Main > Consoles
Xbox mod
ChadTower:
That's what I'm saying. I've read through many of the tutorials and most of them are dated 2004 or so. Things have to have changed quite a bit since then.
So far, this is what I have learned:
I likely have a 1.6 mobo. I can confirm that when I get the chance to open the sucker up. I will have to rebuild the LPC port (which seems to be a debug port) by soldering in 4-5 short jumpers. Then I install a 2x6 (with pin 4 removed) set of male header pins into the LPC through holes. I guess I will have to be careful with the wire jumpers since they're both going in the same holes. After that, run a jumper from a header pin to the d0 hole (haven't figured out what that one is yet). Install the chip, boot it up and immediately set the date/time. Proceeding from there it's all dependent on the particular BIOS of that chip but I will likely have to set it up so that it sees the retail kernel and then a hacked BIOS. At this point, if I desire, I can upgrade the drive using the new chip's OS functions. Configure it for DHCP, let it talk to my router, and then I should be able to FTP/SMB all I want to put things on the drive like emulators and additional software.
What I'm trying to dig up now are issues such as the Live MAC/HD serial nugget given above... I don't want to get it all done and then discover I've actually disabled something I may want later on.
shmokes:
Check out the installation manual for the Xenium SpICE. It tells you how you can tell what version of Xbox you have simply by turning on the Xbox with no game in and checking some info in the Xbox Dashboard. It takes about 1 minute.
ChadTower:
I've read in multiple guides that there are a couple of revisions that can only be told apart by a continuity check on the motherboard. Could be old info, though.
ChadTower:
Hrm... thought of a desired use for Media Center. I download a lot of PPV events the day after they happen. Many times they are in DivX 6. My DVD player only supports up to DivX 5 and I have never seen an updated BIOS for it. So, if I could have a box in my living room that fits in well, can pull from the network, and can be easily updated to new codecs, that would be useful to me. It would be worth my effort to get that in place if I could do it inexpensively.
shmokes:
Well, if you're going to mod your xbox either way, putting Xbox Media Center in place won't add to the expense and will almost not add to the effort. It's just a dashboard, and you've got to install a dashboard either way. The only real extra effort is setting up shared folders on your PC and pointing Xbox Media Center to them which, frankly, isn't much effort.
You can use your modded Xbox as a media center and to play backup discs and emulators without upgrading the hard drive. There's pleny of room on the 8-10 GB for all that.