XBRebooted Console Mod

TouchingVirus

Just to give this one it's own thread rather than continually derail cisk's thread, over the weekend I attempted to put XeLL and XBReboot on one of my consoles.

The plan was to solder cat 5 to the motherboard, run it to an RJ45 header purchased from Radionics. Then cut a hole in the case at the back on the side (under the hard drive) and use an RJ45->LPT port cable to read and write the nand.



I went over to witnessmenow's house because he was gonna attempt it too but we didn't have a nice time of it - I spent 2 hours trying to put Cat 5 cable onto the board while he repaired a RROD xbox. The Cat 5 cable I planned to run from the mobo to the header was too damn hard to solder to those small points - it took ages to heat to tin, and longer to heat both that and the point on the mobo. I ended up using some Kynar 30AWG from the board to the header instead. The ground on the motherboard is also notoriously difficult to heat so instead I globbed a little mound of solder onto the board and soldered the ground to that solder mound.









Between crossing wires, missing resistors and all sorts of n00b stuff I left witnessmenow's house in failure I started from scratch when I got home that night though, perseverance is awesome.

I abandoned the RJ45 idea and went from mobo to LPT port. I used a diode with all five 100 ohm resistors to get the most stable read on the nand with no errors apart from a bad block at 0x0042.




I know this pic doesn't have the diode in it, it was taken earlier when I was getting random Error 280 Unreadable Block errors because I had no diode. Also, any dump with no error never matched a subsequent dump ..so that's why I put in the diode. All problems vanished.

Sunday evening I went back at it, soldering the JTAG part of the hack having discovered I had a vulnerable box. I also removed the R6T3 resistor (damn it is small)

TouchingVirus

Now that all was gravy, I really wanted to revert to my original MB->RJ45 nand reader plan. So I took the soldering iron to the board again, triple checking everything as I went ..I had a "system" this time







After testing out the RJ45 cable I'd previously used it wouldn't work. After taking off the resistors though it worked again and I could read the nand using the RJ45->DB25 cable. So now all I'm using is a diode. I understand that I could use smaller resistors and I might just put them on if I get around to it. For now I'm done...

I would post a final pic including the case mod, but I'm 99% sure I left my power brick and console shell w/ faceplate at witnessmenow's house :rolleyes:

And some shots with XeLL and XeXMenu

witnessmenow

Was wondering where that power brick came from....

I have about 4-5 out in the garage!

Myrddin

Well done TV - thats impressive, most impressive!

TouchingVirus

witnessmenow wrote: »

Was wondering where that power brick came from....

I have about 4-5 out in the garage!

When I discoverd I'd left stuff at your gaff, total facepalm moment!

@EnterNow: Cheers

Also, before I forget - Thanks to witnessmenow for food, mod parts and teaching me that cool little echo thing with the multimeter , docentore and for the advice in cisk's thread and for tellin me what you can do with XBR, totally awesome

Go forth and JTAG, you know you want to

witnessmenow

TouchingVirus wrote: »

When I discoverd I'd left stuff at your gaff, total facepalm moment!

@EnterNow: Cheers

Also, before I forget - Thanks to witnessmenow for food, mod parts and teaching me that cool little echo thing with the multimeter , docentore and for the advice in cisk's thread and for tellin me what you can do with XBR, totally awesome

Go forth and JTAG, you know you want to

Honestly dude it was a pleasure having you down, your welcome back anytime, just do your best not to run over my dog though

TouchingVirus

Yappy little thing...loves my wheels, but they don't love him

TouchingVirus

So I took the plunge and cracked open my August 22nd 2009 refurb to see if I could XBR it. It had the right dashboard version but disappointingly I found out it had a patched bootloaded CD 8435 (CB 7371) and is therefore unjtaggable So if you've got a board lying around I could JTAG then let me know

On the up side though I did managed to get my case from witnessmenow's house on Saturday and have a picture of the reassembled 360 hard drive day to show

Myrddin

So does that RJ45 allow access to Nand while the console is fully assembled?

TouchingVirus

EnterNow wrote: »

So does that RJ45 allow access to Nand while the console is fully assembled?

