XBMC4Xbox

On my old xbox, i was able to remove the cd because of the hw-mod, has anyone yet figured out a way to remove or "blind" the cd on a sw-modded box?

Not that I'm aware of however grabbing the board out of a Thomson DVD drive will work a treat that way the machine still "sees" a DVD drive in place. You could TRY this and let us know if it was successful- I did try something similar with no result but I didn't consider the 3.3vDC being required and haven't had a chance to try myself yet.

Hmmm. this sounds interesting. I may have to give this a test. I have found in my TSOP Flashed xboxes that even a bios that has the dvd rom check removed that there are some side effects no matter which Bios I try. If this works that would be very nice. Thanks for posting Xman

Fingers crossed it does the job Psychotron. I agree, it would be handy. Only found it about 3 weeks ago on some obscure site and thought that's exactly what I tried but with the 3.3vDc and you can get that from the modchip port, nice and close. What also got my interest was the part about the SD card being read from the D Drive in filemanager. I have a SD card adapter I tried but in the HDD port replacing the HDD rather than the DVD drive. Something that would be real interesting on Slims. Let us now how it works out aye?.

I am definently interested in trying this... I just haven't felt like breaking the box apart right now. When I do I will let everyone know how it worked out, Maybe this weekend.

If you leave the PCB of the DVD drive hooked up and tucked away you should not have any issues with the softmodded xbox. Will you be doing a slimbox ?

xman wrote:Fingers crossed it does the job Psychotron. I agree, it would be handy. Only found it about 3 weeks ago on some obscure site and thought that's exactly what I tried but with the 3.3vDc and you can get that from the modchip port, nice and close. What also got my interest was the part about the SD card being read from the D Drive in filemanager. I have a SD card adapter I tried but in the HDD port replacing the HDD rather than the DVD drive. Something that would be real interesting on Slims. Let us now how it works out aye?.

I was bored and decided to give this a test on my softmoded V1.0 Xbox...

No... I have very carefully tried this mod information. The person who posted this must have thought this would work in theory... However... it does NOT work.

I get error 12 at boot with this jumper configuration. My guess is that the xbox does a data polling test at boot to make sure signals turn off and on and since this is a constant state in one direction I am guessing it sees this as a dead drive. Just my theory-guess.

It is a shame it does not work.

I'm thinking SD card adapter with it plugged in the IDE cable that went to the DVD and enabling the data out pin on the connecter maybe.

Not sure.

I tried this with nothing connected in the dvd drives place. If it works with a dvd drive mainboard connected only with the yellow data connector and power and no ide connection I cannot see hooking an ide device to the cable solving the problem. Of course I have not tried that either to see if that works.

I know I saw an old post on the other board where you wanted the DVD drive out and a SATA HD connected and had issues. I read you solved this by hooking up the DVD drive mainboard by itself without the drive inards. What did you have to connect to the DVD drive mainboard to get it to boot. Did you have all three cables plugged in to the dvd drive mainboard to get it to boot (pwr/data/IDE)?

EDIT... Getting confused there are only two cables. The pwr is on the yellow DATA cable. LOL

psychotron wrote: I know I saw an old post on the other board where you wanted the DVD drive out and a SATA HD connected and had issues. I read you solved this by hooking up the DVD drive mainboard by itself without the drive inards. What did you have to connect to the DVD drive mainboard to get it to boot. Did you have all three cables plugged in to the dvd drive mainboard to get it to boot (pwr/data/IDE)?

Yer, that was using the yellow harness plugged in the Thomson board with the IDE harness plugged in to the board as well then because the DVD drive itself was removed as was the interface board, (that only Thomson DVDs have), I had to put links in the Thomson board to simulate the DVD tray and elevator micro switches in the closed state and that fooled the system but that issue was a result of the sata to IDE adapter rather than just the removal of the DVD. The edited bios will do that but not with an adapter installed. To tell you the truth, I don't believe that setup even needed the IDE cable to be plugged in to still work. Maybe that system using the Thomson board only with the IDE connected to a SD card adapter or something else would work but it is harder than simply attaching a few links and 3.3vDC to the yellow plug. That would have been an easy setup. Might be best if I meter the yellow cable wires and see exactly what signals go to and come from the Thomson board and then we may be able to simulate them at the yellow connector and then there would be no need for the board to be there. I think my goal of replacing the DVD drive with an SD card for Slims is obtainable but I think the " Activity-Disc seek/ data ready signal on pin 8 of the yellow connector may need to be manipulated to get it to read. I suspect this signal that comes from the DVD drive board when a disc is ready to be read would then allow the SD cards data to be read.

Xman, Thanks for the info. If you do any further testing of this please pass on the info.