmenow

You'll hardly get any cheaper than this (free shipping btw)

Nick_oliveri

I probably asked this before, but if anyone has any controller dongles let me know, i had to give my own away for that wedding present xbox .

docentore

if anyone interested the adapter i mentioned seems to be working. I was able to partition the hdd (samsung 500gb) but didn't have time to test it throughly. I've got cheap 500gb IDE drive so I think I'll go with that, just in case

MiniMetro

Wondering if anyone one has any good ideas on this. I modded my xbox a while back and installed a 500GB hard drive. Tried using this guide a but after a week or two of trying unsuccessfuly, I figured that it was the old dell desktop that I was using was making it impossible. I tried every possible permutation, learnt about slave and master drives etc. I learnt a lot but to no avail (I found other reports of similar problems with old Dells). I eventually relented and bought the action replay and splinter cell off ebay, I got it for dirt cheap off some guy who had used it for the same purpose. I was mega-pissed that I didn't do this in the first place as it would have saved me lots of time and frustration.

Now, finally being a happy owner of a modded xbox, there is still one issue annoying me. I have a 4-port switch which I use to transfer files from my laptop to the xbox and also to share the internet connection. The hassle arises in having to modify the ip settings in the xbox when I want to switch between file sharing and connection sharing and then back again. It's alright on the laptop side because I can just have .bat files to change the IP address but the xbox is a pain and often needs a reset to get the new settings working.

Any ideas on how I could speed up this process or improve the setup?

Much thanks

ongarite

Why don't use a fixed IP address for both the XBOX and PC.
You can manually set the IP adress in System Settings/Network.

m8

Very easy fix for this with any setup realy is to use a broadband router and just connect up each device to the LAN ports, this will act as a DHCP server and give out the IP addresses required to each PC/XBox, good to stream your media from a network HD/NAS and if it's a wireless one all the better cos you will be able to connect with your Laptop wireless and FTP to your XBox if you want to add new features. Add a BB connection to the router and you do everything.

MiniMetro wrote: »

Wondering if anyone one has any good ideas on this. I modded my xbox a while back and installed a 500GB hard drive. Tried using this guide a but after a week or two of trying unsuccessfuly, I figured that it was the old dell desktop that I was using was making it impossible. I tried every possible permutation, learnt about slave and master drives etc. I learnt a lot but to no avail (I found other reports of similar problems with old Dells). I eventually relented and bought the action replay and splinter cell off ebay, I got it for dirt cheap off some guy who had used it for the same purpose. I was mega-pissed that I didn't do this in the first place as it would have saved me lots of time and frustration.

Now, finally being a happy owner of a modded xbox, there is still one issue annoying me. I have a 4-port switch which I use to transfer files from my laptop to the xbox and also to share the internet connection. The hassle arises in having to modify the ip settings in the xbox when I want to switch between file sharing and connection sharing and then back again. It's alright on the laptop side because I can just have .bat files to change the IP address but the xbox is a pain and often needs a reset to get the new settings working.

Any ideas on how I could speed up this process or improve the setup?

Much thanks

Ron DMC

Doesn't XBMC always default to 192.168.1.21 anyway? Mine does.

docentore

It is not XBMC which is defaulting but your router / server via DHCP.

vibe666

each one is different, assuming you have it set to use the default dash IP rather than static or dhcp. mt two are always .45 and .17 when set to use the dash IP.