flashing tsop failed - any chance of recovery?

[dan.h]

Hi guys,
I've got an xbox with an x3 chip and wanted to flash the tsop on it (It's a 1.4 xbox and the tsop chip says ST on it, so 256k non-winbond).
After softmodding and pulling out the X3 I bridged the relevant points with some conductive paint and using Hexen, tried to flash a bios through Evox.
The chip type was recognized and writing was enabled as Evox was able to erase the bios and fully get to the end of the yellow progress bar. Unfortunatlely it hung up around a 1/3 of the way through the green progress bar and was like this for 10 minutes.

I rebooted the xbox and confirmed I screwed up the bios. If I boot the xbox with the X3 and Hexen in the xbox, then pull the X3 out after ~5 seconds, Hexen loads up but when I try to reflash a bios I get the following error:

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Manufacturers ID ff Device ID ff
!! flash not writeable !!

There is probably a short answer to this long post but is there any way of recovering the TSOP on this?
Cheers

[GhostlyGamer]

Short answer is No. Long answer is yes but involves a chameleon mod chip(very rare, only person I know who has one is Xphazer) and a lot of wires.

[spicemuseum]

Coincidentally both Keropi and I have (quite independently) been doing the same thing recently removing X3s from v1.4s and flashing the TSOP. In my case completely successfully. ...Although in this case my v1.4 has a Winbond TSOP (but I've done v1.4s with ST Micro TSOP previously).

Also wanted to mention that I got hold of my first ever v1.1 recently, and flashed the 1 meg ST Micro TSOP.

In all cases HeXEn has worked perfectly, always making the correct choices about flashing method and BIOS sizing. Great work Heimdall.

[N64 freak]

Well depends on how good you are at soldering it is a relatively easy fix.
I could send you an already flashed tsop chip which you would just need to install.
You could repair it with a suitable modchip and hot plugging or you use one of the old homebrew modchips.
But for all the techniques you would need to solder the two tsop write enable points together.

If thats to much work for you just pop in a modchip, they are easy to install and cheap in price.

The FF id mean that the write enable points aren't bridged correctly.
Just check them and test it again. Already had that problem myself.

[keropi]

yep, did the same with the x3 and a winbond tsop like spicemuseum reported, nothing really special
I blame the conductive thingie, apparently a point lost contact and flashing could not continue... now it's either modchip or tedious work to replace the tsop or install a 28-wire cheapmod to it... tbh modchip is the way to go ....
yeah, my post didn't really add anything new

[fxmech]

Coincidentally both Keropi and I have (quite independently) been doing the same thing recently removing X3s from v1.4s and flashing the TSOP. In my case completely successfully. ...Although in this case my v1.4 has a Winbond TSOP (but I've done v1.4s with ST Micro TSOP previously).

Also wanted to mention that I got hold of my first ever v1.1 recently, and flashed the 1 meg ST Micro TSOP.

In all cases HeXEn has worked perfectly, always making the correct choices about flashing method and BIOS sizing. Great work Heimdall.

I have a fried 1.0 TSOP (currently running an Aladdin XT PLUS2).

How do you recommend pulling the chip? Just after boot, just before flash, --? Any details, and your opinion on this method working with the Aladdin?

I do have an X3 around but it is quite at home in my other box and quite tangled in with the X3CP. Aladdin and X3 are both LPC modchips, so it should work?

[xman]

Are you asking how to re-flash a modchip that has a bad bios?. If that is the case, boot the machine with the good modchip, after it boots your main App or loads an install disc with the bios you want if you don't have them on the HDD itself, pull the good modchip off the pin header, unsolder the "D0" wire, solder the "D0" wire onto the modchip with the bad bios and push the bad modchip carefully back onto the pinheader and re-flash it, done. I personally use EvoXDash utilities for flashing the modchips but any one will do really. EvoXDash is handy for me because I have EvoXDash as an App on all my machines so no disc required. The machine will allow you to do anything without the modchip once it has booted except cold booting the machine or go from a game back to an App like XBMC as this is actually cold booting the machine.

[professor_jonny]

There is a few special bioses floating around you flash to a modchip and boot from it and it does not break the we and wr lines to the tsop.

when booted from this special bios installed on a modchip it allows you to flash the tsop if you remove the mod chip when the system is booted.

but the think that can fool the average user is to flash from one of these bioses you must soft boot a bios by loading hexen or frosty, it wont work with slayers.

it only works on several mod chips a chamelion x3 and matrix are among the ones it works with and i dont know if it works on all versions of xbox.

