T2Steve Posted April 27, 2017 Report Share Posted April 27, 2017 OK kids, this goes into the repair section as it will allow for the manual extraction/edit of an EEPROM in the event of a dead hard drive on an xbox and no EEPROM backup is present because of course it wasnt backed up... There is another method that involves using a Pi that may some day become easier/more frequently used, but for now this is what i've built and what i know. Unicron2006 gets full credit for the design. The pic was stolen from Llamma, which no longer is a site. In order to read the EEPROM you will need to use a program called PonyProg. it can be downloaded here. (http://www.lancos.com/prog.html) you will need to choose the Serial port and calibrate once PonyProg is up and running (sorry, no pics at the moment). Once you have it all setup you attach the wires to the applicable places - Ground can be any ground on the xbox (I usually gator clip it to the case, but you can also just place the wire under a screw on the motherboard and screw it down). Shown below are the two points you will need to hit with your EEPROM reader/writer. For this reason, on my device I attached the SDA and SCL reading lines to pin header so that i can just place the pins into the holes. There are a few different results that can happen here. The 1.0-1.5 xbox will give an error message and you have all the time in the world to tinker with the EEPROM. a 1.6 xbox seems to detect that it is under attack and tries to defend itself by powering itself off. for this reason you need to dump the image pretty quickly on a 1.6. After capturing the EEPROM, the next step would be to create a new hard drive for the xbox. Xbox HDM is quite useful for this. You may also want to take this opportunity to use an app to edit the EEPROM to your liking, since your existing hard drive is dead or missing altogether... a popular edit is to change the hard drive key to all 0000000s so that it is relatively easy to clone and distribute hard drives into new xboxes. Regardless of how you want to go about doing it, you are effectively good to go. Final thoughts - this is a kind of thrown together how-to, and there are other tuts that are more complete than this one. At some point i might edit it and give it more info, but the basics of what you need to know are here. It's my gut feeling that we are going to see a Pi replacement option in the future that eliminates the need to build an EEPROM reader altogether. A Pi with the right image would allow us to relatively easily grab the EEPROM and edit it and flash it back all from the Pi without needing to find a computer with a serial port etc. On a side note as well, I'd like to work with someone to dev up a device that we can use to slip in between the vents on the side of the xbox and then place the SDA and SCL into the applicable spots so that the EEPROM can be captured and edited without having to open the xbox. This would prove to be invaluable for those of us who have JAP special edition xboxes that we dont want to open up - we could grab the EEPROM, edit the region to North America, and then use the regular soft mod game save exploits. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dphirschler Posted April 27, 2017 Report Share Posted April 27, 2017 Many tutorials say 3.9K Ohm resistors. I used 4K Ohm. And I see your tutorial also uses 4K Ohm resistors. Why the difference? Darryl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OGXbox Admin Posted April 28, 2017 Report Share Posted April 28, 2017 My guess? It's only 100 ohms. The difference is the current would be dead on at 3.9k ohm. It's close enough at 4k ohm to get the job done and they are more commonly found than 3.9k. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrypticNL Posted April 28, 2017 Report Share Posted April 28, 2017 There are MUCH easier tutorials then this one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrypticNL Posted April 28, 2017 Report Share Posted April 28, 2017 The resistance can be anywhere from 3.9k - 4.7k ohms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T2Steve Posted April 28, 2017 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2017 Feel free to post your own Kryptic yeah when i read through it I thought it was kind of bunk, it doesn't go into enough detail on the software etc, but honestly this isn't a hard thing to do and I (greatly) suspect that these are going to be replaced entirely by the Pi method. Someone just needs to dev up a bit of software to use the windows app for editing EEPROM data on a Pi, and then how to tag on the three pins needed for this on the GPIO. A Pi zero and a few pieces of header total what like $9? and you dont have to find any resistors or a computer with a com port or anything. It's an all in one solution.