FrostyMaGee

Very true. Just wishful thinking. Lol. Did anyone ever make one outside of Microsoft? I honestly don’t remember. I never saw one but that doesn’t preclude it from existing.

Yeah you’d think there would definitely be a market for a higher quality aftermarket cable. Maybe one day a company will make one. Even if they just wanted to make a quality clone of the old HD AV pack.

It sounded like the initial goal was to install insignia but he accidentally started a softmod using the SC exploit but killed it before it was done. After that the error 21.

You’re welcome. There are definitely folks that know a lot more than me here and have provided a lot of help over the years before I ever even made an acct. It’s a great place for all things about the original Xbox. Everyone has had to start somewhere. By the way, if you have a copy of halo 2 I still remember there being a way to have it update the dash for you should you want to try that route first. As I think about it from back in the day it’s possible you may have to do that with halo 2 or another similar with the 5960 dash update on it in order to get the softmod going at this point. Guess it all depends on how much got screwed up when it was interrupted.

You should be able to boot to splinter cell and use the exploit (assuming that game save is still on your hdd) and let the softmod complete. The dashboard will be replaced by the one with the softmod bud you can install the ms dash, should you wish, via one of the aforementioned discs. You can even run Rocky’s extras disc via iso and the xbe loader if you ftp it to your Xbox after the softmod. Definitely back up your eeprom when it prompts you though and afterwards save it off to your computer or somewhere so you have a copy off the Xbox itself. let us know how it goes and if you need anymore help though.

Yeah I’m with you. I know I had one long ago as well (and currently with Rocky’s and hexen discs) and I remember it’s usually possible to restore (barring something horrible having taken place) when one gets screwed like that. It’s been a long time since I had to do it though. Lol. As for going back to stock I don’t know why either. I’d just let the mod finish and leave it at that. Run the stock if I had a reason to use it. It sounded like the OP really wanted it back to stock though hence my suggestions. Damn I hope I didn’t jinx myself with that earlier comment. Lol

That was my thinking. Try and fix before just torching it and starting anew. Sometimes you have no choice but to burn the hdd (or partition) down though. Lol

Yeah. I probably should’ve put that. Lol. There could be other factors in play to make that not work. I was thinking about an “if all else fails” scenario before maybe trying a hot swap route.

It occurred to me that you may also be able to boot to splinter cell and proceed with the exploit (assuming it’s still on your hdd). You could then let the softmod go all the way through and afterwards use Rocky’s or another utility to restore to the original dash. I believe that’s a possibility. Am I remembering that correctly guys?

From what I recall error 21 is a dashboard error. I want to say there was a trick with certain games that were Xbox live enabled games where you could run them and then update your dashboard from there. This would get you back to stock as it were. You might be able to make Rocky’s extras disc or a Hexen disc and boot to that. If you had a backup of your eeprom you could more. There’s some info here and more in the Softmods section. I’m sure others will also comment as well. I hope that helps! Halo 2 was one game that could do that. Burnout 3 as well. There are others.

That has been my own and friends experiences with the aftermarket type. As I mentioned earlier they tend to be hit or miss (more heavy on the miss side lol). Though I’d suspect even the 3rd party ones that seem to work semi well probably still have less shielding on them than what we’d all prefer. If it was someone that used the og Xbox once every so often it would probably be passable. Once to a few times a week or heavy user would probably notice real quick. IMO.

Out of curiosity what type of signal are you getting on the tv with the modded cable?

Yeah that’s what I was thinking as well. In my experience the HD pack with quality cables between pack and tv tends to give the best results. The Microsoft branded component cables are costly but work pretty well if you find one (though usually the cost is more than the HD AV pack) The cheaper ones you find on eBay, Amazon, etc are hit or miss in my experience. Some are good but some are garbage or they’ll work for a bit and crap out after 3 months. The modded 360 cable always looked like more trouble than it was worth for not much gain. Again this is all my own experiences and those of friends. There’s always the hdmi converters with the separate power supply but I haven’t gone this route with the og Xbox so I don’t know how well they work in that regard.

