samspin

I find it does boost load times a *little bit*, and really helps startup times. What is important to remember is that the interface between the disk and the Xbox motherboard is the main bottleneck- the maximum data transfer speed is always limited to around 66MB/sec theoretical maximum. The Ethernet port limits network file transfers to around 11MB/sec tops. Where SSDs really help is with latency. HDDs really struggle when there are lots of sequential reads- and not just when loading a game with lots of little files. Loading menus when browsing a list of games (complete with boxart images for each game) is improved. Every time UnleashX opens it scans across every single "default.xbe" to extract the titles for apps and games, etc. When using an HDD you can hear it grinding away during this scan, and it takes quite awhile when you have lots of games (though this can be reduced somewhat by ensuring you upload files *one at a time* with FTP, since this helps reduce filesystem fragmentation. By default FIlezilla uploads several files at once and you have to change this setting! Although you should try to avoid filesystem fragmentation with both SSDs and HDDs anyway.) With an SSD the wait time is cut dramatically. I also believe in that regard that an SSD can be more reliable and generate much less heat. I've had a number of HDDs fail over the years but an SSD has always outlasted them- I've never yet had one fail. Remember though that SSDs have a limited number of write cycles- always look for the TBW or DWPD rating for a good indication of reliability. It is best to upload all your games and apps *once* and keep them that way to reduce flash wear. That way the SSD can perform at it's best for reads and probably outlive the Xbox itself. Just my opinion! Sam

Sometimes I have had this problem with games that have separate assets for NTSC and PAL versions, and a disc ships with only one or the other depending on the region it is sold in. What this means is that the "disc dirty error" usually means it cannot find some files that the main executable is looking for, since playing an NTSC game on an Xbox set up as PAL (or vice versa) will cause the executable to look for files that are not present! I had this problem occur when trying to play "Enter The Matrix" with my Xbox in PAL mode, and had to switch to NTSC mode using "Enigmah Video mode switch". Until that is, I found the PAL version and copied over the missing files allowing me to play the game in both NTSC and PAL no matter what video mode my Xbox was set to. It may well be that the developers thought they could save space on a DVD by leaving out assets that would go unused so long as the disc stays in the region it was sold in. Long story short, try changing your video mode (from PAL to NTSC or vice versa) and try again! Otherwise it is likely your source files are corrupted.

That's a shame. I ordered items from them a few times years ago and they would take quite awhile to arrive, but then they appeared to come from Thailand. I have no idea if Australia's customs are a bit picky with Thailand goods but I do know that laws cracking down on mods were passed not so long ago. It is possible your shipment got seized

Ohh man I would *really* like a copy of that! I've no idea what kind of internet connection you've got but I would really appreciate getting that uploaded somewhere, that site had some unique content not found elsewhere. Could we please PM and discuss a way to make this happen?

Update: looks like I spoke too soon. I don't know if the host downtime has caused irreparable disk damage, but Robert, one of the admins from the site, says it's probably not coming back https://twitter.com/modrobert/status/1145231685098901504 I would be extremely interested in finding out if anyone purchased the "Eurasia file collection 2002 - 2017" SD card from the site to help regain access to lost files!

Digging around the eurasia.nu domain reveals it's DNS (and more than likely website itself) is hosted by "devnull.fi" A notice (in Finnish) on this website here reveals that there has been a hardware outage, and that some 'pages' have had to be moved to new hardware: https://www.devnull.fi/29-6-2019-www-sivuissa-ongelmia/ I do hope the "eurasia.nu" site is restored soon because I still use it occasionally myself!

