How to softmod your Xbox and install XBMC for free

Supercell

With Game-Stop selling the Xbox original at €20 a pop why not set yourself up with the ultimate home media centre system aka XBMC for free, you'll wonder how you ever managed without it, you also of course are able to use it as a gaming system too if you ever get time after watching all the stuff you have

I've put together this guide which I hope you might find useful.
This should work for every Xbox original, it doesn't matter what version it is.

Warning: This will invalidate you warranty!!, messing about with electrical goods is dangerous, do not try this unless you are sure you know what your doing!!
If you kill your Xbox I ain't taking the blame baby, its your choice!!

Ok first of all here's a check list of stuff you need for this project :-

1) Xbox original (doh!)
2) Pc with IDE hdd connections
3) Torx 20 screwdriver
4) Blank cd and burner
5) Ndure-3.1.rar - get it from Xbins using Auto Xbins - browse to /XBOX/Console Based Applications/exploits/_Packages/Kingroachs Installer/
6) xboxhdm_v1.9.zip - Get it from here
7) Iso Recorder - download it here
8) Latest T3ch build of XBMC - here - XBMC 8.10 Final - Atlantis Build. Fill in the verification box to download
9) An ftp browser, I like Filezilla
10) Slight update, I've noticed the last few Xbox's I've done with this method there has been issues because the console hasn't been on the latest, or Live-Enabled dashboard. It might alleviate potential problems if you use a later era game, & use the XBL settings to Live-Enable the console if not already done, & then proceed with the mod [EnterNow]

Ok lets get started.

1) Unpack the ndure,xboxhdm and xbmc files and install Iso Recorder.

2) Fire up the Xbox and got to Settings > System Info and find out what kernel your box is running (the line starting with K:X.XX...) :-


My Xbox is running kernel 5101

3) Now run Ndure, check everything except in the kernel selection box - make sure to select the correct version you noted down in the previous step.



When the wizard prompts you where to save to, choose the xboxhdm\linux folder you unpacked in step one above.

4) Now copy the ndure.txt file attached to this post to \xboxhdm\linux\ndure and remove the extension, just should be called "ndure", delete the ndure.htm file in there.

5) Go to the main xboxhdm folder and double click make-iso-win.bat and wait for it to do its thing. When its done you should have a new linux.iso file in you xboxhdm folder. If you installed Iso recorder earlier all you need to do is just double click it and burn.



Ok, now for the fun stuff,

6) Copy a music track to the Xbox hard drive and remove the cd and switch off the Xbox

7) Take off the cover making sure to remove all 6 screws, if its very tight you didn't remove all six!



Unscrew the hdd holder (underneath the ide cable) and unscrew the drive.



8) Boot the Xbox up and start playing the track you recorded to the hdd earlier and then press pause (also make sure there is no cd/dvd in the Xbox dvd drive) . This unlocks the hard drive and is essential.

9) Boot the pc up off the cd you burned earlier, when you get to the screen below disconnect the ide cable from the Xbox to its hdd and connect the pc ide cable to it (must be connected to the end of the cable).

***IMPORTANT*** - The Xbox hard drive MUST be connected to the primary ide cable at the end otherwise it wont be seen by xboxhdm (cd rom on the secondary ide cable)



****NOW HOTSWAP THE DRIVE****



Now select option 1, if it complains about resolution, ignore it and hit the spacebar to continue.

Now type xbrowser

All going well you should see the screen below (sorry for poor quality)



Choose ndure, hit enter and select ndure on the next screen too.

Choose option 1 to install ndure.
It will complain that no backup was done and will then backup the existing hdd image and then will copy over the ndure files.
This takes about 5-10 minutes and nothing happens on the screen. Go get a cup of coffee and wait for it to say its finished.

10) Connect the hdd back to the xbox ide cable and power it off.
Power it back on, all going well you'll get the standard Xbox boot screen followed by UnleashX.



If you got this far, time to get excited, the end is in sight!!
Note : the power light goes orange in modded boot. If you press the eject button when its off it will boot to the standard Xbox screen, pretty cool eh ?
Note the IP address on the bottom left of the screen.

11) Ok now to put XBMC on there, you have two choices, either install it as an application in Unleash X or to install it so it boots directly to XMBC itself, probably the most common choice.

Fireup your ftp browser and go to the Xbox IP using user : pass as xbox:xbox and port 21.

If you want to install XBMC as an app in UnleashX copy the entire contents of the XMBC folder you unpacked earlier to e:\apps

If you want the Xbox to boot straight to XMBC (preferred by most) just copy the entire contents of the XMBC folder to e:\dash (good idea to back up the files there in case something goes wrong) choosing yes to any overwrite prompts.



