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OG Xbox Appreciation and Lack of Emulation Thread of the big black box of doom

T

televator

Member
Timu said:
I just soft modded my Xbox!!!
Click to expand...
Welcome to the land of dreams! Now upgrade your HDD.

LUCKY n WILD said:
So I ended up disconnecting all the cables I could see and reconnecting them but I still get the christmas lights error. Any other ideas what might be wrong? I'm bummed because I have a Japanese Xbox to play Metal Wolf Chaos and now I can't play it and I'm worried about losing my save. :(
Click to expand...
Well shit. That could be a dead HDD. In which case, the save is probably dead with it. You could try to clone another drive... but I think drives are soft married to individual mobos... :/ That would mean a cloned drive will only work on your system if cloned from your original drive. I'm not 100% positive that this is the case though.
 
T

Timu

Member
dubc35 said:
Nice! Is there a guide online you used? I have been meaning to get around to doing this; though I do need to open it up too to check the clock cap as well.
Click to expand...
I use youtube vids on this(just type in soft mod Xbox). It's very easy actually, possibly the easiest console to soft mod.
 
C

Coda

Member
televator said:
Welcome to the land of dreams! Now upgrade your HDD.


Well shit. That could be a dead HDD. In which case, the save is probably dead with it. You could try to clone another drive... but I think drives are soft married to individual mobos... :/ That would mean a cloned drive will only work on your system if cloned from your original drive. I'm not 100% positive that this is the case though.
Click to expand...

Ahh bummer. Yeah it just happened so suddenly and the console isn't modded at all. I suppose I could just buy a modded one instead and grab a Metal Wolf Chaos save at this point but I did have my fun with the game so it wouldn't be for a while.
 
P

PumpkinSpice

Banned
Is there any way to make Xbox 360 controllers work on the original xbox? My two Xbox controllers are pretty ratty and I don't want to buy used ones... but I have a bunch of nice condition 360 controllers.
 
C

CO_Andy

Member
I just want to say that the OG Xbox controllers have the most shoddily built wires of any controller i have used in my lifetime.

My fifth controller just died on me and i've been using that one since the launch of Street Fighter 4.
 
M

Moor-Angol

Banned
I wonder if my CD drive has a problem.

Since I bought I didn't use yet, I just checked the drive with Crazy Taxi 3 and it worked

Today I tried to play PGR2 but the disc was not recognized (under EvoX)

So I tried Genma Onimusha, same

then PGR, same

I enter the original dashboard, tried again PGR and I had this message :



The funny thing is that I tried again Crazy Taxi 3, on both EvoX and og dashboard, not recognized anymore.

Is the CD lens died ? Or is it possible I did something wrong when I took off the clock capacitor ? But the CD is working, I mean, open/close is ok so I suppose it's just the CD lens are gonna to say bye-bye

In that case, what kind of CD driver do I have to look for ?
 
T

televator

Member
Could try just opening the DVD drive and cleaning the lense and blowing out dust. If that fails, replacing the drive is also an easy option.
 
T

televator

Member
PSA: Me and my friend just got done setting up his new halo Xbox. I can now confirm that HDDs are soft locked to individual systems. You can't hot swap HDDs which makes sense. That would just make it difficult if your drive died and you didn't have a premade clone drive already made.
 
M

Moor-Angol

Banned
thanks for the info mate

yesterday I tried to clean the drive lens but nothing changed, so probably it's 100% died.

now I have to look for another system, there are some Xbox units sold as "junk" here in Japan, what worries me is that the one I'd buy has the drive effectively working...


another option, but not in the short time : I have a PAL Xbox in my home country, if I take that DVD drive and I put on my JPN system there would be problems? at lease Europe and Japan were in the same region as DVD format, so I suppose I would not have problems in doing that (considering also I use the drive just to install my games on the HDD, especially now that I realized how big the dvd drive problem is...)


damn, I bought 12 games in October and I can't play them actually >_<
 
C

chronic_archaic

Member
Moor-Angol said:
thanks for the info mate

yesterday I tried to clean the drive lens but nothing changed, so probably it's 100% died.

now I have to look for another system, there are some Xbox units sold as "junk" here in Japan, what worries me is that the one I'd buy has the drive effectively working...


another option, but not in the short time : I have a PAL Xbox in my home country, if I take that DVD drive and I put on my JPN system there would be problems? at lease Europe and Japan were in the same region as DVD format, so I suppose I would not have problems in doing that (considering also I use the drive just to install my games on the HDD, especially now that I realized how big the dvd drive problem is...)


damn, I bought 12 games in October and I can't play them actually >_<
Click to expand...
DVD drives are swappable and as far as I know the DVD region coding is done on a system level but I could be wrong.
 
T

televator

Member
Moor-Angol said:
thanks for the info mate

yesterday I tried to clean the drive lens but nothing changed, so probably it's 100% died.

now I have to look for another system, there are some Xbox units sold as "junk" here in Japan, what worries me is that the one I'd buy has the drive effectively working...


another option, but not in the short time : I have a PAL Xbox in my home country, if I take that DVD drive and I put on my JPN system there would be problems? at lease Europe and Japan were in the same region as DVD format, so I suppose I would not have problems in doing that (considering also I use the drive just to install my games on the HDD, especially now that I realized how big the dvd drive problem is...)


damn, I bought 12 games in October and I can't play them actually >_<
Click to expand...