Sure does, no need to disassemble/reassemble just to get at the nand. I've an RJ45 -> LPT/DB-25 cable, just jack it in and run nandflash

For the XBR mod it could help if I ever do an official disc update by accident but I'm going to use the ones I'm putting on the banned consoles much more because after each update I'll have to take secdata.bin from the nand and work some magic so the banned console can install to hard drive again

Myrddin

So just to be clear cut here, your successful method was:

NO resistors, 1 Diode, Kynar to RJ45 Header, RJ45 to LPT cable?

TouchingVirus

Yes.

If you're going for a once-off cable direct from motherboard to LPT port, then use the 100ohm resistors. But if you're going Kynar from motherboard to RJ45 header and RJ45 to LPT, I used no resistor.

At all times I used a diode, because when I didn't I got unstable reads.

I used a Dell Latitude laptop for the reading and flashing, it was the only thing I had with a native LPT port.

I highly recommend that if you cannot get a read with 100ohm resistors on the LPT port ("Flash controller not found" error in nandpro) then try use lower value resistors (80ohm, 50ohm, 30ohm) before abandoning them altogether - I think this is to protect your motherboard in case the LPT port puts out a voltage at some point through a fault or whatever. I don't have any other resistors, so I don't have that option.

I've done plenty of reads and writes too, and no hassle.

I'm still probably going to buy a few other lower values of resistors and try them out, better safe than sorry.

TouchingVirus

Just to complete this log:

I experience some RROD problems when powering on the console some of the time. It was random in occurance, but annoying. To solve the RROD I only had to turn off the console and turn it back on again.

Through trial and error, I managed to find out that for some reason my motherboard didn't like the regular method of JTAGing (Two diodes & wires from J1F1 to J2F2 and the jumper wire, seen in the first post).

In the end I used the older JTAG method, which involved 3 wires from J1F1 to J2F2 with 330ohm resistors on them and no jumper wire. This solved my RROD issue and now the console works like a dream again.

Myrddin

Ok thats cool. Why do you not need reisistors if going the RJ45 header route?

Edit - can you post a link to that RJ45 header TV...Radionics is a disaster to navigate for small stuff like this...

TouchingVirus

EnterNow wrote: »

Ok thats cool. Why do you not need reisistors if going the RJ45 header route?

Edit - can you post a link to that RJ45 header TV...Radionics is a disaster to navigate for small stuff like this...

I think the fact it's a longer length of wire, coupled with the fact there's a changeover from 30AWG to that heavier network wire that stopped any data reaching the LPT port when I used resistors. As soon as I took them out, it worked.

I suggest you try them in first, and if you get no joy and are sure you did everything else right, take them out.

LPT D-Sub Male Connector - Minimum order of 5 I'm afraid. You can just register for an account on Radionics I think because my Dad did it earlier in the week for some gear he wanted.

witnessmenow

EnterNow wrote: »

Ok thats cool. Why do you not need reisistors if going the RJ45 header route?

Edit - can you post a link to that RJ45 header TV...Radionics is a disaster to navigate for small stuff like this...

http://radionics.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=searchProducts&searchTerm=331-6437&x=11&y=15

Myrddin

TouchingVirus wrote: »

I think the fact it's a longer length of wire, coupled with the fact there's a changeover from 30AWG to that heavier network wire that stopped any data reaching the LPT port when I used resistors. As soon as I took them out, it worked.

I suggest you try them in first, and if you get no joy and are sure you did everything else right, take them out.

LPT D-Sub Male Connector - Minimum order of 5 I'm afraid. You can just register for an account on Radionics I think because my Dad did it earlier in the week for some gear he wanted.

Cheers TV - that link however goes to a Dsub cup...
Cheers WMN - they lool like they are PCB mounted though, can I get ones that connect from the rear of the socket?

Edit - would this be right - http://radionics.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&R=0485928#header

TouchingVirus

EnterNow wrote: »

Cheers TV - that link however goes to a Dsub cup...
Cheers WMN - they lool like they are PCB mounted though, can I get ones that connect from the rear of the socket?

