Modded Xbox help

[FREAKZA]

Ok so I have decided I want to mod my xbox. I'm just not sure how to go about the process to do it. Here is a list of question I have that maybe someon can answer who is familiar with this.

1. Are they any reputable companys that do this as apposed to some kid in his basement?
2. I know it needs a chip of some sort. Other then that what other upgrades are needed?
3. Whats the baseline price for this?
4. Will this effect my ability to play on line
5. Pros/Cons of doing this
6. Is it worth it?

Thanks for any and all help with this.

Merry Christmas.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Originally posted by: FREAKZA
Ok so I have decided I want to mod my xbox. I'm just not sure how to go about the process to do it. Here is a list of question I have that maybe someon can answer who is familiar with this.

1. Are they any reputable companys that do this as apposed to some kid in his basement?
2. I know it needs a chip of some sort. Other then that what other upgrades are needed?
3. Whats the baseline price for this?
4. Will this effect my ability to play on line
5. Pros/Cons of doing this
6. Is it worth it?

Thanks for any and all help with this.

Merry Christmas.

You basically get a PIII with 64mb of ram, so you won't be able to do much with it. You can probably get an old used computer off ebay for less that would be better. If you already have an xbox though, the mod chip is around 70 dollars.

 

[FREAKZA]

I already have an xbox. I'm not really sure what your talking about in regards to the PIII 64mb of ram and buying an old comp off of ebay.

 

[thesurge]

why do you want to mod your xbox...as in to play games you errm...burned or to install linux. im not quite sure what your motive is.

 

[FREAKZA]

Basically I'm tired of having 20 different games laying around talking up space this way I can burn them to the hardrive and free some space up in general. Ya know the basics.

 

[Nocturnal]

Check xbox-scene.com for more info and tutorials. They could help you out much more than AT can.

 

[eXx08]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
Check xbox-scene.com for more info and tutorials. They could help you out much more than AT can.

 

[Hmongkeysauce]

Originally posted by: FREAKZA
Ok so I have decided I want to mod my xbox. I'm just not sure how to go about the process to do it. Here is a list of question I have that maybe someon can answer who is familiar with this.

1. Are they any reputable companys that do this as apposed to some kid in his basement?
2. I know it needs a chip of some sort. Other then that what other upgrades are needed?
3. Whats the baseline price for this?
4. Will this effect my ability to play on line
5. Pros/Cons of doing this
6. Is it worth it?

Thanks for any and all help with this.

Merry Christmas.

1. Reputable companies? Hrm. Don't know and don't think so. It's easy to solder but would probably not recommend a newbie solderer to attempt it.
2. A new harddrive would be nice. An upgrade (a replacement rather) of the default OS is a must if you decide to get a modchip.
3. $50
4. Probably. My friend modded his xbox and did a hd swap and was banned from xbox live.
5. Pros=too many to list. Cons=no xbox live?
6. Not if you enjoyed spending $50 per game.

 

[INM8]

Ok, well iv modded my xbox, and its been fo great use to me. I used an "xenium" modchip, which was good because of the easy installation and its software interface. I also put a 120gb HDD in there.

The best thing about the modded xbox is being able to use XBMC, which is awsome freeware media centre software that has been developed for the xbox. With that, you can play almost every single video\audio format, you can stream off the internet, view photos, play dvd's, rip cd's to the HDD, even stream tv from a Myth Tv linux backend, and the list goes on.

The modded xbox community is huge, so once your xbox is chipped the possibilities are endless. As to xbox live, i have been playing on xbox live for over a year, and i havent been banned. When i want to play, all i do is boot the xbox via the eject button, which instructs my modchip to turn off. Obviously, when you do this, you have no access to any of the games on your harddrive , so you need the game disks.

IMO, xbmc plays all types of video just as well as my X2 4400+ pc, except high def wmv content, which it struggles with sometimes, but thats fair enough considering you need a fairly beefy pc to play them anyway.

SO in other words:

The pros are: Endless
cons: To modchip your xbox and upgrade the HDD it costs money

I chipped mine over two years ago, so i have had good use of mine. If you plan on using your xbox for more then i year or so now i would go ahead and do it, but if you plan on buying a 360 sometime within this year, i would reccomend saving your money and spending it on that.

Hope this helped

btw: IF you do decide to chip it, send me a PM, and ill point you in the right direction to find the software. It can be a bit hard to find sometimes

 

[FREAKZA]

I'm not planning on buying a 360 for a long while yet so this seemed like a good choice. Whats the largest harddrive that can be put in one of these?

 

[INM8]

Ok, well at the moment the two main chips are the xecuter3, and xenium ice. There are also many others however. To find out about them all go here: http://www.xbox-scene.com/modchips.php

The installation for each chip is slightly different, so after you have decided what chip you want (based on availability, features, and price) you can get an installation guide specific to that chip. There are two basic types of installation, which is the pinheader installation method (requires soldering) and theres also a solderless installation option (requires you purchasing a solderless adaptor).

The pinheader installation is relativly simple, but i would only suggest you do it if you have had previous experience soldering. You have to be VERY accturate, or you will break one of the connections on the xbox motherboard and that will be the end of your xbox . IF you havent soldered before, you may be better of buying a kit with the solderless adaptor, or getting a pro modchip installer to do it (even better). I guess it depends if you are confident and comforatable with installing the chip yourself. It shouldnt be hard to find someone that does modchip installation. A while ago there was a guy in the "For sale\trade forum" that was chipping xboxs\ps2s for free.

As for harddrive size, i know with the xenium you can now use any size you like (this depends mainly on the bios you flash your console with). This should be the same for all of the gen4 modchips. Just remember to get an IDE drive, and not a SATA drive.

 

[FREAKZA]

Geez this sounds a lot more complicated then I thought it would be. I would have to find someone to do it since I have no experience soldering. As far as the drive goes I could put in a 300 g drive as long as its an IDE drive?

 

[Slick5150]

You don't need to solder. There are solderless modchips available (and solderless adapters for other chips). I modded my Xbox, used the Xecuter 2.3b lite chip. No soldering required, works great.

The newer Xecuture chips require a solderless adapter, but again, no soldering neccessary.

But as others have suggested, goto xbox-scene.org and they have everything you're looking for

 

[INM8]

Yeah, 300gb will work fine. Any IDE hard drive should. Just make sure you dont get one that runs too hot, because the harddrive cooling in the xbox is very limited. A samsung sp250c would work well in an xbox. They are one of the coolest 7200rpm drives on the market, and they are pretty quiet too.

The inital setup can be annoying, but once its done, and you understand how everything works, its very easy to maintain.

 

[TheRyuu]

Trust me, soldering isn't THAT hard. I have NO soldering skill at all and installed my X3 to problem. Didn't frag or anything, booting up fine, used flashbios to get X3 bios on and I was all set. I had a spare 120GB drive in the house, so I justed used that one. Trust me, it takes A LOT of games to fill up 120gbs. Plus, the ones you don't play just burn those to dvd's and delete off HD to save space.

I know alot about modding xbox's, so you can PM me too if you want help.
I apparantly know more about xbox's then PC's. But thats gonna change

EDIT: Installing my X3 might have been a bit of luck, but if you don't feel like soldering, there are solderless adapters out there, even for 1.6/1.6b.

 

[Trevante]

If you're not confident in your soldering capabilities, look up softmods (software exploits that pretty much do the same thing as a modchip, but for much less/free). Solderless modchips aren't worth.

The best place to ask about this would be at www.xbox-scene.com as earlier mentioned. You'll get more in depth info from there.

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: Trevante
If you're not confident in your soldering capabilities, look up softmods (software exploits that pretty much do the same thing as a modchip, but for much less/free). Solderless modchips aren't worth.

The best place to ask about this would be at www.xbox-scene.com as earlier mentioned. You'll get more in depth info from there.

I have mixed feelings on soft-mods. It's just as easy to do a hard mod with a mod-chip (only it will cost you more $$$).

For some apparent reason, I never liked soft-mods. I thought you couldn't play on Xbox Live with them.

EDIT: But Xbox Scene would be a great place to start. Use their forums too.

 

[FREAKZA]

What sort of program would I need to install to rip the games? I am assuming you can also store dvds on there as well.

 

[python023]

1st look at xbox-scene.com and its forums. Modding is really worth it. Solderless modchips like the chameleon are actually quite easy to install and reliable. Softmods are preferrable. Definitely add a larger HDD, the bigger the better, make sure your BIOS has LBA48 support enabled. All the info and more on X-S.

Originally posted by: FREAKZA
What sort of program would I need to install to rip the games? I am assuming you can also store dvds on there as well.

xIso.

 

[kaioshade]

I skipped the modchip and just tsop flashed my xbox. IMO much better than messing with a chip, especially if you have no real reason for xbox live.

 

[FREAKZA]

Originally posted by: kaioshade
I skipped the modchip and just tsop flashed my xbox. IMO much better than messing with a chip, especially if you have no real reason for xbox live.

But can you still rip games and what not?

 

[INM8]

look up softmods (software exploits that pretty much do the same thing as a modchip, but for much less/free). Solderless modchips aren't worth.

The problem with softmods is your actually flashing your xbox's original bios. Dunno why, but iv never been comfortable with that. Atleats with a modchip, once its installed, if u acidentally flash it with the wrong bios, or if something goes wrong, you can just go into recovery mode and reflash. IF you screw up your xbox's retail bios, your stuffed. Well thats my understanding off it anyway

Besides, once you buy the tools\equipment to do the softmod (aka: megaXkey) you are spending about the same amount of money it would cost to purchase a modchip anyway. Probably more.

 

[kaioshade]

Originally posted by: FREAKZA

Originally posted by: kaioshade
I skipped the modchip and just tsop flashed my xbox. IMO much better than messing with a chip, especially if you have no real reason for xbox live.

But can you still rip games and what not?

TSOP flashing an xbox is yields the exact same results as a hard mod. all you are doing is putting the same bios that the chips use directly into the xbox itself.

 

[kaioshade]

Originally posted by: INM8

look up softmods (software exploits that pretty much do the same thing as a modchip, but for much less/free). Solderless modchips aren't worth.

The problem with softmods is your actually flashing your xbox's original bios. Dunno why, but iv never been comfortable with that. Atleats with a modchip, once its installed, if u acidentally flash it with the wrong bios, or if something goes wrong, you can just go into recovery mode and reflash. IF you screw up your xbox's retail bios, your stuffed. Well thats my understanding off it anyway

Besides, once you buy the tools\equipment to do the softmod (aka: megaXkey) you are spending about the same amount of money it would cost to purchase a modchip anyway. Probably more.

Not necessarily. I spent 22 dollars total for my tsop flash. 17 dollars for a memory card for the exploit and 5 dollars for a used copy of splinter cell. 5 minutes later, and my xbox was successfully modded.

Yes, if you screw up the onboard bios youre going to have to get a chip to fix it, just do it right the first time.

 

[Trevante]

There seems to be some confusion here.....

The softmod I'm refering to is a total softmod in the sense that everything is done with the software. You don't even have to open the xbox to do it, and once you get all your files ready, you can have it done in 10 minutes. If you go to the XBE exploits of the xbox-scene forums, you'll see what I'm talking about. It's very safe for beginners, it's cheap, and if something goes wrong, you can usually fix it as long as you have a backup of your eeprom. Softmods work on any version xbox.

Replacing the on board bios is better known as a TSOP flash. With a tsop flash, you have to open the xbox, jump certain solder points together, then reprogram the TSOP with a new bios. If you have a 1.0 or 1.1 Xbox, you can solder in switches that allow you to split the TSOP into 2 banks (2 x 512), or 4 banks (4 x 256). That way, if you flash one bank with the wrong bios, or if you like having multiple bioses (I switch between a two hacked bioses, a linux bios, and the original MS bios, which would allow me to play XBL if I wanted), you can do so. 1.2-1.5 Xboxes can be TSOP flashed, but you can't split the TSOP into multiple banks. Yes, if you mess up your TSOP flash, you'll need a modchip to fix it, but if you don't, then you've saved money that you would have spent on getting a modchip in the first place. Unless you mess with the TSOP flash a lot, you're probably not gonna have any problems with it once you pick a bios and stick with it. If your Xbox was produced anytime after March 19th 2004, then you have a 1.6 xbox which cannot be TSOP flashed.

Installing a modchip is the most secure method in terms of being able to recover from a problem, however, there are more things that can go wrong with it, and chipping an Xbox generally costs more than the other methods of xbox modding. Not to mention that if you mess up soldering, you could potentially mess up the modchip and/or your xbox. Modchips work on all versions of Xbox, however installation is different for certain versions, and if you have a 1.6, there are a few more steps involved, and you have to make sure you flash with a 1.6 compatible bios, otherwise you could brick your modchip, and potentially your xbox too.

Personally, I recommend the softmod, because like kaioshade said, you're just loading another bios, regardless of which method you use, and the softmod is the cheapest, easiest, and quickest way to get it done. I spent $10 on a used mem card, $7 on a used copy of Splinter Cell, and about $10 on a USB hub and a controller breakaway cord, which I used to connect my controller to the PC (with the mem card plugged in, loaded up the Action replay program (free on their website), and copied the gamesave exploit over)). For a grand total of $27, yes I could have bought a modchip (in fact, I did buy a DuoX2 for about $20 online, but that was for fixing an Xbox), but then again, I wouldn't be able to mod other people's Xboxes and charge them using that one modchip would I? :-D
After modding some people's Xboxes for about $20 each, I have more than made back the money I spent on the softmod materials.

And whoever said to use xiso to rip games, slap yourself. xISO is known for creating buggy ISO's, and it's been established for at least 2 years now that xISO should not be used for making ISO's. Qwix and Craxiton or much better Xbox ISO creation programs. For backing games up to the harddrive, DVD2Xbox is the best program to use, followed by Complex Tools.