I am very late to this but did you ever get daphne working? I played around with it for a little while years ago. From what I recall you had to have your bin files in a specific folder and you had to edit each frame file (in this case the lair.txt) and point it to that path in the very top of the frame file where this is declared. I can try setting it up again on my Xbox and tell you exactly what I did to get it to finally run if you’re still playing around with daphne. It was mostly trial and error since there’s not a ton of info available in regards to troubleshooting this emulator. MaGee

So I tried the blinking drive in another console. Same blinking issue. Not really shocked. Here is the interesting part. The previously working drive that I used to test in the problem 1.6 Xbox now doesn’t work in its original working console. It does the blinking like it’s reading then stops and does nothing just like it started to do in the problem 1.6 Xbox. Is it possible there’s a power short coming from the problem Xbox MB that’s frying something in the logic board of these drives or something else corrupting? This one is just straight up weird. By the way, I did pull out the MB and ran the ide traces. Other than being dusty everything looked fine under magnification. I gave the rest of the board another once over with magnification but nothing stood out. I was kind of hoping I’d at least find a culprit on the MB for this issue even if I couldn’t repair it. Lol. At least I’d know what the hell was going on. Lol I took a pic of the MB top in case anyone is interested. Maybe I missed something. The mystery continues.

Thank you for the reply! That is a concerning trend. Following that line of thinking I might pull out the MB and just follow the traces from the ide connector just to see if there is a break or corrosion somewhere in its pathway. Another good test would be to see if the previously working drive from the other console still works in its original console. Fingers crossed it didn’t hose that drive. If that works test number two would be to see if the problem console blinker works in the other console, as you mentioned, with a new MB in play. Yeah using fatxplorer and moving files to partitions will most likely be my only recourse for the problem Xbox. Once I have that the dvd drive will be fairly irrelevant insofar as games are concerned. I’ve been running everything on 2Tb hdds for a good while on my own and that’s what they want on this one. Whether I can repair this one or not I kinda want to see if I can figure out what’s up with this Xbox. It’s just bugging me now. Lol. Thank you for the advice and ideas. It appears I have some more investigating to do with it. Time to tear out the MB and break out the magnification! Lol. If I run across anything of note or stumble on to a fix I will be sure to update it here. Thanks again!

Funny enough I just finished doing that exact thing. I swapped out a known working dvd power cable. Same issue with the original drive and the known good drive from another console. Just to try it I swapped out the ide cable for a known working from another console. Same issue with both drives. I tried a few working games, a few dvds, and a few cds but to no avail. Same issue persists. The original just never stops blinking green. The replacement drive acts like it reads the disc and stops blinking but does nothing after that. Bizarre. I will say this they both opened and closed this time without issue after I swapped out the dvd power cable. At this point I have to be looking at something with the motherboard right? I guess I can always take out the MB and look much more closely at traces and solder points. Worse comes to worse I can always make it a parts system. Lol Thank you for the reply @KaosEngineer. I have read and referred to many of your posts on this forum over the years. Wish I’d made an account before now. Not sure why I put it off so long. Lol. I feel like I’m overlooking something to check though. I just can’t put my finger on it. I’ve run in to a good bit of problems with different og Xboxes over the years but have always been able to repair them. I’ve never run in to this particular scenario though. Puzzling.

Greetings all! First time posting anything but have gathered a lot of great tips and fixes from this forum for a few years now. This problem has me stumped though. Here’s the situation: The xbox boots fine to the ms dash. I can access the hdd, copy saves to memory unit (or usb via adapter), browse settings, etc. The eject button on the dvd player just flashes green. There’s no disc in the drive, it doesn’t make any horrible noises, it won’t open, and there’s nothing impeding it from opening. I took it apart, removed a lot of dust et al, cleaned the laser, checked to see that the manual eject via the release button worked, double checked the tray side rails, etc. Everything looked normal. Reassembled and had the same problem listed above. I put in a known good drive and that remedied the non stop green light flashing so I thought I’d figured out the issue. I go to test a disc and the known good drive starts to not eject or close intermittently. Additionally it won’t do anything with the disc. If I put a few known good and un scratched games it the drive just flashes green forever. It never gives a dirty disc type error or anything and again this is a drive I know works (tested it right before I pulled it out and put it for test in the current Xbox). I’m stumped. I thought about changing out power and ide just to see. Swapped out two known good AV cables just for grins. No effect. Nothing on the MB looks bulging and I can’t see and trace rot,etc on the top at least. Any ideas? Thank you, MaGee