How to softmod your Xbox and install XBMC for free

Nick_oliveri

Ongarite you know it all . My drive gives a good bit of jip too, sometimes it wont go back in! The Girlfriends Drive makes an ungodly clicking noise when it boots, even when theres nothing in it.

Waiting for a 500 gb to come from komplett along with mah new PC!
The 500gb is a wedding gift for the brother. Xbox waiting here for it.
Hes going to have a nice library of stuff when he returns from hols.
(thanks again for your naming and library recommendations on the other thread)

Black_Knight

ongarite wrote: »

Is it a Samsung drive? They develop a problem with the magnet regulating the drive opening, closing.

OR

It could be a Thompson and you could try and re-align it.
http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/thompson_dvd_tray.htm

Samsung.

ongarite

Either you're Samsung drive is faulty or the Power/Eject PCB on the XBOX is bad.
http://forums.llamma.com/viewtopic.php?t=10406&highlight=samsung+tray+open
http://forums.llamma.com/viewtopic.php?t=5977&highlight=samsung+tray+open

Glad your using the library features in XBMC, Nick.

witnessmenow

Thats why i was wondering why you cared about its resale value. You may aswell put your DVD drive into your dads and butcher his to put it into yours.


As a patch job for fixing your dads, cut the power from the motor of the drive that way it can try eject and close to its little hearts sonsent and it will do nothing.

Black_Knight

Butcher my Dads FTW!

sigmax

Hi!

I bought a used, unmodified xbox. I found this tutorial. I followed it.

WHen rebooting modded xbox with unleashX, the green intro from MS, was ok, but when unleashX booted, it was a garbled screen (like output in hdtv, but my TV is NTSC only).

I got into the xbox thru FTP and installed latest T3CH XBMC, as dashboard replacement, hoping that it would fix the hdtv situation.

Now it boots the green anim from MS, OK, then screen goes berzerk (garbled) just as before with unleashX, but I hear OK the greetings music from xbmc ...

I did a reset on xbmc (by pressing both thumbsticks).

NOW I cannot get into the FTP (I dont know the IP in which the xbox is set up by default).

I scanned subdomains 192.168.0.x 1.x 2.x and 3.x to no avail. Xbox is gone.... the led is Yellow, it seems to have xbmc loaded, but it is a weird scrolling pinkish nightmare (again: I am sure it is in HDTV).

I also cleaned with isopropil alcohol the video / audio connector in the xbox, on the event that some contact is not OK, but everything seems ok.

ANY suggestions are welcome!!! Thanks in advance!

regards,

SigmaX.

witnessmenow

Welcome to boards sigmax.

Thats a strange problem. Is it an NTSC xbox too?

Can you hear sound of moving around the menu , if you press up or down on the controller does it make any noise? If it does you could try change the display setting by ear maybe? I'm sure someone here would post up directions how to do it, if they haven't by monday i should be able to for you.

sigmax

Hi Witnessmenow

Well yes it is working ok (but I cannot see because it is set at 480p).

I went to a friend's home which had an HDTV lcd, and I can see XBMC (but all pinkish) at 480p.

I put NTSC in every setting, reboot, and AGAIN in 480p.

I edit guisettings.xml and place video / resolution: 4 (NTSC) but xbmc KEEPS booting at 480p.

I changed xbmc version / release to another one.

same behavior.

Weird indeed... the green MS boot thingy, keeps going OK ... weirdness starts when xbmc boots.

It seems that somewhere, a setup is "burned" into my xbox ... and says HDTV (the cable I am using is a component cable)

Regards,

Sigmax

ongarite

Your region (NTSC/PAL) and resolution is set through the EEPROM and MSDASH not XBMC settings.
If its on NTSC now and you want to change the resolution to 720p or 1080i, you need to boot into the MSDASH and change the video settings there.

sigmax

Hi Ongarite!

Thanks for your info. Now the problem is, HOW can I go back into MSDASH ! (which was being seen OK before I softmodded my xbox and put xbmc).

I cannot find any way of getting MSDASH working. I will try poking around I hope I dont have to do the hotswap dance again hah.

SigmaX

ongarite

Your MS DASH should be on the C: partition called default.xbe or something like that.

craze7

ongarite wrote: »

Your region (NTSC/PAL) and resolution is set through the EEPROM and MSDASH not XBMC settings.
If its on NTSC now and you want to change the resolution to 720p or 1080i, you need to boot into the MSDASH and change the video settings there.

i believe u can do this in xbmc now!!!

afg_rocker

hi can you help at this part i enter it twice then it says syntax unexpected
something like then it says press any key to continue help me please i really neeed your help thx



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.

Calibos

sigmax wrote: »

Hi Ongarite!

Thanks for your info. Now the problem is, HOW can I go back into MSDASH ! (which was being seen OK before I softmodded my xbox and put xbmc).

I cannot find any way of getting MSDASH working. I will try poking around I hope I dont have to do the hotswap dance again hah.

SigmaX

There is an option in the UnleashX menu for booting to the MS Dash IIRC

awhir

hey guys have been trying this for the last 3 hours with no avail.

when i get to the hotswap part - i hotswap the harddrive plug it into the main ide of my pc , the dos app then responds by frezzing....if i let the dos app enter option 1 and then plug the hard drive in and then type in xbroswer and i goes luniz cd not found try again.....

guys i have tryed 2 diffrent pc's and i have came accross the same problems anyone got anyideas ?

Nick_oliveri

I got the same error the CD drive being in slave mode. These are set by jumper pins on your CD drive. Always remember what they were set to first!