It looks like your best bet is buying an external programmer with PLCC32 adapter to fit the flashrom from your current modchip, and using that to put a 1.6-compatible BIOS on it. I've had a glance over the eBay listing mentioned earlier in this thread and noticed a snag: if you look closely down the page there is a note "64bit driver is not completed yet. Programmer works only TEST mode." This essentially means that although it can in theory support 64-bit versions of Windows, the driver is NOT signed. Which will mean it will be a massive PITA to get working. Windows will stubbornly refuse to obey you when you try to install the driver, telling you that it is not signed and that 64-bit Windows "requires" it, and that therefore the install is aborted. The only way around it involves restarting into a temporary TEST mode. Nope, not by clicking restart and pressing F8 (at least if you're running Windows 8 and above, since F8 at startup has been removed!). By pressing the Window Key and R to get the "run" box open, then typing the command "shutdown /r /o /t 0" without quotes, and then choosing "change windows startup behaviour". Then when it starts up again, choose the option "disable driver signature enforcement" (this is what it means by TEST mode, intended for developers). From that point on, for that session only, you'll be able to install the driver and click "install anyway" when warned that it is not signed. You should then be able to load the software for the device, plug the flash chip into it, and program a 1.6 Xbox compatible BIOS image onto it. Also note that in most cases you'll only be in this TEST mode until the next reboot. On the next reboot the driver will be blocked again, rendering the device useless until you repeat the above steps. If you do want to try it, be aware of the above steps that will be required unless you are using Windows XP, or 32-bit WIndows Vista or 32-bit Windows 7, since those versions do not require all this faffing. I do know that Windows 8 and 10, whether 32-bit or 64-bit, DO most of the time! (see this page for more information about the precise Microsoft policies regarding this) That's probably why this device is so cheap, because the maker does not want to pay extortionate prices to a certification authority that Microsoft approves of to get the driver signed. Or... you could get an alternative programmer elsewhere on eBay that has working drivers for all modern Windows editions, but they are a bit more expensive. Anyway, good luck, I hope you get your Xbox working again! It might be worth going to all this trouble if you only have to do it once, right?!

The furthest I've been able to reach on my 1GHZ N64freak XBox without freezing is: GPU: 299MHZ CPU: 1062MHZ (on a stock XBox this would be 778MHZ). This was after testing for several hours on games such as Star Wars: Clone Wars and Halo 2. Not as good results as some others on here who probably haven't had to resort to the measures I've taken! I have however been intrigued as to the many factors that come into play. Perhaps those using 120V PSU's as opposed to 240V PSU's have better luck due to less heat generated by the transformer? I have noticed heat is a big factor- I had to set my fan at 100% to have a reliable overclock. Since I have failed to get hold of some aftermarket PSU's to test with (RichsPSXParts.com ignored my order for over a month, so I had to cancel it), I decided to turn my attention to how I could reduce load on the 5V rail. It is a known fact that the Xbox uses quite a large initial 5V current at boot time, and it uses rather ALOT of it during heavy graphical scenes. I also am aware that SSD's tend to have a larger 5V current draw then HDD's, and that might be causing more strain. So I decided to try out offloading onto the 12V rail. To do this I bought a 12V to 5V 3A converter (small enough to fit behind the DVD drive) and rewired the MOLEX plug to feed 12V to it, and get 5V out to feed into the SSD. This seems to have worked well. Previously I only got as far as 266MHZ for the GPU, and no overclock of the CPU at all! This does go to show that even small details can make somewhat of a difference. However I do have to leave the fan on full speed because the PSU does get very hot quite quickly if I leave it at the default 20% speed (who knows, I might be causing more harm to it in the long run?). I might try to replace the fan because it is annoyingly loud, or at least place the Xbox in a ventilated cupboard so the noise doesn't annoy me. Maybe a different BIOS might have better luck for higher overclocks? I noticed in the screenshot above that one is using the Xecuter 2 BIOS rather than IND-BIOS. I would try a different BIOS than IND-BIOS. However this Xbox is a 1.4 with a FOCUS video chipset. The one in the photo above is a 1.0 with a CONEXANT video chipset running on an Executer BIOS. The only BIOS's (other than IND-BIOS) that can be set to use a partition table from the hard drive (that supports 128MB RAM) is Xecuter. However only the early X2 versions can be patched to use a partition table using XBTool. Trying to use one of the early X2 versions on an Xbox with a FOCUS video chipset results in a FRAG. The newer ones DO support the FOCUS video chipset, but cannot be set to use a partition table, they FORCE you to choose between "128GB for F and G gets rest", etc (to see more details, see the changelog contained within the X2 5035 release, can be downloaded on Eurasia here) Trying to run XBTool on later Xecuter X2 versions has the checkbox selected for "ignore the partition table on the hard drive" and it is greyed out! Apparently Xecuter "X3" BIOS's CAN allow custom partition tables, but they only work on a physical Xecuter chip, not a TSOP or other brand modchip. There exists a patch to make them run on other chips, but even so the X3 versions are too big (it requires a full 1024KB chip, found on a 1.0 or 1.1 Xbox).Xbox 1.2 and above only have 256KB flash, same with Aladdin XT modchips. Since I have F and G partitions almost filled at 1TB each, I am not prepared to alter my partition schemes and re-transfer everything all over again. So it looks like I'm stuck with IND-BIOS if I want to use all 128MB RAM, leave my partitions the way they are, and be able to have my Xbox actually display a picture, since it's the only BIOS with these features that fits into 256KB. Argh! I think I've done well to get this far. It DOES seem to handle scenes with large amounts of enemies and explosions with a lot less slowdown so I'm quite happy with it at this point.

