Help with modding xbox?

[Deathpancake]

I recently was given an original xbox with a broken disc drive, so I decided to mod it. Unfortunately it has been he'll thus far and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. What I've done is open the xbox and unplug the IDE cable from the DVD drive to give me error 12 when it boots up (which is supposed to unlock the drive), then I plug it into my old computer and boot into xboxhdm and type 1. For whatever reason it gives me a whole bunch of errors and when I type in xboxhd it says my drive is locked! Can you anyone help me? I've been going at this for like 4 hours and nothing I try will work. Sorry if this is in the wrong place I just can't find any active original xbox communities anymore

[servox]

Are you trying to mod it with xboxhdm?
when using xboxhdm i think you should have your computer on and ready. not plug in and then turn the computer.
unplug the dvd drive before you turn the xbox on.
have you looked into loading it to a memory card with action replay then using one of the three games to install the softmod?

[asbo]

when using xboxhdm i think you should have your computer on and ready. not plug in and then turn the computer.

IDE is not hot swappable, i.e. the hard drive needs to be detected at boot(although there are exceptions).
On the computer I use xboxhdm with, an old Dell, I have to press pause on the keyboard half way through POST, plug in the hard drive and then hit pause again to resume POST.
This might be the case on other Dells too or maybe not, its likely that a lot of computers are going to have a slightly different process to get xboxhdm to work.
It can be utterly infuriating and so after modding a few xboxes this way I switched to a game save exploit which is so much easier.

[bigkidoz]

What guide are you following, i havent seen any hot swap method that requires the dvd drive to be disconnected to throw an error- that just kills the boot process.
You dont even need to pause a song on the console like some guides say, just wait till after the flubber animation and as soon as you se the xbox logo disconect the hdd ide and connect to pc.

[SPPV]

All you need to do is grab Babylon2 and follow this tut for hotswap (exchange Pimped for Babylon) http://tristan280.wix.com/sppv-apps#!tutorials/c19af The page I just linked just go to home page and scroll down for Babylon (and dont worry I made Pimped and Babylon I KNOW they interchangable and Babylon is supoerior, old vid but should help)

[Deathpancake]

Sorry for late reply! Yes I was trying to do it with xboxhdm, and it seems that after a couple days of trying I finally got it to work! I used this guide
http://snesorama.us/board/showthread.ph ... modern-way
To finally get it to work I switched the jumper on the hard drive to master. Now that I've done the mod, I have the custom dash, but I honestly have no idea what to do now. Can anyone give me a rundown on xbox homebrew? Or perhaps link to a guide?

[servox]

Congrats on getting it to work!!!
well um i guess a good place to start is here as you can add XBMC as a app or the dash its self.
There are also emulators you can add to your XBOX and you can access them in XBMC or what ever your dash is.
You could add XDSL and turn it into a older (but still kinda cool because it CAN be done) computer.
all kinda cool stuff you can still do with a xbox the was set free.

Oh and always remember Google is a good friend to have because it will try to answer any question and won't judge you.
if you need any more help come on back. i'm sure some one will try to give you a hand.

[Deathpancake]

Ok, I really need help. I've FTP'd into my xbox, but I don't know what to do next! I have some questions, too:
1) Is my c drive supposed to be empty?
2) Is the nkp11 folder in my e drive supposed to be empty?
3) Where do I put game isos?
4) .xbe's are xbox applications right? If I put them in the apps folder then i can open them up as apps, but to install something as a dash do I put it in the dash folder (should I not bother doing this?)?

[Rocky5]

Ok, I really need help. I've FTP'd into my xbox, but I don't know what to do next! I have some questions, too:
1) Is my c drive supposed to be empty?
2) Is the nkp11 folder in my e drive supposed to be empty?
3) Where do I put game isos?
4) .xbe's are xbox applications right? If I put them in the apps folder then i can open them up as apps, but to install something as a dash do I put it in the dash folder (should I not bother doing this?)?

1) yes, that is the shadowc drive working, you place a clean Xboxdash in there, or what ever you want.
2) not sure, but I think it is. (Think the config files go there, something you don't need to worry about)
3) E, F or G:\Games\Game Name\the ISO file. (You will need to use Dvd2Xbox to rip the disc to ISO)
4) yes these are xbox executables. To replace your dash you replace the files in E:\dash\all the files + default.xbe (extremely important the default.xbe)

Note: you can download discimageutility 1.0.1 & that includes an attach.xbe that can mount the ISO, so have a look at that.

[Deathpancake]

Thank you very much! Only thing is my dvd drive is broken, so do I have to rip game isos on my pc, then ftp it onto the hd? If so, how do I do that? Do I have to split the file into two?

[Nextelhalo]

Hell these days all the ISO's are online, just download them and FTP them to the xbox using Quix (PC) and the Avalaunch Dashboard (XBOX). Those two programs work together and they will FTP the ISO and break it down into folders the way it should be as if you ripped the game from a disc. It's got crazy fast transfer speeds too. So in a nutshell, download the ISO from the usual ISO places and then FTP the ISO using Quix and Avalaunch. Give yourself a big Chuck Norris thumbs up and play away.

[blighty]

Note: you can download discimageutility 1.0.1 & that includes an attach.xbe that can mount the ISO, so have a look at that.

Are you saying that the xbox can launch an iso file located on the hdd? I never knew the xbox could do that?

[psyko_chewbacca]

Are you saying that the xbox can launch an iso file located on the hdd? I never knew the xbox could do that?

NKPatcher lets you do that. It's less convenient than extracted images on the HDD if you ask me but it has certain advantages.
Troublesome games with longer filenames (like Toca Race Driver 3 I think?) can reside on the HDD without having to patch the game files.
You can also potentially save a lot of Disk space with games that have tons of small files if your HDD is formatted using bigger cluster sizes (since the game iso is written on the HDD as one big file).

However, I think that FATX also limits the filesize of a single file to ~4GB so not all games can benefit from that.

[Rocky5]

Are you saying that the xbox can launch an iso file located on the hdd? I never knew the xbox could do that?

NKPatcher lets you do that. It's less convenient than extracted images on the HDD if you ask me but it has certain advantages.
Troublesome games with longer filenames (like Toca Race Driver 3 I think?) can reside on the HDD without having to patch the game files.
You can also potentially save a lot of Disk space with games that have tons of small files if your HDD is formatted using bigger cluster sizes (since the game iso is written on the HDD as one big file).

However, I think that FATX also limits the filesize of a single file to ~4GB so not all games can benefit from that.

Correct & not so much, I wouldn't say its less convenient, since DVD2Xbox or the Discimagetool both have ISO ripping & they will split the ISO into 4GB chunks, then the attach.xbe (dvd2xbox includes this when ripping) will mount all ISO file in a directory, so I would say if you don't want to mod games just rip them as ISO.

Works out cleaner.

If Tsops could mount ISO files I would be using ISO files for games.

Well I would say there is only 1 downside, the xbox will think there is a disc in the drive all the time unless you dismount the ISO. (Loading another game will just overwrite that game)