XBMC4Xbox

Is it possible to turn an Original Xbox into a Linux based NAS?



I've had a D-Link DNS-323 as shown above with 2x 1Tb Samsung Drives for quiet a few years now. Its mostly used for file sharing over different device around the home but it has many more features including FTP, SMB, UPNP, etc..

D-Link DNS-323 Web GUI Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdZv7XOmRJc

XBox Specs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_techn ... ifications

DNS-323 Specs:
http://www.cyrius.com/debian/orion/d-li ... 323/specs/

I've been inspired by the below Tutorial:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas- ... mitstart=0

In short it would be nice to I guess flash a modchip with Cromwell, format the drives with partitions I want and install a distribution of linux. I come across a distribution called "OpenMediaVault" a network attached storage (NAS) solution based on Debian Linux.

It contains services like SSH, (S)FTP, SMB/CIFS, DAAP media server, RSync, BitTorrent client and many more. Thanks to the modular design of the framework it can be enhanced via plugins.

OpenMediaVault Website:
http://www.openmediavault.org/

OpenMediaVault Web GUI Demo:
http://demo.omv-extras.org/

It would likely take some work to get that distro on Xbox but it could also be done with another distro like XDSL or GentooX

It is a nas, already, with the ftp server running. Is ftp too limited? You can stream, and download from it. You just need to set up your client to download stream or mount it.

It is possible to have both drive connected at the same time using linux.

The problem is that all distro are on 2.x kernel. Compiling new softwares to stay up-to-date will sometime prove to be difficult. There is no NAS oriented distro readily available for the Xbox. you'll have to take what's already there and build all the stuff that you need. Recent SMB, NFS, Torrent will need to be built from source and probably heavily patched to run on such old kernel.

I wouldn't be surprised building a recent gcc proves to be tedious!

If you want to have a try, I suggest you start with Gentoox. Gentoo build their soft from source instead of relying on pre-compiled packages like Debian. I'd say this fact does put Gentoo in favor since there whole system should be already adapted to compiling new code easily.

I must say the idea of a Xbox-NAS has come to my mind in the past but why so much trouble when you can get an equivalent Pentium3 (or even Pentium4) for next to nothing and have a lightweight distro with recent kernel, better storage option, USB2, expansion via PCI?

EDIT: forgot about RAM too.

I'm starting to agree that this project may not be worth the effort...

I'm starting think in the way of a Raspberry Pi, one would fit nicely in the plastic HDD tray.
It can run OpenMediaVault, XBMC and Debian with HDMI out.
A mini router like the TP-Link MR3040 with dd-wrt installed could also fit on the HDD tray.
I believe I could fit a couple 3.5" Sata drives where the DVDrom is.
Connect a couple of xbox360 controls for emulators.
And have it all powered by the original PSU...

Just get a raspi now they are only $20 new. Oops just saw you posted that.

The only issue with these low power devices is that they don't offer the network throughput of higher specs devices. I had a EXT3-formatted USB HDD attached to a raspi with nothing but a single SMB share. If I recall correctly, transfer speeds were below 5MB/s and latency was horrible when only a single user was accessing files. Multiple users at once was just plain unacceptable.

Old computers don't suffer from these limitations, unless you have something extremely old!

Of course, if low power consumption is a requirement, a raspi is a good option.
Personnally, I have old N270 Atom netbook (EEEPC 1005HA) running lubuntu LTS on which I have externalized the Sata port. I have a 2TB HDD connected via SATA on which I store files that need to be accessed quick (X360 games using ConnectX for example). I also have a 3TB USB HDD to store media files and backup storage. I use the internal 100Mb/s ethernet port for now but I plan on hooking a cheap PCI-E gigabit ethernet controller to the mini PCIe port of the netbook. miniPCIe gigabit cards are just too expensive to justify the expense on such old hardware!
The whole setup consumes less than 30W of electricity so it's ON 24/7. No RAID I know, but I do have a AVID MEDIArray ZX server in RAID 10 configuration I power ON from time to time to backup really important stuff. I think of it as a "safe" for critical data such as photos, documents, product keys, archived softwares and such.

HP microserver!

So cheap now.... you can put a full blown OS on such as Windows server/ubuntu etc... or you can run FreeNAS or NAS4Free booting off the internal USB port

Theres tons of the old generation on ebay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Proliant-G ... 4d324e6526

and a new Gen8 one after cash back is only £119

http://www.dabs.com/products/hp-prolian ... html?src=2

You can even fit a half height GFX card for DXVA and run Kodi direct to your TV as well as having all your files stored, they also use very little power with 80 Plus PSU etc....

