XBMC4Xbox

Hi
I got a problem, my HDD stopped loading XBMC4XBOX !

Story:
My SmartXXX (running EvoxDash) XBOX died on me days ago (wouldn't power on) so I opened it, found 5 damaged capacitors, soldered new ones, and it powered up fine. I Said "Weee, I rule".
I was ruling, so I decided to upgrade from XBMC4XBOX 3.3.3 to 3.5.3. Bad MISTAKE !
I powered it up, started "ED on a Chip" for FTP (I have it on Bank 2 of my SmartXXX EEPROM) and started uploading to E:\Apps\XBMC3.5.3, as I usually remember doing...so that later, I would change evoxdash.cfg to point it to the new xbe binary.
Halfway through, the FTP stalled. No more connection. I remember ED on a Chip doing it years before, had to do with FTP bursting or so.

This time, It was worse. Loading Evox BIOS on Bank 1 was fine, but after that, XBMC wouldn't load as it did before my FTP attempt !
So I returned to ED on a Chip, and BAD SURPRISE, all my partitions show up "empty". No more C: contents, no more E: contents, etc. I also cannot create any folder or copy and file there.

What could have gone wrong ? Any idea how to fix this mess ?

Could it have corrupted itself ? And if so, is there any chance a simple "CHKDSK" solves it, if I connect the drive via IDE to an old PC ?

I was able to boot SmartXXX and go to a bank menu where I can open my C: drive (but not E: where I kept my XMBC versions in distinct folders) and I see my files there (mostly evoxdash stuff, the XBE and the CFG files), which is even more strange, how can connecting via FTP not show me any contents ?

Any hints are appreciated,

PS: My SmartXXX has a menu where it shows my HDD password ( a bunch of hexadecimal), so I know I have it. But that's all I know.

The possibility of corruption is there, have had it happen with the E partition before so since then I have a 'take no chances' approach to loading the contents of an Xbox hard drive. If I end up deleting a lot of files on any partition, I scrub the partition and simply load it from scratch. There simply is no 'chkdsk' utility for the Xbox's Fatx system, never has been. I don't know what this "ED on a chip" is (google wasn't helpful) but I'm guessing it's the SmartXX equivalent to the Xenium OS on an ICE chip. I would not trust any on-chip solution, really, for the purpose of FTP or even drive cloning. You're best bet if you have a modded box, chip, soft, or TSOP is a HeXEn 2017 disc if you have a working disc drive. Then you know you're working under a Evox M8 BFM bios which will reliably interpret your partition table and then you're running the UnleashX dash with its solid FTP server (solid, but no auto-renaming like xbmc's filezilla server).

So, I'd recommend you find yourself a HeXEn 2017 disc, easy enough... giyf, burn it to a DVD-r, load it up, and if you gotta you can start from scratch. But I'd leave that "ED on a chip" alone as I wonder if it's FTP server is as flaky as the XeniumOS one is.

-edit As for why your drive contents do and don't show up in various FTP environments, that's not uncommon at all with chip solutions. My XeniumOS FTP server has that issue. But the FTP servers integrated into XBMC, UnleashX, Avalaunch, EvolutionX, and dvd2xbox are all pretty solid in that regard (though their speed isn't all the same).

Thank you for your great reply. You were spot on with my problem !

(yep, ED on a chip is a simple FTP server running from flash, it was a very silly move from me, as I knew it was not stable from years past).

I just did as you told me

1 - got myself a Hexen 2017 disc and it loaded fine, detecting my HDD.
2 - C partition is OK, as well as other partitions (X, Y, Z). I just backed them up via FTP to my PC
3 - Looking at the Hexen display...it says E partition is 0 MB free. And via FTP it does not even show up. Surely looks like it is corrupt.

Solution...in my simple mind, I would:
- go to "Xbox Admin"-->"System"-->"Format Menu" and click Format E Drive.
- Then I would copy via FTP the contents of XBMC4XBOX 3.5.3 to E:\Apps,
- change C:\Evoxdash.cfg to direct to "E:\Apps\XBMC4XBOX-3.5.3\XBMC\default.xbe",
- reboot and it would work.

-edit: Just did it, Format E ok, then I found that Hexen also installs XBMC and provides the link, went fine and it's up and running !!

Cheers m8! Thanx for the help If you come to Lisbon, beers are on me, X my heart !