I'm wondering if someone could help me with a few issues I'm having with my Xbox (The original not the 360).
When I got hold of a second hand Xbox last year I noticed it had a feature on the bottom of it that made it looked like it was modified.
Trouble is I'm not sure if its 'Soft-modded' or 'Hard-modded'
I tried experimenting with it and attempted attaching a USB key to it. As the Xbox doesn't house a USB port I had to make one myself. Initally I made one by soldering two wires together to make a makeshift USB cable that could be plugged into one of the USB ports.
Although it detected my USB key it said it did not recognise it and promptly deleted all that was on the USB key. I decided to purchase a cable over the web but again it did the same thing.

The image above is a rough description of the chip that is attatched to the base of the console.
My question is why can't the console detect my USB key without it deleting all that it contains?
The second problem I have is trying to get it to recognise any DVDs I run.
The Idea is that I would like to install an emulator to run via a disc (as shown
here) and
here.
I've tried several different methods of getting the console to run this application but to no avail.
Could anyone help? Thanks in advance.