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrypticNL Posted April 28, 2017 Report Share Posted April 28, 2017 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave C. Posted August 18, 2017 Report Share Posted August 18, 2017 Good stuff! Maybe a project for another day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scrappysphinx Posted August 18, 2017 Report Share Posted August 18, 2017 I already have an eeprom reader that works fine however as its serial based i have to keep going back to an old xp pc with serial ports. I've tried a couple of USB-Serial adapters and they don't work, does anyone know of a usb eeprom reader or compatible adapter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaosEngineer Posted August 19, 2017 Report Share Posted August 19, 2017 (edited) [UPDATE: Opps see this info posted in it's own thread] An ingenious fellow, Ryan, who goes by the handle "Grimdoomer" has written software ,PiPROM, that allows one to use a Raspberry PI as an Xbox EEPROM reader. NO PC with a legacy serial port required! No resistors, zener diodes, 9 pin RS-232 connector, no soldering, just two or three Dupont jumpers connect from the Xbox LPC header to the RPI GPIO header. For those without a Raspberry PI, one more reason to buy one. The project write-up, READ/WRITE AN XBOX EEPROM WITH A RASPBERRY PI, is available at his website http://icode4.coffee/?p=22. Code repository at https://github.com/grimdoomer/PiPROM Edited August 20, 2017 by KaosEngineer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XC-3730C Posted October 23, 2017 Report Share Posted October 23, 2017 Can someone make one of these for me? I don't have the time or steady hands...Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big F Posted October 25, 2017 Report Share Posted October 25, 2017 (edited) This is the same circuit I have in the one I have, bought on eaither XBox-scene or eBay can't remember which, it has worked flawlessly each time. Even used it once to read out a rom on a control board at work. in my experience the USB to serial adaptors are meh when it comes to this kinda thing. Tried so many over the years with varying success. I have an old Dell notebook that runs XP purely for uses like this and the diagnostic software for my car, which will run under Win 7 but not as well, The Pi option looks interesting, an excuse to buy another one maybe. Edited October 25, 2017 by big F Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neighbor Posted July 19, 2018 Report Share Posted July 19, 2018 (edited) Did this thing before, now operating mainly on laptop which doesn't have peripheral for such reader, so I'm using a cheap 24, 25 series CH341A programmer. Edited July 19, 2018 by neighbor 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neighbor Posted July 19, 2018 Report Share Posted July 19, 2018 (edited) On 23.10.2017 at 5:42 AM, XC-3730C said: Can someone make one of these for me? I don't have the time or steady hands... check the post above Edited July 19, 2018 by neighbor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Traace Posted July 20, 2018 Report Share Posted July 20, 2018 (edited) A SOIC8 flash clip should work too. Just be sure the programmer has pins for it. Then clip it on consoles EEPROM for read/write, no need to solder anything Edited July 20, 2018 by Traace 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neighbor Posted July 20, 2018 Report Share Posted July 20, 2018 1 hour ago, Traace said: SOIC8 flash clip exactly 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aries Posted May 4, 2020 Report Share Posted May 4, 2020 The CH341A programmer works fine with xbox eeprom? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmyjamz Posted May 7, 2020 Report Share Posted May 7, 2020 What a neat project . I love how many uses the pi has Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SS_Dave Posted May 8, 2020 Report Share Posted May 8, 2020 11 hours ago, jimmyjamz said: What a neat project . I love how many uses the pi has There is also this and it's dirt cheap to make almost as cheap as the 3 wire to serial port reader depicted in the 1st post. https://github.com/Ryzee119/ArduinoProm Cheers SS Dave Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aries Posted May 9, 2020 Report Share Posted May 9, 2020 Is there anyone who has tested this as an eeprom reader/writer ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SS_Dave Posted May 9, 2020 Report Share Posted May 9, 2020 That probably would work But why make it so complicated when this will read and write an eeprom in a Xbox Cheers SS Dave Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEK Nemesis Posted May 9, 2020 Report Share Posted May 9, 2020 I highly recommend trying the ArduinoProm (by Ryan Wendland). https://github.com/Ryzee119/ArduinoProm I made one and it works perfectly. It uses only an Arduino Pro Micro (5V) and connects through USB. Super easy to make. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaosEngineer Posted May 9, 2020 Report Share Posted May 9, 2020 5 hours ago, aries said: Is there anyone who has tested this as an eeprom reader/writer ? I don't believe that will work. It's simply an RS-232 to TTL-level converter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aries Posted May 9, 2020 Report Share Posted May 9, 2020 2 minutes ago, KaosEngineer said: I don't believe that will work. It's simply an RS-232 to TTL-level converter. Ok,thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaosEngineer Posted May 9, 2020 Report Share Posted May 9, 2020 Something like this is what you need: Or this one: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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