I have a new to me XBOX and I have been out of XBOX modding for approx 10 years.

[pharoah007]

sooo... help

I am confidant with the network side of things (getting FTP to and from the xbox and so on)

What I would like to know is, what is the best way to mod xbox these days...it IS 2014 now    Back when I was doing it, a chip was the way to go, however, I have been doing some research the last day or so and it seems that ntere is no advantage to a chip over a soft mod these days.

So how is everyone soft modding there XBOX these days?   is there a "install disk" (just guessing)

Oh wise ones.... point me in the right direction please.

[Generic Eric]

splinter cell game and a memory card *ready to go* from ebay

As a practical matter, a person is on their own afterwards.  Can you merge the other partitions? I thought you I read it could be done, but I couldn't find out how.  Swapping out the HDD was another matter and I didn't want to risk messing the drive up.

Maybe you can write us a nice tutorial once you are done

[mann0mann]

I've found this the easiest way to do a softmod...

Google Softmod Installer Deluxe.

Was very easy to use software.

[danny_galaga]

And don't forget to remove the clock capacitor if it's not a V1.6 (",)

http://dannygalaga.com/xbox.html

[ark_ader]

The last two xboxes I got from the Thrift store had nearly new looking capacitors, and these were 1.1.

But I yanked them anyway.

[sharpfork]

I still like a chip or TSOP but I like to remove the flubber and not have to worry when changing drives or wanting to pull the DVD drive off.

Google coinops and vision.

[pbj]

And how does one remove the flubber?

[destronger]

it depends on the hacked bios you use when you either use a mod chip or TSOP your Xbox.

I repect sharpfork as he's helped me in the past but a word of warning if you go to the site he's asking you to google, the moderator/dev is very difficult to deal with. keep your questions to the point and if you even hint of emuXtras site you may be banned.

[pbj]

Well, I'm running EvoX m7 or some such nonsense I compiled ~10 years ago onto a memory card.  Make with the non-flubber bios.

[destronger]

if your mod chip is over ten years old the chance of flashing the bios from your Xbox may be slim or you may have a good chip that's easy to flash. if your TSOP'd then you should be able to do it with ease.

I'm not in front of my computer so searching for useful link kinda stinks fight now.

do know if your Xbox is TSOP'd or has a mod chip?

[pbj]

TSOP.  I pull out and throw away any modchips I encounter in these days.

[destronger]

TSOP.  I pull out and throw away any modchips I encounter in these days.

i only take out a mod chip if it's not flashable.

I can't recall which one I use off the top of my head. I can post later the one I use.

[sharpfork]

And how does one remove the flubber?

I use m8plus and EVtool to remove the flubber and set my boot paths.

I flip all the toggles off and set all the logo colors to black just to be sure.  One of the toggles disables the DVD check witch is cool if you are building a bartop and want to save space.  I up my fan speed and set a boot order of DVD, coinops on my F partition, XBMC on C, then stock MS dash.  Lots of folks like XBMC as the boot dash if they use individual emulators.  I've been using Avalaunch and filezilla for transferring files because it supports 10 concurrent transfers.

This is my xBox powered tate cab booting without flubber.  It has an 8 gig Compact flash-> IDE SSD for a hard drive and boot to game selection in ~7 seconds:

[destronger]

i use X2CONFIG MAKER with Xcuter X2 bios. i like X2CONFIG MAKER because i can modify the load up screen with a config.ini file that you put onto your xbox and you can preview what colors you pick for the xbox screen in real time in the prog. of course the it comes down to ones preference. 

as sharpfork mentioned there's a bunch of options when it comes to updating your xbox. he mentioned coinops, i use xbmc as my dash which gives straight access to what ever emulator i fancy at the time.

here's a preview for you:

http://s751.photobucket.com/user/destronger/media/9bf5a583.mp4.html?sort=3&o=6#/user/destronger/media/9bf5a583.mp4.html?sort=3&o=6&_suid=13953792013000608590723285356

i have since changed the xbmc skin to confluence and my icons are here:

http://s751.photobucket.com/user/destronger/slideshow/XBMC%20Icons

examples:

[pbj]

Sure would be nice if that bios file bounced off a truck and into my inbox....

