Got myself an Xbox, Need General Help and Guidance [PICS]

[foxinabox]

While you're at it, replace the thermal paste. It makes a substantial improvement.

[Gedeon]

One thing to take into consideration is how the bios is setup before you flash it and add your hard drive. You do have to plan this part out depending on how big the hard drive is that you select.

Hey Nex, I don't have any bigger size IDE hard drive right at this point. I've got to find one first, however this might take a couple days. But I guess I can upgrade the BIOS without installing a new drive, right? The system should boot up normally with Executer for example, even if I have the old drive... afterall the "locking" is not being checked with the new BIOS. Or should I get the bigger drive first and than proceed with flashing the BIOS?

What's not entirely clear here is that I think I should format the new drive as FATX (maybe the rescue/recovery disks has options to do this, not sure) and I don't see yet when it's gonna happen in that process.

I don't want to mess up my softmodded original hard drive, because I DO NOT own any exploit games.

While you're at it, replace the thermal paste. It makes a substantial improvement.

Yup, gotta pick up some thermal paste from the local computer shop as well

[asbo]

I've zipped things together to make it easy for you. Download and unzip.
You can edit the network section, in evox.ini in the evox folder, to save using the controller to do it on the xbox. This is optional.

Run EVtool, click open and open \all you need V3\evox\Bios\M8plus.bin
Choose what you want from the toggles list, personally I untick everything.
Under Boot Partitions and Executables choose the locations where your dashboards will be, you can use the up/down arrows to pick drive letter. I recommend E:/apps/XBMC/default.xbe, E:/apps/evox/evoxdash.xbe, etc
You can also change the power LED colour if you want.
Hit save as and overwrite.

Now FTP the dashboards to the locations you chose, including evox, its files and subfolder.
Reboot the xbox, XBMC and the new Evox should show up on the launch menu.
Run the new evox dash and under System Utils run backup, wait for it to do its thing then FTP the backup folder to your PC. It will be in the evox folder.
Then run Flash BIOS. Select M8plus.bin and let it do its thing.

Reboot and the xbox should boot into the first dashboard you chose. Dada! one TSOP'ed xbox.

Alternatively you could FTP evox.ini and the BIOS folder, containing M8plus.bin, to the current evox location on your xbox, overwriting the evox.ini file already there. Trouble is I'm not sure where that would be on a softmod.

Just ask if anything isn't clear

[Gedeon]

Wow, kudos Asbo! Thanks for this little package you provided.

A bit of FTP-ing and backing up EEPROM and stuff my Xbox is now running with the new BIOS on board, yay! Right now I'm trying to apply new thermal paste but the old one is a bitch, it's like bubble gum (even smells like it). Managed to get off the heatsink from the CPU but when I'm done with that I guess gotta turn on the console for a few minutes to generate some heat and get the heatsink off the GPU, it's like glued there now. Gosh!

A new HDD is on it's way soon, how should I proceed with that? I mean creating the partitions and whatnot.

[Nextelhalo]

Congratulations sir, the hard part is over with. For the hard drive, use an install disc like Slayers or Hexen and you'll have plenty of options to setup the drive. Once you choose just sit back and watch the magic happen. Once it's done you can set XBMC as the dashboard (if the disc doesnt do it already) and start using FTP to transfer your games and all that jazz.

[Gedeon]

Just wanted to add a post about cleaning up the CPU and the GPU. With the new thermal paste the CPU is around 55 Celsius, and the board is a bit below. I played FlatOut 2 for about 15 minutes so... I guess it's okay. Will post some results later about this. One thing for sure, Microsoft used bubble gum paste and they really wanted it to last but... took me about 1 and a half hour to remove that crap.

[asbo]

Glad I could help
I always have a set of ArctiClean for removing the thermal paste in PCs and it works on the xbox bubblegum too. Certainly not worth buying if you're only going to use it once though.

[Gedeon]

I also decided to remove the "metal grill" in front of the fan, set the speed to 34% and the CPU is at steady 52 Celsius now after 15 mins of gaming, and the board is a bit lower. With maximum speed is's extremely efficient, but really noisy so decided to go with a bit warmer but qiueter Xbox

[xman]

I also decided to remove the "metal grill" in front of the fan, set the speed to 34% and the CPU is at steady 52 Celsius now after 15 mins of gaming, and the board is a bit lower. With maximum speed is's extremely efficient, but really noisy so decided to go with a bit warmer but qiueter Xbox

Just be aware if you set fan speed at 34% using XBMC as the settings method, this setting is ignored while playing games as XBMC is not running while playing games. The fan control setting while gaming is solely that set in the bios. Not sure whether you realize this or whether you indeed are referring to 34% as the fan speed you did set in the bios. For XBMC I set mine at 50c, auto control and 2% minimum fan speed. Seems to work fine but importantly, keeps the fan noise down as it appears to rarely exceed 8% fan speed to maintain the 50c. I used to set the fan speed manually but found it safer to allow auto setting to allow more fan if things like fan becoming covered in dust come into effect during the machine's operation.