Ok, now for the moment of truth.............

Power off the Xbox and reboot..if you see the image below...have fun - you just got the best media centre money can buy..for the princely sum of 20 yoyo's!!

rosboy

Thanks

o1s1n

Fantastic guide! Really does make it sound easy enough.

Supercell

Thanks o1s1n, its nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be initially.
XBMC really is incredible, I cannot imagine not having it now, it really is that good and at 20 euro, you've nothing to loose by installing it.

Tazer

Can this play games from the HDD?

Supercell

*********************IMPORTANT*****************************************
If you have a very old version (4XXX) of the dash then this softmod may not work.


My dash is 5960

If it is very old, then you can update it by either playing one of the later Xbox 1 games or by playing online , either will auto update your dash.

4034 dash is known not to work at all with this softmod so MUST be updated.
***********************************************************************

Here's a few screen caps from the box I modded today (see http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Default_Controls#Xbox_Controller for how to make a screen cap and other stuff)

Homepage while stuff is playing



What shall I listen to next..



Maybe I'll watch a film..



Or maybe a TV Show..



Whats the weather forecast?



When playing music I can have some pretty cool visual effects



Most formats are supported

Supercell

Tazer wrote: »

Can this play games from the HDD?

Erm, that would be an ecumenical question...

weeder

well i would recommend connecting the chassis ox the xbox to the pc chassis by somthing metal or else you could have a lot of static floating around. also one some machines this just wont work in my experience, might try it again though even though ive already bought splinter cell and hacked myself action replay
ive seen it work with a 3.5 inch ide enclosure before

Clover

great post man , i still have two xbox's in the house and i might give this a try on one of them.

vibe666

XBMC is possibly the greatest example of what is possible when enough geeks get together to work on something for the benefit of all.

it will play ANYTHING you throw at it (except HD video, the CPU and memory aren't quite up to it) and oddly enough kvcd's due to a slight incompatability with the media player, but aside from that, anything goes.

connect it to your home network and quite literally the world is your oyster. I don't know anyone who has one who would go back to using anything else.

Add to that the component video cables you can get on ebay and you can set XBMC to NTSC mode and up the video resolution of the GUI to 1080i and it will even upscale DVD's and DivX's to that too, you just can't beat it, and for 20 notes, why on earth would you?

conzy

Holy crap awesome guide!

I have an orginal xbox with a busted dvd drive and no controllers....

Is there anyway I could make this work? The controller ports are usb right? so i could wire a usb socket onto one of them?

Maybe I will just buy a more working xbox But it would be nice to make this one work...

ongarite

Super guide Longfield. Good to see many people using the ole XBOX with XBMC.

Edit: A mis-read of the thanks system can make it read very different!!

Supercell

If you have music on the Xbox hdd then yep you could install XBMC on there no probs, you could pick up an xbox remote for a tenner from Game-Stop I think.

Tbh, I never use the remote I have, the normal gamepad can do so much stuff in XBMC I prefer to use it instead.

That said for €20 I'd just keep your current one for spairs and buy one from Game-Stop, you won't regret the purchase for one second once you get XBMC on there

Supercell

ongarite wrote: »

Super guide Longfield. Good to see many people using the ole XBOX with XBMC.

Edit: A mis-read of the thanks system can make it read very different!!

Thank YOU, here have a thanks thing from me!, you helped me a lot with the first Xbox I modded.

weeder

i have the same thing to say about ongarite

although i couldnt make the hotswap work on my last xbox (which i then broke trying to install a modchip and ongarite saved me)

Longfield, GameStop should be paying you commission I modded mine with the XBOX action replay because I don't have a desktop pc. XBMC is good but I don't share your huge positivity for it lads. I don't have mine hooked up to my wireless Eircom modem that's probably why.

witnessmenow

Has any one ever replaced the hard drive with a bigger one? Can you recomend any good guides for doing it? Cheers

Supercell

This should be useful :- http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/1/203286

Guide isnt the easiest to follow but uses pretty much the same stuff I used in the guide above, only real difference is that you copy the xbox c and e drives to xboxhdm linux folder (overwriting the existing ones) and copy the eeprom.bin (go to programs in XBMC and browse to the ntds folder and load up Unleash X and you can backup your eeprom.bin in that to the hdd) .

Then when you boot off the cd connect your new large drive and install xbox filesystem (its one of the options on the cd boot screen).