[mann0mann]

Since I don't have the skills to mess with the Bios.  I'm curious, the SSD how much does that improve loading times on games?  Or does it not really since it's bottleneck is still the IDE interface?

[pbj]

I bought the hardware to convert a compact flash card -> IDE hard drive today, so if no one else chimes in I can let you know in a week or two. 

 

[ark_ader]

What about getting those IDE Disc on a Module?



I hope you can see the detail.   

[sharpfork]

What about getting those IDE Disc on a Module?
I hope you can see the detail.   

I looked into these but could only find them in 2-4gig before the price got stupid.  At a certain point, it makes sense to get a SATA I SSD at like 64 gigs and give it a try.  This my CF SSD BTW:

[pbj]

That's pretty much the setup I've got coming in the mail.  It'll be an interesting experiment to see how quick I can get it to boot up, I'm already at the XBMC splash in about 10 seconds and at the XBMC menu at around 14 using some cheap 160GB hard drive.

[ark_ader]

While we are on the subject, can anyone point me towards a XBMC front end for the xbox?  I have Dragon, but it is limited, and CoinOPS is a maze to navigate.

[pbj]

I just use the Project Mayhem III skin.

[destronger]

While we are on the subject, can anyone point me towards a XBMC front end for the xbox?  I have Dragon, but it is limited, and CoinOPS is a maze to navigate.

I guess if sharpfork can mention "google coinops and vision" then I can post "google emuXtras."

[ark_ader]

I got an account on MegaUPS but the file is like 20gb and I'm happy with CoinOPS5 which was big enough.

I was hoping for a smaller file to just use the interface.  I have enough games.

[destronger]

I'm aware, the Xbox version of xbmc is there. under 100megs.

[mann0mann]

What about getting those IDE Disc on a Module?
I hope you can see the detail.   

I looked into these but could only find them in 2-4gig before the price got stupid.  At a certain point, it makes sense to get a SATA I SSD at like 64 gigs and give it a try.  This my CF SSD BTW:

Sharpfork, what impact does the SSD make on game loading in CO?

[mann0mann]

PBJ & Sharpfork...


Still would love to hear from you guys on this SSD conversion.  Can you comment on how this affects loading times for games, maybe even specifically in Coinops or Visionary?

I keep my builds pretty small for these, I would love to try to do a swap if I new it would improve the speed

-Mike

[pbj]

Well, I could never really get it to work.  Occasionally the Slayer disc would recognize the drive, and acted as though it formatted it properly.  I've since read that I needed a compact flash card capable of "ATA mode" and this was some random find out of a junk pile.

Just wasn't really worth my time to get it going.  I'm navigating the XBMC menus in 14 seconds which is pretty darned quick.

[sharpfork]

Sharpfork, what impact does the SSD make on game loading in CO?

I have the ssd in my tate cab running coinops.  Give me a couple of tate titles you want me to test and I'll take a look and compare them to a non ssd test xbox.

[mann0mann]

How about a big one like Raiden or Raiden Jet Fighters

Thank You!

[northerngames]

That's pretty much the setup I've got coming in the mail.  It'll be an interesting experiment to see how quick I can get it to boot up, I'm already at the XBMC splash in about 10 seconds and at the XBMC menu at around 14 using some cheap 160GB hard drive.

I would think your still limited to the cable speed itself and not sure how this would speed the os up any at all 

I know you can throw a upgraded IDE cable in them to make them a hair faster over the stock cable but nothing even noticable really.

the board itself can only do a certain speed and is limited also so one would have to over clock the gpu and cpu to achieve actual overclocking speeds.

[sharpfork]

Ide100 cable (133 is easier to find but will not matter) + 7200 drive speed can make a difference, especially when browsing games and loanding the preview videos in coinops.  I'll do a game launch test over the weekend.

[sharpfork]

No game launch speed up on cf ssd game launch over standard 7200 rpm with ide 133 cable.

[mann0mann]

Bummer.  Thanks for checking.  Great idea though for bartops though