Edit - would this be right - http://radionics.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&R=0485928#header

Sorry EnterNow, completely misread your post and thought you wanted the D-Sub

If you're looking for ones that go into the back and not from the bottom like mine then yes, that link you posted is what you're looking for. I also suggest some heatshrink to keep those pins isolated.

When cutting a hole in the case, cut it as close to the USB/Ethernet ports as you can, otherwise it'll be too close to your DVD drive when it goes in, which is a disaster. I had to re-cut the chassis and use a LOT of glue to fix that mistake in my first mod.

*edit* Wow, those ones you have there are expensive. How about these: http://radionics.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&R=3862687#header

witnessmenow

EnterNow wrote: »

Cheers TV - that link however goes to a Dsub cup...
Cheers WMN - they lool like they are PCB mounted though, can I get ones that connect from the rear of the socket?

Edit - would this be right - http://radionics.rs-online.com/web/search/searchBrowseAction.html?method=getProduct&R=0485928#header

Yeah the ones you linked to are better suited, but cost ~ 10 times as much! I could live with my more PCB mounting looking ones!

Myrddin

Cool, I know what I need now so cheers guys.

My Falcon arrived today, and seems to be ready for the great experiment. Is it just me or is the old dash much nicer?

TouchingVirus

Pre-NXE dash? Nice! Ain't seen a blade 360 in a long time.

I've got a RROD console to fix, not a clue what it is but apparently it's JTAGable Power of the JTAG is awesome

Myrddin

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Pre-NXE dash? Nice! Ain't seen a blade 360 in a long time.

I've got a RROD console to fix, not a clue what it is but apparently it's JTAGable Power of the JTAG is awesome

So you have your original, your new Jasper and now a RROD to jtag? Damn you man!

If I may impose again, Radionics dont sem to do an RJ45-LPT cable...where did you get yours?

TouchingVirus

Haha, the new RROD console is for a friend, he'll buy it off me for €70 (cost of the console & parts for the RROD fix) if I can get XBR on it.

As regards the RJ45 -> LPT cable I made it myself - that's why I bought the D-Sub cups. Lop one end off a regular 1m network cable, strip back the outer shielding and solder it onto the D-Sub connector.

Myrddin

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Haha, the new RROD console is for a friend, he'll buy it off me for €70 (cost of the console & parts for the RROD fix) if I can get XBR on it.

As regards the RJ45 -> LPT cable I made it myself - that's why I bought the D-Sub cups. Lop one end off a regular 1m network cable, strip back the outer shielding and solder it onto the D-Sub connector.

Ah that makes sense now...Ill do that. Purely because it allows easy access to Nand, and because its a great idea

TV to Friend - "Nah, couldn't get that Xbox working at all"
TV to Himslef - "Another jtag'd beast to add to my collection muhahaha"

TouchingVirus

What would I do with 3 XBR's, I can only play one at a time €70 = MONEYS!

Myrddin

TouchingVirus wrote: »

What would I do with 3 XBR's, I can only play one at a time €70 = MONEYS!

70 quid is no good to you man when you start seeing flashing red lights
Pure redundancy thats all, but yeah three is overkill. When Ive two I think Ill be happy :pac:

Myrddin

Guys, is there a difference between a switching diode and a signal diode? The diode code from the tutorials yields this result from Maplin - http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=19076

Apparantly its a signal diode...

TouchingVirus

EnterNow wrote: »

Guys, is there a difference between a switching diode and a signal diode? The diode code from the tutorials yields this result from Maplin - http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=19076

Apparantly its a signal diode...

Yes, but you'll see that there are 3 models of diode on offer, OA90, 1N4148 and 1N918. If you look in the description you'll see 1N4148 is a switching diode. It is the one me & witnessmenow bought for the mod

witnessmenow

EnterNow wrote: »

Guys, is there a difference between a switching diode and a signal diode? The diode code from the tutorials yields this result from Maplin - http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=19076

Apparantly its a signal diode...

Dude send me a PM and arrange psedning me a stamped address envelope and you can have some diodes!