You can try another region's DVD drive... it shouldn't hurt anything even if it doesn't work because of some self contained region lock.
 
T

Timu

Member
It seems many Xbox DVD drives tend to be crap, mostly with that Thomson model. Philips, Samsung and Hitachi are better but more rare.
 
M

Moor-Angol

Banned
Timu said:
It seems many Xbox DVD drives tend to be crap, mostly with that Thomson model. Philips, Samsung and Hitachi are better but more rare.
Click to expand...

yes, and I wonder how many "new" models (I mean, after 1.0 and 1.1 which should have the Thomson model) I can find here in Japan...

I saw on Yahoo Auction a guy selling 24 (twentyfour) Xbox units, maybe I should consider it :D
 
P

PumpkinSpice

Banned
So I was having issues with the component-out on my XBox last year, turns out it was just a busted cable so I bought a new one. Since the official and Monster ones are expensive I just bought a generic from-China one. Problem is it had really terrible noise, I think it's not shielded properly; direct to my TV the sync info is so bad that the picture shakes and through a scaler it still just has noise/trash all over the screen whenever it's dark.

So I found this youtube video about making your own, and I decided to try it. It turned out really well! I used a high-quality PS2 component cable since I didn't have a 360 one, and I ended up with a really nice quality Xbox cable with no noise. Unlike the video I even managed to salvage the shielding at the multi-AV side.

Worth a shot if you're handy and want a better cable.
 
O

oneida

Cock Strain, Lifetime Warranty
PSO on Xbox requires an XBL account on the system. I thought I had one on my Xbox, but I do not.

What are my options? Is it possible to put an XBL account on a memory card and then use that to put the account on my system?
 
P

PumpkinSpice

Banned
I was going to replace my hard drive in my softmodded Xbox with an SD to IDE adapter but Xbox uses ATA drive locking and the adapter or possibly the SD spec does not support it. So I bought a modchip and will install that when it arrives to disable the drive locking BS. I know SD cards are likely to fail too in the mid-to-long-run but at least getting a new one is easy, they're cheap, they're not going anywhere, and if everything's unlocked I can even replace it without taking the case apart.

Unfortunately in the process of discovering this I unlocked my hard drive and my Xbox froze before I could re-lock it. Spent a little too much time trying to fix that. Turns out all the old tools like xboxhdm pretty much won't work on modern systems.

I managed to eventually find out that as long as you have an IDE slot on your motherboard you can just boot the latest Ubuntu live CD or DVD or USB and run a tool called "hdparm" directly. It's included with Ubuntu and presumably most modern Linux distros. If you have your drive key, you can run like "hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass $PASSWORD /dev/sda" (assuming you have no other drives connected, the IDE one should map as /dev/sda). The only wrinkle is that the password you get back from your xbox is hexadecimal and the input for hdparm is a string so you need to decode that ahead of time.

I ran something like:
Code: 
export PASSWORD=$(printf '\x00\xAA\xBB\xCC...')
hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass $PASSWORD /dev/sda

Where the hex password was originally printed out as 00 AA BB CC ...

When I get a chance I might write out a more complete guide in case someone else googling in 2016+ is trying to figure out how to even possibly re-lock a hard drive on a modern system.
 
P

PumpkinSpice

Banned
(double post, but completely unrelated)

Took some time to clean some stuff that arrived this week:

hKjnazih.jpg
Click to expand...

I've never played any of these games properly. In the old days I would scoff at the series as I was more into Metal Gear style stealth. I started a bit on the first one on PC a few years ago but I really wasn't feeling it. Hopefully with full Xbox shadows in effect I can get into them.
 
V

Vespa

Member
SheepyGuy said:
(double post, but completely unrelated)

Took some time to clean some stuff that arrived this week:



I've never played any of these games properly. In the old days I would scoff at the series as I was more into Metal Gear style stealth. I started a bit on the first one on PC a few years ago but I really wasn't feeling it. Hopefully with full Xbox shadows in effect I can get into them.
Click to expand...

I prefer Metal Gear over this series too. The atmosphere is quite good though and I remember being super impressed at the way the shadows looked at the time, still think it holds up fairly well. Chaos Theory's soundtrack is amazing!

I bought Double Agent for xbox recently too after reading awhile back it was made by the Chaos Theory team and was superior to the 360 release.
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

Member
Anyone who can point me towards a tutorial on how to unlock the HDD of the Xbox for forcing 480p? My system is already modded, but I can't force 480p/720p/1080i because it gives me an error that it can't write to the eeprom because the HDD is locked. Being stuck with 480i despite using component cables absolutely sucks. Guess an NTSC console would solve that problem right away, but that seems like more trouble than I should go through for decent image quality.
 
