Ludvig's first softmod, and other mods
Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 10:13 pm
Just for the fun of it i will make a kind of a work log my latest project.
Some background story of my me and Xboxes. I am not new to modding them, just new to softmodding.
My first xbox was bought when i served compulsory military service. It was a standard black one, but it died on, and this was before i started thinking of repairing electronics by my self (Except PC's) So i got hold of a slightly used Crystal Edition from a friend. Soon after getting that one, i heard about softmodding them. My brother in law had done that to his xbox, and also did mine. It was loaded with XBMC ofc, and thats what got me into forums and sites that showed me cool casemods and other stuff i could do with the xbox. This was the time before i had Internet at my flat, so every time i visited friends or my parents i was on these forums looking for inspiration and printing page after page with tutorials. So the first thing i did to the xbox on the hardware side was 80mm fan mod, IDE cable upgrade and loads blue leds. Even in the controller ports. Sadly i dont have any pics of it here at work, i may have at home on my server though. Then this xbox got an clear ghostcase tranpslant, going for a more subtle and clean style this time. Black jewel, blue leds underneath. Ghostcase DVD mod, and blacked out HDD and made black covers to hide cables.
Then the misses moved away to study, and she was used to the Xbox too, so i got online and bought a standard black one from USA. It finally arrived, and ofc i had'nt thought of the voltage difference, plugged the 110v Xbox in my 220v outlet. That fried the power supply, luckily in those days the llama site was live, and i got hold of another (110v) power supply, and i also bought a step down converter. My brother in law also softmodded this one and put in an bigger HDD. I did much the same as before, but since this was an 1.1 i also changed the fan on the GPU heatsink. 80mm fan at the back and IDE cable upgrade. This one i just got a custom jewel and pink leds underneath as case mods.
After many years if (ab)use, they started to show they weaknes, with alot of HD files getting downloaded. So the daily driver got replaced for a Raspberry Pi running Kodi. The 1.1 got loaded with children movies and my sisters kids borrowed it. Made some changes to XBMC (Skin and master profile) so they could not do anything wrong, just watch movies. They still use it from time to time, but i think it is time for me to claim it back The Ghostcase one, was packed away for a while until we decided to set up an entertainment room, so finally i got it out again. I started really falling in love with the Xbox again, playing good old games and so on. So i decided i want to softmod one for myself to have at work. I started looking for a worthy candidate for this, so i got a Crystal One that sadly have bulging caps and is dead. On the plus side it is chipped and got a bigger HDD. So that will become a nice project later, changing caps. A perfect excuse to finally buy a decent soldering station.
Then i got hold of a black one, a bit scruffed up and sticky DVD drive, but boots and is stock. So it will be my first softmod, when i have all the stuff i need.
As is said earlier, i like project to make the evening go faster here at work. So I love to things that take a bit of time and that i find cool. So i started making a Xbox memory card a USB port instead.
Started out with an usb cable, that the metal shielding around the female USB plug was to bulky, so it would not fit in the memoy card case. The second cable had a thinner metal casing, but it got destroyed when removing the plastic on the outside and therefor it got rendered useless. So now i have a memory card case that has a cutout for the female USB, but no more cables to try. So the memory card is still functional, i did not desolder the connection yet. After figuring out that there may be hard to find a USB stick that will work with the xbox, and the fact that i dont have any more femalu USB plugs to use, i figured i will just make a USB to Xbox cable with the female plug that was too bulky. So in case my USB sticks dont work with the Xbox, i can put the Savegame exploit on the memory card and at least get to softmod the Xbox.
And finally, i picture of the view out of my window here at the barge. This is my backdrop while writing this
Some background story of my me and Xboxes. I am not new to modding them, just new to softmodding.
My first xbox was bought when i served compulsory military service. It was a standard black one, but it died on, and this was before i started thinking of repairing electronics by my self (Except PC's) So i got hold of a slightly used Crystal Edition from a friend. Soon after getting that one, i heard about softmodding them. My brother in law had done that to his xbox, and also did mine. It was loaded with XBMC ofc, and thats what got me into forums and sites that showed me cool casemods and other stuff i could do with the xbox. This was the time before i had Internet at my flat, so every time i visited friends or my parents i was on these forums looking for inspiration and printing page after page with tutorials. So the first thing i did to the xbox on the hardware side was 80mm fan mod, IDE cable upgrade and loads blue leds. Even in the controller ports. Sadly i dont have any pics of it here at work, i may have at home on my server though. Then this xbox got an clear ghostcase tranpslant, going for a more subtle and clean style this time. Black jewel, blue leds underneath. Ghostcase DVD mod, and blacked out HDD and made black covers to hide cables.
Then the misses moved away to study, and she was used to the Xbox too, so i got online and bought a standard black one from USA. It finally arrived, and ofc i had'nt thought of the voltage difference, plugged the 110v Xbox in my 220v outlet. That fried the power supply, luckily in those days the llama site was live, and i got hold of another (110v) power supply, and i also bought a step down converter. My brother in law also softmodded this one and put in an bigger HDD. I did much the same as before, but since this was an 1.1 i also changed the fan on the GPU heatsink. 80mm fan at the back and IDE cable upgrade. This one i just got a custom jewel and pink leds underneath as case mods.
After many years if (ab)use, they started to show they weaknes, with alot of HD files getting downloaded. So the daily driver got replaced for a Raspberry Pi running Kodi. The 1.1 got loaded with children movies and my sisters kids borrowed it. Made some changes to XBMC (Skin and master profile) so they could not do anything wrong, just watch movies. They still use it from time to time, but i think it is time for me to claim it back The Ghostcase one, was packed away for a while until we decided to set up an entertainment room, so finally i got it out again. I started really falling in love with the Xbox again, playing good old games and so on. So i decided i want to softmod one for myself to have at work. I started looking for a worthy candidate for this, so i got a Crystal One that sadly have bulging caps and is dead. On the plus side it is chipped and got a bigger HDD. So that will become a nice project later, changing caps. A perfect excuse to finally buy a decent soldering station.
Then i got hold of a black one, a bit scruffed up and sticky DVD drive, but boots and is stock. So it will be my first softmod, when i have all the stuff i need.
As is said earlier, i like project to make the evening go faster here at work. So I love to things that take a bit of time and that i find cool. So i started making a Xbox memory card a USB port instead.
Started out with an usb cable, that the metal shielding around the female USB plug was to bulky, so it would not fit in the memoy card case. The second cable had a thinner metal casing, but it got destroyed when removing the plastic on the outside and therefor it got rendered useless. So now i have a memory card case that has a cutout for the female USB, but no more cables to try. So the memory card is still functional, i did not desolder the connection yet. After figuring out that there may be hard to find a USB stick that will work with the xbox, and the fact that i dont have any more femalu USB plugs to use, i figured i will just make a USB to Xbox cable with the female plug that was too bulky. So in case my USB sticks dont work with the Xbox, i can put the Savegame exploit on the memory card and at least get to softmod the Xbox.
And finally, i picture of the view out of my window here at the barge. This is my backdrop while writing this