In other news im after getting a new PC, with only one IDE Slot on the mobo. Dunno whether to sell my original PC.

Black_Knight

Theres usually a pic of how to select Master, Slave or Cable select on the drive itself.
Like here in the top left

Nick_oliveri

Its weird that they set some hard drives to slave . Or "cable select".

Black_Knight

Nick_oliveri wrote: »

Its weird that they set some hard drives to slave . Or "cable select".

Think I put mine on either CS or Master. Maybe a few of both over the course of my XBMC mods.

bandit197

Thanks for the excellent guide OP. I had a few issues along the way but were all my own doing. Once I got set-up with the proper IDE layouts and settings
I had no problem. Thanks again for sharing.

bandit197

awhir wrote: »

hey guys have been trying this for the last 3 hours with no avail.

when i get to the hotswap part - i hotswap the harddrive plug it into the main ide of my pc , the dos app then responds by frezzing....if i let the dos app enter option 1 and then plug the hard drive in and then type in xbroswer and i goes luniz cd not found try again.....

guys i have tryed 2 diffrent pc's and i have came accross the same problems anyone got anyideas ?

I was getting the same errors and I just kept trying the different combinations of IDE set-up untill I got it sorted. I was using a banged up old pentium III that I rescued from the attic for the job. There is'nt even an operating system installed so I wasnt worried messing anything up.
If you can get your xbox and install cd to PogMoThoin Ill see can I install it for you.
Ive left the pentium III exactly as it was when it worked for me as Pog is using it to mod one for himself.
Im really impressed with XBMC. It has streamed every format I threw at it so far including, MP3, MP4, XVID, DIVX, RM, VOB etc

unklerosco

For some reason Xbins aint working for me... so for anyone looking for Ndure 3.1 u can get it here

http://rapidshare.com/files/58071383/Ndure-3.1.rar

witnessmenow

bandit197 wrote: »

I was getting the same errors and I just kept trying the different combinations of IDE set-up untill I got it sorted. I was using a banged up old pentium III that I rescued from the attic for the job. There is'nt even an operating system installed so I wasnt worried messing anything up.
If you can get your xbox and install cd to PogMoThoin Ill see can I install it for you.
Ive left the pentium III exactly as it was when it worked for me as Pog is using it to mod one for himself.
Im really impressed with XBMC. It has streamed every format I threw at it so far including, MP3, MP4, XVID, DIVX, RM, VOB etc

Just to let you know a few pages back there 120-minutes was having problems modding his xbox and i said i'd do it for him and it would not work with the same setup i had used for 7-8 other ones, tried putting the hard drive to secondry and worked first time so for some reason they are not all identical.

bandit197

witnessmenow wrote: »

Just to let you know a few pages back there 120-minutes was having problems modding his xbox and i said i'd do it for him and it would not work with the same setup i had used for 7-8 other ones, tried putting the hard drive to secondry and worked first time so for some reason they are not all identical.

I missed that when I was reading through. Funnily enough when I was doing my own one it failed to work the first few times on my final IDE setup. I kept at it because I was certian I had it right and after the third or fourth go it worked.
It seems to involve a lot of trial and error

pastor

Hi guys

I was going down the road of buying a couple of MCE extenders but came accross this thread. Picked up two xboxes today in Gamestop in Henry St. One is fully boxed and sealed the other is a used crystal, looking forward to trying this out. Lots of good content on my MCE setup.

Does anyone have a component or last resort a scart connector for the xbox for sale?

Thanks for all the excellent info I really appreciate it.

Paul

vibe666

i got component cables off ebay ages ago and 720p and 1080i make a huge difference, both in xbmc itself and with upscaled video. well worth the effort, as is a silent fan mod.

I'll be doing a ocuple shortly so I'll do up a little guide for that with some pics but it's dead easy and one of the best easy mods to do. not having the noisy old fan whirring in the background ruining your audio experience is a big plus.

I've done several using this fan from komplett and it's perfect.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=312828

it take s abit of cutting of the plastic hdd drive tray and a couple of corners of the fan to get the 80mm fan into the 70mm hole in the xbox but it's well worth it and a piece of cake with a dremel, but I had a mate did his with a pair of pliers and he says his works just fine too.

I also have a fon router running the dd-wrt firmware that I'm currently using as a wifi bridge (and working flawlessly) that I plan on shoehorning into the xbox at some point as well, but that's going to be a bigger job.

Oracle

pastor wrote: »

Hi guys

I was going down the road of buying a couple of MCE extenders but came accross this thread. Picked up two xboxes today in Gamestop in Henry St. One is fully boxed and sealed the other is a used crystal, looking forward to trying this out. Lots of good content on my MCE setup.

Does anyone have a component or last resort a scart connector for the xbox for sale?

Thanks for all the excellent info I really appreciate it.

Paul

Do you mind me asking the price you paid? Thanks.

There's an AV component cable at MX2 for £5 delivered: http://www.mx2.co.uk/default.asp?part=XBUK067 I'm not sure if that's what you want.

mfield

Oracle wrote: »

Do you mind me asking the price you paid? Thanks.

There's an AV component cable at MX2 for £5 delivered: http://www.mx2.co.uk/default.asp?part=XBUK067 I'm not sure if that's what you want.

That's a composite cable, not component. Crappy quality off that!

Component cable looks likeTHIS

Black_Knight

I find just turning down the fan speed in the settings does a nice job! I can hear it if theres dead silence, but thats kinda rare in movies.

ongarite

You need THIS CABLE from eBay for HD resolutions.