I've thought about this, and while it is indeed possible to have multple Kernels on one TSOP, this does not mean different versions of the Xcodes can be used! Have a read here: https://www.eurasia.nu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=183 "The Xcode interpreter, which is stored in the MCPX ROM and cannot be changed, always reads its instructions from 0xFF00_0000, while all Xbox ROMs refer to the x86 code at 0xFFFC_0000. Therefore the Xcodes that get executed do not belong to the active image - actually the Xcodes from bank 0 get executed always, no matter what bank you select. If you have four very similar images, this might work, but very often it doesn't work! It was suggested to connect A18 and A19 resp. either to GND or to Vcc, to have definitive 1s and 0s, but we cannot recommend this either, because it is quite likely that this will make your MCPX explode!" In english, it recommends not to do this because having A18 and A19 connected to GND or Vcc applies voltage to the MCPX in a way that it was not intended for and it will get hotter than it should over time (explode is a bit of a drastic statement). So unless you add some resistors to the circuit or add cooling to the MCPX, don't try this! It will eventually fail and be very difficult to diagnose. Since the MCPX is a BGA-soldered component that cannot be easily replaced, it's far safer to just stick with modchips. That being said, using this kind of mod *temporarily* in order to recover an incomplete flash should be fine so long as you don't use it for too long.

I'm not sure that will work. I believe this mod works at a much lower level in the Xcodes during hardware initialization, in the very first steps before anything appears onscreen. Nice idea but I don't think it'll work. EDIT: see this comment regarding BFM Bioses: "Just for general knowledge, you can use a 1.6 BFM BIOS on any Xbox revision because the boot process restarts from the 2bl entry point. Ultra low level init steps are skipped (X-codes execution, RAM timing table load, etc.)." Then, check the Readme for XBoverclock "It modifies system initialization fields and bytecode ("X-Codes") using heuristics to allow for reclocking of a few parts of the XBOX system." There you have it, sorry!

EvoX should be able to backup your existing BIOS if you want to retrieve it. Download EvoX Extract that zip and FTP it to your Xbox. Run it and choose the "backup" option. Check again with FTP and a new folder called "backup" should now be within EvoX's folder. There will be several files: bios.bin, eeprom.bin, hddkey.bin and hddinfo.txt . Obviously the one you want should be bios.bin .

I'm not quite sure about that off the top of memory when it comes to XBlast. I have always done, for example "copy /b bios.bin+bios.bin+bios.bin+bios.bin 1mbbios.bin" and using the resulting 1mbbios.bin file. EvoX dashboard flasher does not require this, it automatically fills the whole TSOP or Modchip for you. I do know that this is definitely necessary when using Raincoat flasher via Eurasia Pro Generic Flash Disc (I know from experience it will erase the whole 1MB chip then only flash 256KB of it if you only give it a file that big, leaving the rest blank. Since the Xbox always boots from the final quarter of the TSOP, not the first quarter, this will cause a FRAG. Causing me to have to use the two-wire trick to boot again). Of course you should always do this *after* patching. If I were you I wouldn't leave it to chance... anyway, good luck with it!