[Gedeon]

I also decided to remove the "metal grill" in front of the fan, set the speed to 34% and the CPU is at steady 52 Celsius now after 15 mins of gaming, and the board is a bit lower. With maximum speed is's extremely efficient, but really noisy so decided to go with a bit warmer but qiueter Xbox

Just be aware if you set fan speed at 34% using XBMC as the settings method, this setting is ignored while playing games as XBMC is not running while playing games. The fan control setting while gaming is solely that set in the bios. Not sure whether you realize this or whether you indeed are referring to 34% as the fan speed you did set in the bios. For XBMC I set mine at 50c, auto control and 2% minimum fan speed. Seems to work fine but importantly, keeps the fan noise down as it appears to rarely exceed 8% fan speed to maintain the 50c. I used to set the fan speed manually but found it safer to allow auto setting to allow more fan if things like fan becoming covered in dust come into effect during the machine's operation.

Yup, I'm aware of that. I set the fan speed to 34% in the BIOS, so I flashed it again. I'm okay with the extra noise but it was necessary because the placement of the console is not exactly well ventillated. Sometimes you must compromise for the aesthetics Anyway, 49-53 degrees for a P3 CPU is quite acceptable imo. I wonder what difference a quieter and bigger fan would make knowing it should maintain the same temp levels that I have with the original fan now with it's speed set to 34%.

[tim619]

How did you bridge the "solder-points"? Did you soldered them or used other easier things like pointed out in the beginning?

[Gedeon]

I really want to use some sort of wireless controller with it, at least one. I was thinking of something that I can build inside the case sacrificing the first controller port somehow. I've seen this Logitech wireless controller for Xbox on ebay, but it's nearly impossible to get one in Europe, so maybe a PS2 controller would be a better option with a receiver and a converter. The main goal is not to have anything attached to the front giving it a nice look. Let me post a picture to help you guys get the idea

[Gedeon]

How did you bridge the "solder-points"? Did you soldered them or used other easier things like pointed out in the beginning?

My friend works at someplace they deal with micro electronics and stuff like that all day long, so he has a quite nice equipment at home and he did the soldering with a small drop of tin on both pads. It's not the most beautiful job he done (at least this is what he said) but it gets the job done and that's what matters. So no tricky stuff like pencils or duct tapes.

[tim619]

Thanks, I also wanted to flash tsop but wasnt sure if I get the soldering right... So I hoped to hear some magic like "pencil"

[Nextelhalo]

How did you bridge the "solder-points"? Did you soldered them or used other easier things like pointed out in the beginning?

My friend works at someplace they deal with micro electronics and stuff like that all day long, so he has a quite nice equipment at home and he did the soldering with a small drop of tin on both pads. It's not the most beautiful job he done (at least this is what he said) but it gets the job done and that's what matters. So no tricky stuff like pencils or duct tapes.

Logitech Wireless Controllers, only way i'd go.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2x-Original-Xbo ... 9#shpCntId

[hawsey]

Oil cooling , it's the future cool your Xbox and get a chip shop air freshener for free ......
I kid not it has been done .

[Gedeon]

How did you bridge the "solder-points"? Did you soldered them or used other easier things like pointed out in the beginning?

My friend works at someplace they deal with micro electronics and stuff like that all day long, so he has a quite nice equipment at home and he did the soldering with a small drop of tin on both pads. It's not the most beautiful job he done (at least this is what he said) but it gets the job done and that's what matters. So no tricky stuff like pencils or duct tapes.

Logitech Wireless Controllers, only way i'd go.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2x-Original-Xbo ... 9#shpCntId

Hm. Is it possible to disassemble the receiver and hide it inside the case? I bet the huge plastic cover just a leftover mentality from the past when everything that's huge and heavy must be good.

[Nextelhalo]

Yep you can remove the guts from the receiver and hard wire it to the controller port, however, those receivers do tuck away nicely on top of the xbox and you can wrap the cord around side.

[budbandito720]

Also the receiver's have the memory card slots so you wont be able to use them if inside xbox

[Gedeon]

Also the receiver's have the memory card slots so you wont be able to use them if inside xbox

I don't think I'm going to use any memory cards for the xbox, ever