I'm half thinking of doing it myself, if I do, I'll probably document the process here.

Can you suggest a good lockable hard drive to replace the one in the xbox with?

Supercell

Deleted User wrote: »

Can you suggest a good lockable hard drive to replace the one in the xbox with?

Here ya go, more compatible drives than you can shake a stick at:-

http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list&sort=dateadded&desc=1

witnessmenow

Thanks Longfield!


Btw i came across this when i was searching through Longfields link, seems to be a really detailed FAQ about xbox modding

Nick_oliveri

All i am getting when i try to xbrowser is:

root@Xbox-HDM:/1 xbrowser
Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hda...
Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hdb...
No disk drive found on /dev/hda
Please connect a drive and try again!

We will now search /dev/hda for an xbox partition table.....

No xbox-partition table found on /dev/hda

Done!!!
root@Xbox-HDM:/3

:pac:

Edit: this is what happens when you miss a step and dont check your kernel version. I am stupid.

Placebo

is the media stored on the hard drive [do u ftp it ?]

Only use i can see is if i was able to stream media to it, i know its possible with XBMC, have u tried that OP?

Nick_oliveri

You can stream media to xbmc win a cat5 and a little setting up on the xp side. Vista can be a bitch though!!

Supercell

Nick_oliveri wrote: »

All i am getting when i try to xbrowser is:

root@Xbox-HDM:/1 xbrowser
Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hda...
Looking for CD-ROM in /dev/hdb...
No disk drive found on /dev/hda
Please connect a drive and try again!

We will now search /dev/hda for an xbox partition table.....

No xbox-partition table found on /dev/hda

Done!!!
root@Xbox-HDM:/3

:pac:

Edit: this is what happens when you miss a step and dont check your kernel version. I am stupid.

Nope thats not it, are you connecting to the primary ide controller at the end of the cable, and did you pause the playback on the Xbox before hotswapping the drive?

Also, are you sure the drive is being detected at all, reboot the pc and go into th bios and see if the drive is there, first time I did this I hadn't connected the cable right and couldn't figure what the problem was until I tried again , next time making sure the cable was pushed home.

Supercell

Everything is streamed, it all just works perfectly over your lan.
Make sure to share the source though, I created a user with name xbox and pass xbox for each media share and set this up as the default in network settings (smb) on XMBC.

Nick_oliveri

Yep i paused the playback on the jimi hendrix file (not cd)

Using an IDE on primary for the CD Drive
And am using another seperate xbox IDE cable for the PC to xbox connection.

Drive is being detected

Supercell

Your cd drive should be on the secondary ide controller and the hdd the only thing on the primary ide controller, it wont be detected otherwise (its really frustrating I know).
I'll edit the guide to make that clearer, should have said that.

Nick_oliveri

K i tried swapping them the other way around and im getting the same thing. I cant understand how its not detecting the cd drive when thats what im booting off.

Edit: what master slave settings should i be using on the cd drive?
it was on slave, trying again

weeder

im having probs myself, just gonna wait for splinter cell

Nick_oliveri

Its working now. Longfield is the master, what my drive should have been set to.

Supercell

weeder wrote: »

im having probs myself, just gonna wait for splinter cell

Your not that far away from me weeder, if you're stuck and have transport your welcome to pop over here and I'll give you a quick tutorial (I'm on hols this week with time to burn) and get you set up.

Supercell

Nick_oliveri wrote: »

Its working now. Longfield is the master, what my drive should have been set to.

Good stuff , if you've got the hdd detected your almost home.

weeder

where ya located? im guessing it has to do with the dell bios splinter cell is ordered anyway but im bored myself

Supercell

Once you are installed lads, i'd recommend setting up the share user and pass (another words the username and pass you gave access to in windows, if unsure about network stuff just put your windows username and password), because typing username and pass for network browsing is a PITA on the Xbox.

On XBMC go to settings and then network..



And put your Windows share logon username and pass..



Now you can browse your home network without constant prompts for username and password..

Supercell

weeder wrote: »

where ya located? im guessing it has to do with the dell bios splinter cell is ordered anyway but im bored myself

You have PM

weeder

replied.

i really cant stress enough to have the 2 chassis connected by a bit of wire,seen some static and felt some too today until i did it, its a lot riskier if you dont do it

Oracle

I'm kinda new to all this, but looks really cool, very interested. But I'm gonna ask a obvious question, If I do this what happens to the original Xbox interface? Is it gone forever or can it be recovered? (i.e. is this mod permanent or reversible?)

Supercell

The simple answer is nothing!