Firstly, ensure you are using a modchip to boot from, preferably one that has a removable flashrom (like the Aladdin XT). Another option is the SmartXX, since most versions of those have recovery boot options. Reason being, if you set a clock rate too high, the Xbox will not be able to boot fully and will be useless. If using the Aladdin XT I would recommend a USB PIC programmer and a PLCC32 socket adapter for it. This would allow you to reflash manually if your Xbox won't boot. Then... download a pre-built XBOverlock executable from here: https://github.com/WulfyStylez/XBOverclock/releases and extract it to a folder, have the folder Explorer window open. You will need a copy of the BIOS to patch for overclocking. Be it INDBIOS, Xecuter, etc. Anyway, you need the .bin file for this, and to put it in the same folder as XBOverclock. Note the filename. Open a command line window and get to the folder XBOverlock is in. The easiest way to do this to copy and paste the address from the Explorer window you have open by typing cd and then paste the folder address. You may need to put inverted quotes around it " if it has spaces in it. E.g. cd "C:\Users\Giant Robots\Desktop\XBOverclock" From here type xboverclock and note the instructions it gives you. Or follow the below example where one has 'indbios.bin' as the original BIOS, and 'patched.bin' should be the output. FSB controls the front-side bus clock patch, NV controls the graphics chip clock patch. E.g. xboverclock -fsb 141 -nv 242 -o patched.bin indbios.bin The program will let you know what has been patched and the values rounded down. When you are done, FTP the 'patched.bin' BIOS file onto your Xbox and flash it the way you normally would ON THE MODCHIP! The Xbox will shut down as usual after flashing. Turn it on and pray. If it works, try playing something that is tough on the graphics chip. A good example is to open XBMC and play a video upscaled to 1080i (enable 1080i in the system settings). If the Xbox does not freeze while playing this, then chances are you have a stable overclock. Note: I have found that sometimes an overclocked Xbox can no longer completely flash a new BIOS image and the progress bar will jam, with no option to retry. This is the second reason you should always do this with a modchip you can manually flash: bricking your onboard TSOP (minus the Xbox 1.6 which does not have one) is a nightmare to recover from. The last time I had this problem I had to desolder the whole TSOP with a hot air station, solder it onto an adapter board, reflash it with a PIC programmer, then solder it back on the Xbox motherboard. This took me hours to do since it is hard to tell if all the pins are correctly connected. Plus, it is dead easy to lift the pads by accident, permanently rendering it impossible to boot from TSOP! You should only flash there if you are *absolutely* certain you have a stable overclock, and do not plan to write another BIOS again. To do that of course you would need to disconnect your modchip and disconnect any wire you have between GROUND and the D0 point on the motherboard, then boot normally, and flash normally. If, on the other hand, you cannot get the Xbox to boot normally (either black screen or a frozen flubber animation) then you will need to reflash your modchip externally as I have described above. A MiniPro TL866II and a PLCC32 adapter is a good candidate to do this. If you need help doing this part, give a word here and I'll post instructions in another post... this one is getting a bit long. Try again with lower overclock values and keep trying gently.

I know it's a bit late but I just came across one of these on eBay and bought it! I've really wanted a modboard that supports 1MB flash as opposed to only 256KB. DO NOT try unplugging your modboard from the Xbox LPC socket (be it Muppet-X, Xecuter or Aladdin) whilst the Xbox is switched on. This can fry the modboard. I lost several Aladdin boards and my only Xecuter board to this mistake during a desperate night. I know it's tempting but it's far less risky programming these externally than trying to swap them around with the Xbox on! Instead, you should notice that the flashROM chip can easily be removed from it's socket (this applies to the Aladdin board and the Muppet-X). If you're really having trouble flashing directly from your Xbox I would recommend a USB Minipro TL866II along with a PLCC32 adapter to connect the flashROM chip. Install the MiniPro software on your computer. Look at the markings on the the flashROM chip and ensure you select this, and then select a BIOS file to flash. To do this go to File>open or click the icon of a folder opening. The icon of a chip with a letter P on it is the button to start flashing. Sometimes you might have to wiggle the flashROM chip to put it at an angle in the socket, because the legs don't always align if the socket is worn. The Minipro will abort the process to avoid electrical damage if the chip is not correctly connected and tell you as such. The erase process before 'programming' should take less than a second, followed by a single rise of the progress bar during the slow write. A quick verification pass should occur followed by success. Sometimes you might have to untick "check ID", in my experience I almost always have to do this for some reason, but the flash verifies OK and works in the Xbox afterward fine anyway. If it hangs on erasing with a progress bar slowly moving back and forth, unplug the adapter to abort and try again. Then put the flashROM chip back in your modboard, put that back in your Xbox. Test by switching on and away you go.

