Original Xbox modding

[WPKenny]

I was wandering round the local boot fair the other day when I spotted a lonely original xbox. I asked the guy how much it was out of curiosity and he said "3 quid mate". Now it had no leads with it what so ever, but I'm pretty resourceful and managed to snag a controller from another store, I already had a figure-8 power lead and had heard that splinter cell was the game you needed to mod the xbox.
The thing was I couldn't find a AV lead anywhere at the boot fair and calls to local game retailers yealded nothing.
I texted a mate from work to see if he had any spare. As luck would have it, he had a spare SCART lead and brought it into work today.
So I dash home after work and plug it all in. Black screen.
I try the eject button. Nothing.
I stick a paperclip in to eject the dvd drive and whack in Splinter Cell. Still a black screen but it sounds like it trying to read the disc. Hmmm.

So I'm wondering if it's been set up on component leads or something and isn't giving out the correct signal for the SCART lead. Suddenly in a flash of inspiration I decide to try holding the eject button in as I push the power button. It springs into life and there's a picture on the screen! And the eject button starts working again!

It turns out someone's already soft modded the thing. So this thread's not about how to mod the xbox. Just what to do with it now.

I got a couple of quick questions.....
It's an 8gig HDD, why so many partitions? What does each one do?
Is there a way to turn it on just with the power button? Right now pushing both buttons gets it working but it opens the DVD tray every time it boots.
How easy is it to whack a bigger HDD in? Can I prep it or will I need to softmod the xbox again once I put a new HDD in?
Also... How cools is XBMC???? Apple trailers on my telly. heh.

 

[Trem]

Scenyx Entertainment Community -> FAQ

Bigger HDD

 

[Yaka]

everything you needs is on xbox scene. i still love xbmc on it but the tux ver is winning me over. theres tons you could still do on it. think preety much all recent stuff mod wise has been for minimising the size of the xbox.

my first

and my 2nd with 3x500gb hhds

been modified some what since that pic, internal wifi, built-in component conns and optical


one feature i wished the xbox had was the ability to wake on lan

 

[WPKenny]

Bloody hell that's a hell of a lot of modding Yaka!

I must say the first one looks kind of like a lego project but the second one's pretty slick looking.

I'm going to attempt a HDD upgrade tonight. Nothing fancy, just a 20gig drive to see how easy it is.

Am I right in thinking that there's a way to get it to boot straight into XBMC and not this EvoX thing it loads up now. And is there a way to stop me having to press and hold both buttons to stop it booting to a black screen?

 

[Yaka]

yes current xbmx for xbox should start up by defult once you ftped it over. as for boot up you will have to find out what hacked bios is running.

 

[Kryten]

Let me know how you get on. I've softmodded my own xbox and slapped xbmc onto it purely for streaming media to the telly from my PC. Want to add a 160gb drive to it (as I have a couple lying around) so I can put the more popular of said videos onto it locally and save the PC being on. Plenty of resources on how to do it, I just really can't be arsed opening the PC, finding an IDE cable and doing it the normal way :|

Of course if anyone's got any suggestions on upgrading the HDD without hooking it into my main box it'll be greatly appreciated I managed it before using a USB>IDE adapter and taking "ownership" in VMWare, saving me rebooting or mucking about but vmware doesnt like USB on win 7 currently :/

 

[phazey]

Got to admit, XBMC is the only must have thing when you mod an xbox. Mine was streaming live TV when i had no TV antenna in Burma - never bothered to get a replacement.

One question - how many watts does the xbox pull - I've got a 110v unit, and my Wii downconverter will not power it....