As its a softmod everything is reverseable (not that you will need to reverse anything).

If you want to boot your Xbox normally, press the eject button.

If you want to boot into Softmod mode then press the power button.

Its elegant in its simplicity, the buttons work as normal once the console is booted up.

If you want to put it back to the way it was originally you can too.

Nick_oliveri

The two triggers and the back button and the black button pressed at the same time in softmod mode will reset your console.

Thanks again longfield. Im going to sort a couple of people out with this. Legend.

Bodan

Hey longfield , could you explain step 11 again as its not clear how you install xbmc. Is it done from cd or do you have to connect your computer directly to the xbox.

you have to ftp into the xbox.

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/213943

Bodan

thanks for that Frank Proud Vial. In the afterdawn guide it said you can also use a router. Has anyone ever done it with the netopia 3347 eircom router?

Oracle

That's cool thanks for the reply Longfield. I'm definately gonna give this a try, thanks for the instructions.

o1s1n

Gave this a go tonight over the last couple of hours and no matter what I did, I just couldn't get it to work

Boot disc worked fine, but that's where it ended. I tried so many times but it just refused to find the Harddrive. After the primary IDE didn't detect it, I tried every other possible IDE setup.

Had to give up in the end after having a couple of freak out moments -

'OMFG why wont my PC boot?!'

And

'OMFG why won't the xbox boot?!' (Seems an xbox doesn't like to boot properly with the DVD IDE disconnected)

So I've restored everything to working order and decided to leave it alone and go the memory card route.

Nick_oliveri

The xbox wont boot with the IDE's disconnected, DVD Drive or Hard Disc.

You need to make sure that the CD Drive on your PC is on the secondary IDE controller and has its pins/jumper set to master. Leave the pins/jumper on the xbox hard drive alone and make sure its on the primary IDE controller with nothing else attached.



Edit: Dont bother with the memcard trick. Longfield has kindly offered his help to me and seems to know a lot about what hes talking about. And i will also try and help the best i can.

o1s1n

Nick_oliveri wrote: »

You need to make sure that the CD Drive on your PC is on the secondary IDE controller and has its pins/jumper set to master. Leave the pins/jumper on the xbox hard drive alone and make sure its on the primary IDE controller with nothing else attached.

Yep, that's exactly what I did. All that was running was the CD drive set to master from the secondary IDE and the XBOX harddrive from the primary.

I Paused the XBOX on a song. Connected the Harddrive it to IDE primary. At the same time the pc was booting up with xboxhdm. Enter 1. It starts running through a list of things and then stops with the option to input xbrowser.

I put that in and get an error that it can't find the Xbox harddrive.

Tried this many many times but I always get the same error.

Nick_oliveri

Thats strange. Id ask you did you remember to input your kernel version only this problem isnt really associated with the error you are having.

Whats it showing up as in the bios? Did you make sure both IDEs are functional?

o1s1n

Nick_oliveri wrote: »

Thats strange. Id ask you did you remember to input your kernel version only this problem isnt really associated with the error you are having.

Whats it showing up as in the bios? Did you make sure both IDEs are functional?

Kernel is correct yes - 5838.

IDEs are both function fine as I tried switching them around and the cd drive booted up from each.

I really should have taken a capture of the screen. It was more or less saying no harddrive was found immediately after I entered the command Xbrowser. Then it would give me the option to try looking again, with a different number attached to the beginning of the command line. (2, then 3 etc)

The only thing I can really think of is that I'm somehow making a mistake when disconnecting the harddrive. Is there a certain limit to the amount of time before you have to have it connected to your pc? Although, I'm getting it on there pretty fast.

I thought this was strange myself. It seems like a pretty straight forward thing to do.

Supercell

There is a time limit, you have five minutes to switch over the drive which should be more than enough usually.

o1s1n , the hotswap sequence is very important, it must be done in the following order:-

1) Play music track on Xbox hdd (make sure no cd in Xbox cdrom drive or it wont lock the drive) , pause track
2) Boot pc off xboxhdm cd, when at the screen where you have to input a number..hotswap the drive and THEN press 1 then input xbrowser

Also make sure your drive is actually unlocked, easiest way to do this is to choose the option to go to hd utilities, it will tell you right away if the drive is locked or not, if its locked you'll get the issue your describing also.

encryptix

Hey, great guide but ive got a problem at this step, when i get here there is no "/ndure" in the directory, did i burn the cd wrong?



Also to those people having problems getting the hard drive as master, make sure your cd drives jumper isnt set as master (It took me a good 10 min to figure out why it wasnt being detected!)