Edit:

Forgot to mention you can also run the Synology NAS software on an HP Microserver...

http://xpenology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6

Geeba wrote:HP microserver!

This, this, a thousand times this!
Install a BIOS mod and you can connect 6 SATA drives(well on the N40L and N36L you can anyway, not had my hands on a newer generation one). Install unRAID and enjoy
Like this.

I dunno the HP microserver maybe a good option for UK residence,
but they seem very expensive and uncommon in Australia.
Personally I think I might be better off with a low power NAS.
My DNS-323 has been very reliable over the many years Ive had it.
It may not have been the fastest NAS out there but it served its purpose.

Raspberry Pi 1 B vs Dlink DND-323 LAN Speed Test:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 3&p=396678

The Raspberry Pi achieves an average of 67Mbps and the DNS-323 of 58Mbps
This works out to around 10/11Mbps realistically, this is fine for home media sharing.
There have been many RPi users out there posting NAS transfer speeds of 10/11Mbps
The only time I could use faster speeds is when I initially transfer all my files to a new HDD.

I had a pentium 2 that could transfer files at 11MB/s, if a raspi cant do it that fast then something is wrong, although i find if you add windows to the equation it sometimes bottlenecks to slower.

We pretty much know what to expect from a low power NAS, but what speeds would be expected with a high power NAS? Like the HP microserver, etc.

Depending on the network speed and if you are using RAID you should get various speeds.

RPi has USB 2.0, so that is the bottleneck
And only 100mbps ethernet

You could actually use XBMC as a NAS... its has both FTP & SMB servers... theres also a "auto-detect" feature that will recognise other consoles with XBMC an can share between each other... maximium speed of around 10/11Mbps and limited to a single 2Tb HDD...

I've considered a "Banana Pro" as it has a SATA port...
Below link are speed test results of comparing the SATA & USB ports with interesting results.

http://www.mikronauts.com/banana-pi/ban ... ive-tests/
http://www.mikronauts.com/banana-pi/ban ... e-tests/2/

It is only a small improvment compared with the RPi...

http://www.mikronauts.com/raspberry-pi/ ... r-tests/2/

I get around 100MB/s down and 30MB/s up with my HP microserver on a gigabit network with multiple switches. That's with a windows PC.

NeMesiS wrote:You could actually use XBMC as a NAS... its has both FTP & SMB servers... theres also a "auto-detect" feature that will recognise other consoles with XBMC an can share between each other... maximium speed of around 10/11Mbps and limited to a single 2Tb HDD...

XBMC doesn't include an SMB server. Unless you are referring to OpenELEC?

fxmech wrote:XBMC doesn't include an SMB server. Unless you are referring to OpenELEC?

Sorry, UPnP...

asbo wrote:I get around 100MB/s down and 30MB/s up with my HP microserver on a gigabit network with multiple switches. That's with a windows PC.

Not bad... the Banana Pro can achieve the same results...

psyko_chewbacca wrote:The only issue with these low power devices is that they don't offer the network throughput of higher specs devices. I had a EXT3-formatted USB HDD attached to a raspi with nothing but a single SMB share. If I recall correctly, transfer speeds were below 5MB/s and latency was horrible when only a single user was accessing files. Multiple users at once was just plain unacceptable.

What software were you using?

NeMesiS wrote:

psyko_chewbacca wrote:The only issue with these low power devices is that they don't offer the network throughput of higher specs devices. I had a EXT3-formatted USB HDD attached to a raspi with nothing but a single SMB share. If I recall correctly, transfer speeds were below 5MB/s and latency was horrible when only a single user was accessing files. Multiple users at once was just plain unacceptable.

What software were you using?

Raspbian distro, cannot remember which version at the time but it shouldn't matter much in terms of performance.
-No desktop environnement
-Samba 3
-Minimal stuff running in background, sshd and a few short cron jobs.
OS was on Class 10 SD card and data was on a USB2 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM HDD.

I have a first gen 256MB RAM Model B. I doubt having 512MB of RAM in my case would have boosted performance significantly.

psyko_chewbacca wrote:I have a first gen 256MB RAM Model B. I doubt having 512MB of RAM in my case would have boosted performance significantly.

Do the first gen RPi have USB2.0?
Have you tried OpenMediaVault.org?
I believe RPi2 Model B have 900MHz Quad Core processor, 1Gb RAM and 4xUSB2.0 ports.

asbo wrote:

Geeba wrote:HP microserver!

This, this, a thousand times this!
Install a BIOS mod...

Yep. The Spice Museum has a G54 powering its data centre.