alcatraz68

I'm thinking the laser itself, I tweaked the pot on one of my drives and managed to get it working but it stopped reading discs again within a day or so.

I have two Toshiba/Samsung drives that have bad lasers, I can only seem to find replacement lasers for Thomson drives available to buy online. Is there anywhere that sells lasers for the T/S drives, or are there lasers from other products that might be compatible? I saw someone online who replaced a Playstation 2 laser with one from a music CD player and it worked, not sure if something like that can be done with the Xbox drives?

The game has been running ok since, but if I do get another crash I will give this a try, thanks.

This isn't the case for me, I have F and G partitions at 145gb each, both use 16KB clusters and there's no error indicator.

My retail disc, ripped with dvd2xbox. I managed to play through the first championship last night with no freezes so I don't know if it was just a one off crash or not.

I recently did a softmod on a 1.6 console and installed an old IDE 320gb HDD I had from an old PC build. I tested the HDD's health first and it seems to be performing well so I cloned my exisiting Xbox HDD and installed the softmod. I've backed up around 70 games to the new HDD and while most seem to work fine I was playing Burnout and the system froze. This was during my first race. Is this a sign of a potential problem with the HDD or something else? Looking at the S.M.A.R.T information on the console i'm now seeing a few questionable readings:

It does yes.

Thanks i'll check it out. The password worked too. Brilliant thank you, I was able to FTP the file over to my computer and added in the Emulator option. I also moved around a few things as the default layout wasn't to my liking (Applications and System Settings were buried within a folder called 'Xbox Admin', I moved them to the main menu). I'm having one more issue with the UI though, my emulators have icons when you highlight them but my games don't, any idea if this can be fixed somewhere? I'm using the default UnleashX skin.

I have just FTP'd CoinOps 8 over to my newly mod chipped Xbox but there is no Emulator option in the menu so I can't load it. I can see an option to 'format' menu but it asks for a password to be entered to access it. Also I have 'HeXEN tools' and 'Ndure tools' but these too require passwords, although these require pressing buttons in the correct order. Is there any commonly used passwords I can try to use or should I contact the seller I purchased the modchip off about this?

I had another go at the mod today and it was sucessful! I scraped away the mask and managed to solder a wire to both sides of the damaged D0 point, I then ran another wire from the point to the D0 contact on the mod chip. I've turned the system off and on a few times, loaded up a few apps and tested a game and all seems good. Thanks for your help!

Ok brilliant thank you. Will I need to scrap away some of the material near those points? I'm thinking it's going to be difficult to get solder to stick to them?

Here are a few pics. I followed this guide for my install: https://circuit-board.de/forum/index.php/Attachment/72198-Aladdin-XT-installation-Guide-pdf/

Unfortunately i'm having problems with the mod chip. I installed it in the console and it booted up right away, EvoX logo on start up screen, etc. The hard drive also worked so I booted up a game and it played perfectly, but when I did an IGR the console went off and now won't power back on, i'm now back to having the flashing red/green light. I double checked the solder joints on the pins but this didn't change anything. I looked at the D0 wire connected to ground and found that the solder had been squashed when I screwed the motherboard back into the case and two points were now bridged on the screw joint. No idea if this is what caused the issue? But I think i've messed up now because the D0 solder joint has come off the board and the trace broke too... and i'm guessing this will now render the console unfixable?

Brilliant thanks guys. Will my HDD work as it did before or will I need to do a fresh install?

For some reason while trying to flash a new bios to my TSOP I got a message saying 'programming failed', and now I get no picture when my console boots and the LED flashed red and green. So i'm thinking it's bricked. I was wondering if I installed a mod chip would this then save the console? I've seen an 'Aladdin XT+4032 X2 Plus' on eBay and the installation seems very simple for these chips.

I had no idea it was possible to run isos off the HDD, I'll have to look into that one, cheers.

Ok great I think i'm starting to understand it all (maybe..) So am I right in saying that I can: 1) FTP a Bios + XBlastOS to my Xbox and flash 2) Install the new HDD, then use a burned HeXen DVD to format the drive and setup a new dashboard, install apps, etc Is it as simple as that or am I missing more things I need to do? Also, would Evox m8+ be a good BIOS choice?

Ahh ok no worries, so if i'm going to flash a new bios with XBlastOS instead where would I get the bios file from? And once i've flashed the bios would I then use HeXen to setup the new hard drive?

I've had a look and the points shown in the tutorial definitely look like they've been modified (my console is a 1.2 or a 1.3). Baring this in mind will I be able to proceed with HeXen and flash a new bios with it?

coldasijs Thanks for the heads up on the cap, I never noticed it before so i'll replace it and any others that are bulging. I have no visible modchip on my board anywhere so i'm a little confused, however it is definitely chipped as the start up screen has been replaced and when I run bios checker it says there's a hard mod installed. I'll definitely grab FATXplorer and format the drive prior to installation. My mod was done a very long time ago (around 2004 or 05) so I think the bios will definitely need upgrading. Do the different bioses files come on the HeXen/OGXBOX installer discs? @sweetdarkdestiny Thank you for the links. My disc drive is really struggling to read discs, I was going to swap in another drive to load my boot disc although if it's possible to do the install without I might try that. I definitely don't see a chip anywhere on my board, i've just looked up what TSOP flashing is so I think you might be right.

I have an old Xbox that has an Xecuter 2 chip installed, it still has the stock HDD so i'd like to upgrade it to a 500GB SATA. Weirdly I cannot physically see any chip soldered to the board, I can see some yellow wires going out the front of the console so i'm not sure if this is where the chip is located? (see pic). In any case I have downloaded the HeXen 2018 installation disc, and I have the necessary parts required to convert from IDE to SATA. Is this disc capable of setting up a HDD with this chip? I took a couple of pics showing my kernel and the fact my current HDD is locked: