uses for original xbox?

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smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
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I'd wager the vast majority of them still work. A little isopropyl alcohol on the contacts can clean up nearly any used cartridge. That Halo 2 disc will degrade by the time it's 30 years old, and the NES cartridge will still work.

Except it isn't just dirty contacts that caused problems. They were notorious for breaking and so was the NES system itself. There are replacement parts for them that should fix those problems, especially if you have the newer top loading NES, but then it isn't all original.
 
Apr 12, 2010
10,510
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It had more than enough decent playable games. It had some of the more superior ports of the 3 consoles. Even though 360 supports some backward compatibility, it doesn't go without issues. I'm still looking for titles for the system. It has more titles that interest me than GC, but neither have shit on PS2 selection.
I kind of regret not picking up some Xbox's for $5 at Goodwill to fuck up with homebrew & such though.
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
It had more than enough decent playable games. It had some of the more superior ports of the 3 consoles. Even though 360 supports some backward compatibility, it doesn't go without issues. I'm still looking for titles for the system. It has more titles that interest me than GC, but neither have shit on PS2 selection.
I kind of regret not picking up some Xbox's for $5 at Goodwill to fuck up with homebrew & such though.

A couple years ago I purchased 6 or 7 Xbox Live starter kits for the original Xbox for $5 each at the BX of the base I was stationed at. They came with 12 months of Xbox Live (that worked for gold subscriptions) and the headset. I threw all the headsets away and gave a few of the codes out.
 

Sulaco

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2003
3,825
44
91
I'm seriously considering going the "XBMC" route with mine, especially with the MAME/Emulation. That looks amazing.

Has anyone tried this? There are a few YouTube videos explaining it, but I was hoping maybe someone had soft modded their Xbox and could give some tips.
 

iluvdeal

Golden Member
Nov 22, 1999
1,975
0
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The original Xbox by itself was nothing special, but modding it and installing XBMC turned it into a gold mine. Media players like WD TV, Apple TV, Roku, etc. are widespread now, but back then a set top box playing your video files wasn't possible until the modding community got hold of the Xbox. It was pretty awesome, it was like seeing and living in the future as you couldn't buy in stores what the xbox was doing as far as media library management and playback from a set top box was concerned. You'd have to wait years later to get that functionality in commercial devices.

I'm seriously considering going the "XBMC" route with mine, especially with the MAME/Emulation. That looks amazing.

Has anyone tried this? There are a few YouTube videos explaining it, but I was hoping maybe someone had soft modded their Xbox and could give some tips.

At this point, I'm not sure I'd invest the time as I don't imagine the software is actively being updated anymore so prepare to be frustrated. You could do the MAME stuff on your PC if you just want something to play games. As far as XBMC goes, it was awesome back then but I wouldn't rely on it now as I'm not sure it would handle recent video formats and it'd choke on HD video files. But understanding those limitations, if you want to do it all as a project though, it'd be fun. I modded mine with a mod chip and 120GB hdd, good stuff.
 
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smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
I'm seriously considering going the "XBMC" route with mine, especially with the MAME/Emulation. That looks amazing.

Has anyone tried this? There are a few YouTube videos explaining it, but I was hoping maybe someone had soft modded their Xbox and could give some tips.

MAME runs terrible on every platform. And you need certain builds for certain games, because MAME doesn't go for playability, but true emulation. This results in an awful experience. =( I wish it wasn't so because I'd have built a MAME cabinet a long time ago.
 

Sulaco

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2003
3,825
44
91
The original Xbox by itself was nothing special, but modding it and installing XBMC turned it into a gold mine. Media players like WD TV, Apple TV, Roku, etc. are widespread now, but back then a set top box playing your video files wasn't possible until the modding community got hold of the Xbox. It was pretty awesome, it was like seeing and living in the future as you couldn't buy in stores what the xbox was doing as far as media library management and playback from a set top box was concerned. You'd have to wait years later to get that functionality in commercial devices.



At this point, I'm not sure I'd invest the time as I don't imagine the software is actively being updated anymore so prepare to be frustrated. You could do the MAME stuff on your PC if you just want something to play games. As far as XBMC goes, it was awesome back then but I wouldn't rely on it now as I'm not sure it would handle recent video formats and it'd choke on HD video files. But understanding those limitations, if you want to do it all as a project though, it'd be fun. I modded mine with a mod chip and 120GB hdd, good stuff.

What about 16-bit emulation? I was thinking more along the lines of that and old NeoGeo stuff...
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
What about 16-bit emulation? I was thinking more along the lines of that and old NeoGeo stuff...

I had a hardmodded xbox with a 300GB HDD and a few emulators with pretty much every SNES and NES game. Those worked well, but as far as I know, you have to have it hardmodded to do that.
 

iluvdeal

Golden Member
Nov 22, 1999
1,975
0
76
What about 16-bit emulation? I was thinking more along the lines of that and old NeoGeo stuff...

It's been many years but I don't remember the xbox having any problems with running 16 bit emulators. All this talk about the original xbox has made me want to fire mine up again to see if it still works after all this time.
 

Sulaco

Diamond Member
Mar 28, 2003
3,825
44
91
I had a hardmodded xbox with a 300GB HDD and a few emulators with pretty much every SNES and NES game. Those worked well, but as far as I know, you have to have it hardmodded to do that.

I'll look into that. I really didn't want to hard mod, so that might be a deal breaker.

Thanks for the heads up.
 

effowe

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2004
6,012
18
81
I'll look into that. I really didn't want to hard mod, so that might be a deal breaker.

Thanks for the heads up.

Check this..

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=215055

Granted it's from 9 years ago, but will explain the basics. I have gotten XBMC running on a softmodded XBOX. Once you go through the exploits and have EvolutionX (or another dashboard) running, it will boot to that and you will have FTP access to the hard drive. You can then install emulators, XBMC, etc, but you should upgrade the HDD before you start putting a lot of things on there.