This! Sometimes I've had this problem, and found having the DVD drive plugged in causes slow startup when I've plugged the end of an 80-wire IDE cable where both ribbons meet to the motherboard. It does make a difference which end of the cable you plug into the motherboard, even with MASTER selected on the SATA adapter. Swapping it around may help to reduce these startup lags. In other words, try ensuring the place where both ribbons meet is connected to the DVD drive... If this doesn't make sense I'll post a photo.

Thanks for pointing that out! I have in the meantime as a result of my curiosity sought some aftermarket PSU's from the RichsPSXparts to see if these make any difference. It's worth noting that the RAM initialization code is within the secret ROM in the Southbridge (MCPX) and NOT in the BIOS itself. It is therefore in normal circumstances not replaceable. However... there is hope. The secret ROM (both versions) has been dumped. According to the security paper, the secret ROM was circumvented by making use of a legacy CPU feature (the A20 gate) in order to force the Xbox to start at an address in flash rather than in the Southbridge, and placing a small dumper application directly in flash. http://xboxdevwiki.net/File:Haxar-a20m.jpg shows you only need to solder one wire to accomplish this. Both versions of the MCPX dump are available on XBins. So... in theory one could do the same trick and place a modified startup routine directly in flash, along with a modified 2BL to concatenate the contents of the secret ROM, albeit with edits to set a higher RAM clock speed along with the physical RAM replacement with QC40 modules. Of course you would have to ensure any BIOS image you are writing to flash takes this into account. Uh, this is getting very complex isn't it? I know I haven't got the programming background to pull this off, but it does give you an idea of what to look for if one did have the programming expertise to try this. Even without this however, just doing the physical modifications would be an interesting test. I will be testing the XBOverclock on my N64freak board once I have some more Aladdin Modchips, hopefully in a couple of days. I do not want to brick it by writing directly to the TSOP. It's pretty easy to take the flash chip out of an Aladdin board and use a USB PIC programmer to flash externally to try again. Removing the TSOP from the Xbox itself if I were to put an unbootable image on it and reflashing that externally would be much more of a challenge (well, getting it off the board is one thing, getting it back on without damaging those delicate pads... urgh)

N64freak: Thank you for clarifying that you leave the stock ram installed! I still believe I will have better luck on your board because it looks to have been much better looked after! I got the info regarding not all stock RAM being equal from the following: a paper on the Xbox security system, and slides from a presentation of the paper. Both under the heading "RAM initialization". Microsoft took *any* RAM that Samsung offered in order to keep production costs low, including ones that won't run at the full spec. This happens a lot in manufacturing yields where some modules produced aren't quite up to the intended spec and would otherwise have to be scrapped or instead sold advertised at a lower top speed. https://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/fahrplan/attachments/674-slides_xbox.pdf https://cs.oberlin.edu/~ctaylor/classes/341F2012/xbox.pdf According to the slides, the Xbox startup routine tries placing a small piece of data in the RAM and testing retention at 200MHZ, then 195, then 190, and so on until the RAM either passes the stability check or will not clock down further. This appears to be the pseudo-code used: "POKEPCI MEM_CNTRL, 200 POKE 0, 0xAAAAAAAA ACC = PEEK(0) IF ACC = 0xAAAAAAAA GOTO END POKEPCI MEM_CNTRL, 195 POKE 0, 0xAAAAAAAA ACC = PEEK(0) IF ACC = 0xAAAAAAAA GOTO END POKEPCI MEM_CNTRL, 190" Thus this is why I believe the RAM quality plays a part in how successful one can be when attempting to overclock. It's therefore pot luck on this aspect. I would imagine that if you go to a reputable seller for new RAM, these modules would run at the full spec they were designed for. Wow, just searched for "PicoPSU" and I am very impressed! I would love to try one of those. It's a shame that XBOX to ATX adapters are no longer sold but I imagine with a lot of perseverance I could probably cut up a plug and fit the wires to the correct pinout myself.