P

PumpkinSpice

Banned
-shadow- said:
Anyone who can point me towards a tutorial on how to unlock the HDD of the Xbox for forcing 480p? My system is already modded, but I can't force 480p/720p/1080i because it gives me an error that it can't write to the eeprom because the HDD is locked. Being stuck with 480i despite using component cables absolutely sucks. Guess an NTSC console would solve that problem right away, but that seems like more trouble than I should go through for decent image quality.
Click to expand...

What kind of a mod do you have? If it's a modchip you can unlock the hard drive safely but if it's a softmod you can't.

I'm not sure of a tutorial for just unlocking but you could look up stuff on Chimp for XBox which is used to swap in larger hard drives. You'd just run that and in the menu there's an option to unlock the master hard drive.
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

Member
I received it modded, it's Evo X but I have no idea if it's just softmodded or with a chip. i have absolutely no clue how modding on the original Xbox works. But what I can find it's a bit of a mess :/
 
P

PumpkinSpice

Banned
-shadow- said:
I received it modded, it's Evo X but I have no idea if it's just softmodded or with a chip. i have absolutely no clue how modding on the original Xbox works. But what I can find it's a bit of a mess :/
Click to expand...

You could try contacting the seller (?). If that's no good, you could open it with a torx 20 screwdriver and check under the dvd drive (torx 10 screws inside).

Don't unlock your hard drive if you aren't sure cause it could leave your XBox unable to boot. And if you go ahead with unlocking make sure to write down or take a photo of the key on screen before you do.
 
E

EmiPrime

Member
-shadow- said:
Anyone who can point me towards a tutorial on how to unlock the HDD of the Xbox for forcing 480p? My system is already modded, but I can't force 480p/720p/1080i because it gives me an error that it can't write to the eeprom because the HDD is locked. Being stuck with 480i despite using component cables absolutely sucks. Guess an NTSC console would solve that problem right away, but that seems like more trouble than I should go through for decent image quality.
Click to expand...

My Xbox is all modded and set up how I like it but I did it all forever ago so there might be a better way to do this but try the Enigmah video select application. You'll be able to switch to NTSC and gain access to the progressive scan options. It's done in seconds from what I remember.
 
stn

stn

Member
Guys, help me here. I think my console is affected by the leaking clock capacitator. I'm planning to open up the console and remove it. I'm afraid of screwing up my console because I generally SUCK at these things. Should I be worried?
 
T

Timu

Member
stn said:
Guys, help me here. I think my console is affected by the leaking clock capacitator. I'm planning to open up the console and remove it. I'm afraid of screwing up my console because I generally SUCK at these things. Should I be worried?
Click to expand...
Is the leaking doing anything wrong? It's recommended to remove it though.
 
E

EmiPrime

Member
stn said:
Guys, help me here. I think my console is affected by the leaking clock capacitator. I'm planning to open up the console and remove it. I'm afraid of screwing up my console because I generally SUCK at these things. Should I be worried?
Click to expand...

Don't be. It's like a PC from that era with molex power cables and a big chunky IDE cable, all very sturdy and nothing like other consoles with their fragile and bespoke cables and connectors. Once you lift off the DVD and HDD units you'll have access to the motherboard and the capacitor.
 
stn

stn

Member
I have no idea if the leaking is doing anything to my console, I just assume it might be because I think my console model is the type that's affected. I'll double-check everything tomorrow to make sure. Thanks all!
 
M

Moor-Angol

Banned
stn said:
Guys, help me here. I think my console is affected by the leaking clock capacitator. I'm planning to open up the console and remove it. I'm afraid of screwing up my console because I generally SUCK at these things. Should I be worried?
Click to expand...

it's very easy, I did twice (recently I bought another unit to replace my Thomson DVD) and didn't have any sort of problem

just check what kind of model you have
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

Member
SheepyGuy said:
You could try contacting the seller (?). If that's no good, you could open it with a torx 20 screwdriver and check under the dvd drive (torx 10 screws inside).

Don't unlock your hard drive if you aren't sure cause it could leave your XBox unable to boot. And if you go ahead with unlocking make sure to write down or take a photo of the key on screen before you do.
Click to expand...

I received it from a friend who bought it at a fair so I don't know exactly how it was done. But I'll try opening it and check it.

EmiPrime said:
My Xbox is all modded and set up how I like it but I did it all forever ago so there might be a better way to do this but try the Enigmah video select application. You'll be able to switch to NTSC and gain access to the progressive scan options. It's done in seconds from what I remember.
Click to expand...

I'll check this out and see what I can do. Thanks! :)
 
T

televator

Member
When I opened up mt friend's Xcalibur box I was saddened that the capacitor could not simply be removed. It needs to be replaced because the BIOS is fed by it (?) and appears more complicated to get off the board.
 
H

Hayama Akito

Member
I want to enter to Xbox someday but for me is almost impossible, I'm from a country (Chile) who Xbox was absolutely nothing, PS2 was everything because you can pirate the games and it was much less expensive. For almost everyone Xbox was an america-only phenomenom. Every Xbox here are now like +200 bucks, not even CIB :(
 
Leonidas

Leonidas

Member
Is there an easy and/or cost effective way to hook Xbox up to a PC monitor? I have the component AV cable and would like to hook it up to a PC monitor via VGA or HDMI.
 
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