[Heimdall]

@xman: I think fxmech is asking about fixing the bad flash on the TSOP, not reflashing a badly flashed modchip.

@fxmech: You have two options.
1. As it's a 1.0 it has a 1 MB TSOP chip, which means that the three wire trick might work. Essentially the 1MB chip contains 4 copies of the BIOS, and during booting the Xbox checks that at least 2 of the copies match. A common flash failure is flashing a 256kB BIOS, but using a flashing tool that doesn't resize the BIOS to 1 MB, so you end up with one bank having your new BIOS, and the other three holding the old BIOS, so the boot fails. The fix is to fool the TSOP chip into always reading from the same 256kB bank, so that the BIOS copies always match. You do this by using the three wire trick, where you connect the appropriate TSOP address lines to either ground or +5V so that the chip always reads from one bank (and you can choose which bank). I have some notes at home, I'll dig them out and post here later today - but if I forget then PM me to remind me!

2. You probably need a spare chip for this. You pre-place your flashing tool (Evox would be a good choice) and BIOS on the hard drive, and you flash a special BIOS (Evox TSOP_D6, from memory) onto the chip. As it starts to boot you remove the chip from the chip header. If you get the timing right then the Xbox boots, but in a way that means you can flash the TSOP (remember that with a normal BIOS boot you can only flash the device you booted from, this BIOS removes that restriction). I think I have some notes on this at home as well.

[fxmech]

Thanks for the replies.

The corrupted TSOP occurred after trying to get a split bios switch setup flashed. I hope it will have a 256k bank running somewhere with a working bios.

If not, can the 3 wire trick load a 512kb sized bios from either "side"?

And i see more info on this evox d.6 bios now. It makes sense that i need to flash this from a multi - bios chip. At least it would be easier - to try it on the Aladdin would at the very least require a flash like xman described to flash it back to a normal bios for daily use.

Thanks for your help guys. Look forward to your notes heimdall!

[Heimdall]

Yes, the 3-wire trick can boot any of the four 256kB blocks, or either of the two 512kB blocks. The notes should explain that, when I find them!

[MrMajst3r]

http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/ComaConsole.htm

[Heimdall]

Here we go:

Using Evox D6.TSOP BIOS on a chip

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What you need:
LPC modchip with D0/ground control (an X2 chip will do it)
Wire soldered to the A15 point on the motherboard (check 29-wire mods for location).
The D6.TSOP Evox BIOS flashed to a bank on your chip. This can be found from the Evox 3921 dashboard distro.

A boot CD which has the ability to flash your TSOP. An updated Evox boot disk or a bootable copy of raincoat will suffice. (Winbond TSOP must use raincoat .7). I suspect you can also flash from the hard drive.

Instructions:
1. Ground the A15 wire.
2. Boot the Xbox with the chip enabled (booting from the d6.TSOP BIOS) and with the boot disk in place.
3. After a second, disable the chip. (This probably means removing the ground from D0). You should see the Xbox splash screen with blue/yellow Xbox logo. If all goes to plan, your boot disk should run and you'll be able to flash your TSOP.

The 3-Wire Trick:

For a four bank split it isn't 3 wires, it's 4 wires.

http://s955.photobucket.com/user/Heimda ... t.jpg.html

You don't need to use switches, you just have to solder a 9" piece of insulated wire to each of the four points in the diagram, and label each cable.

The combinations are as follows:

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A18          A19         Result

Ground       Ground      256kb Bank 1
Ground       +3.3V       256kb Bank 2
+3.3V        Ground      256kb Bank 3
+3.3V        +3.3V       256kb Bank 4
Float        Ground      512kb Bank 1
Float        +3.3V       512kb Bank 2

Just twist the ends of the A19 and A18 wires with either ground or +3.3V, or leave them floating (and insulate the ends, obviously) as shown in the table, to activate the bank you want, then boot the Xbox. If it doesn't boot, turn the Xbox off then try a different combination.

[fxmech]

Is the A15 labelled properly here?

[Heimdall]

No, the top circle (on the capacitor) is ground, the other two are A18 and A19. The best A15 picture I can find is here, and more specifically this picture. It's the connection adjacent to the TSOP chip itself, just below the R7D1 label.

[lekostomp]

Is the A15 point on chameleon just a ground point? Or does it serve a bigger purpose then just grounding a15?

[Heimdall]

A15 is the 16th address line, and you ground A15 to force (or exclude) reading a particular address range. You connect it to the Chameleon so that the Chameleon can control the A15 address line so that it can include / exclude that address range as it boots - although I don't know why it would want to do that.