That's a very good point, since overclocking the FSB also overclocks the RAM. The quality of the RAM varies significantly in all Xboxes due to the fact Microsoft allegedly sometimes used faulty RAM that cannot run at the full designed spec (and used a test on each startup to slow down faulty RAM to make it work reliably at the cost of performance). I have been testing this on my Trusty revision 1.0 Xbox (1.4GHZ CPU with 128MB RAM). I do not think Trusty replaced the original 64MB RAM, I think he just added new RAM in the missing places, so therefore if the original RAM is low quality, that limits the speed already. I cannot overclock the FSB beyond 144 without lockups. A tad disappointing is that the NVCLK will only go as high as 277 without lockups. If I try anything over 290 I will get black screen on boot. Thus I am not likely to see much noticeable improvement. However I did find that using a different PSU will also have a slight effect too- my old delta PSU would allow stable 268 NVCLK, a Foxlink PSU will allow as high as 277. Both PSUs get quite hot when doing this mod and when lockups occur I have to wait for the PSU to call down otherwise the Xbox will not completely boot (either a black screen or a frozen boot animation will occur). As I've got cooling fans on both the GPU and CPU there's not much more that can be done except to boost the speed of the exhaust fan. I will try this again on my N64freak 1GHZ 128MB Xbox (revision 1.4) when I get the chance and post in here again. I have a feeling I will have better luck on this one since N64freak tends to really treat these boards with much better respect to detail. I also have another revision 1.0 Xbox with a stock 733MHZ CPU and 128MB to test with but I do not have it in my house at the moment. In summary: all components will have a significant impact on your success with this mod! If you have the skills and patience, try replacing *all* your RAM with known high quality modules (too nerve racking for me to do myself!). Also also: check that your PSU has enough breathing space. Having a SATA adapter board with all those extra wires for it can't help if you stuff the wires over the top of the PSU. Yes there's hardly any space but try relocating most of those wires underneath the hard drive tray. aaaand Submit...

The screenshot is a preview image hosted on YTImg.com, which is YT being Youtube. If we take part of the URL and paste it on the end of youtube dot com slash watch ? v = We get: I can only assume whoever owns this Youtube channel made this skin and the video previews him/herself to showcase modded Xboxes they sell, since it appears to be owned by a "Videogame Specialist" (translated from Mexican). Your best bet is contacting the channel owner to see if they are willing to give a copy of the skin.

Suggestions off the top of my head: 1) Use an SSD- this makes the whole boot process much quicker no matter how many games you load (not practical if you really need 2TB, too expensive at this time, I use a 480GB SSD). Obvious and overkill. 2) When uploading via FTP, ensure you upload *one file at a time*. This can easily be set in Filezilla and helps reduce filesystem fragmentation. There are no known FATX defragmentation tools at this time so prevention is easier than cure. If you have been uploading multiple files at once, I would suggest to reformat and retransfer. 3) Use a patched version of UnleashX that does not search for and extract all the game icons on every boot (instead it is extracted when a game is first launched). Rocky5's softmod disc has this, you can download the part with the patched UnleashX here: https://github.com/Rocky5/Xbox-Softmodding-Tool/raw/master/Extras Disc/Dashboards/UnleashX.zip . This probably has negligible effect, since it still needs to search for the title in each XBE, but it might help.

Here comes my third post: what I had to resort to in order to get my Trusty 1.4GHZ Xbox cooled sufficiently. I found that the supplied thin aluminium heatsink that he supplies with a small fan atop does not do enough, even with the black exhaust fan being set to full. (see this thread on XBMC4XBOX forums for example photos: https://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17) Hardly desirable for long term use. (Note: I am not here to diss Trusty. I do not deny that it is incredible that he has found the technical knowledge to upgrade an XBOX CPU as far as it will possibly go.) Anyway, I purchased a thick copper heatsink and had to drill holes into it in order to attach it to the board. This involved buying a titanium drill bit, and drilling partway through in small doses. Reason being, the copper and the titanium got so hot from the friction that it would freeze up the drill. I therefore resorted to putting the drill bit and heatsink in my freezer every so often, then getting them out again to keep going. Eventually I did it, and was able to reuse the original bolts Trusty had left behind. I honestly cannot find where I bought the copper heatsink from as it has been four years since I did this, but if I do, I will update this thread. For good measure, I mounted one of my spare Evercool fans exactly where the bolts fit. I would have just used one of those directly on the CPU but of course, it is not enough large enough to fit the surface area of the larger 1.4GHZ CPU. Anyhow, it does provide sufficient enough cooling (and quietly) this way, although the hard disk tray does still need to be cut in order to have enough airflow space. Note: Since taking this photo I swapped the GPU plastic retaining clips for the actual Xbox screws after putting this board back in it's case, after ensuring proper application of thermal paste. At least you can see that it fits quite nicely. Anyone is welcome to ask for additional photos if interested. My next step is rewiring an old LG GDR-8163B drive and flashing it to make it compatible with all optical media (both originals and burned) and then fitting that.

Here comes my second post, with a photo of the inside of my N64freak 1.0GHZ Xbox. I have to say I was very pleased at the condition this arrived in- very expertly clean. It turned out that the upgraded CPU uses exactly the same amount of space as the original 733MHZ CPU. So... when I got this I had an idea I've been wanting to try that might remind some people of the old Xbox-Scene days. Fitting fans to the CPU and GPU. I was inspired by this old archived thread: http://web.archive.org/web/20080403113352/http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=600530 (note: most of the images might take a few clicks to see since they are saved on Photobucket!) Anyhow, since it is almost impossible to find IceberQ Pro 4 kits anymore, I had to dig around for a solution. Eventually I came across these: Evercool UFO Universal VGA Cooler https://www.ebay.com/itm/EverCool-VC-RI-R-Mini-UFO-Universal-VGA-Cooler-Red/252457072614?hash=item3ac79d37e6:g:du8AAMXQwMdRFNrj These fans happen to have the fitting holes exactly where they need to be to mount them on the Xbox motherboard. These fans also come with a Molex power passthrough connector to save you buying one separately. Just like with the IceberQ kit, you need to remove the original black plastic retaining clips from the board, in my case I used an old disposable soldering tip to melt the clips off (I was too wimpy to risk damaging the traces using a knife). You can use the original Xbox screws for mounting the fan on the GPU. For the CPU however, you will need to use plastic spring fittings to fit the fan on. I used hot glue on the bottom of the board to help keep the thing fastened down, just like in the original tutorial. The result is below (sorry I only took one photo of this board).

My name is Sam. I am from the UK. .... Okay, perhaps I shouldn't be so straight-to-the-point. I am someone who tinkers with old electronics. Over the last few years I've been teaching myself to solder by getting hold of cheap playstations and chipping them, from the oldest to the newest. Reason being, the solder points get tinier and more difficult to do as technology progresses. Around 2011 I got into Xbox modifications, and have seen good websites come and go with a wealth of information come and go (sad face). I am glad to see this website emerge from the dust to continue the trend. Now, onto my collection: I have a number of Xboxes. Most of them are broken, some of them work. Mainly because I have attempted RAM upgrades and failed. I also own a Trusty 1.4GHZ box (and had to go to quite a lot of trouble to get the thing to cool sufficiently to get any stable activity out of it!) I purchased this three years ago via Trusty on XBMC4XBOX's forum. More recently I have acquired an N64Freak 1.0GHZ box via this forum. I've got to say, the quality of the work is vastly different on both, though both now get fairly equal usage due to the fact some games are more stable on the 1.0GHZ than the 1.4GHZ (even with patching). I have as of late come across several downloads I'd like to get hold of on this forum, but cannot get them because I need to have at least 3 forum posts. Hmm, I wonder why that is. It does make me a little peeved that some sites force you to make an account just to download files, and then wonder why they have lots of inactive accounts with no posts, then delete them en masse, possibly because they look so similar to spammy accounts. But this... is a whole new level. I have no intention of spamming, so I guess this policy is having a (probably desirable) effect of forcing me to actually make good quality posts in order to be allowed the privilege of downloading. Possibly to ensure people actually contribute to the community in order to benefit from it. Okay, I can see that being a good reason. So here we are, my introduction. I will follow up this post with some photographs I have taken from the inside of my two souped up Xboxes.

I have had this issue on one of my Xboxes but other ones I have work absolutely fine. After glancing over the motherboard I can see that some of the capacitors are bulging on this particular Xbox (where they don't on the others I have), leading me to suspect that is the cause. I have yet to try replacing them but if I ever do and find that solves the issue, I will post here again.