[XEcuter 3 Flashing Bios]

On 10/2/2017 at 7:27 AM, KaosEngineer said:

I also see that there are two releases of FlashBIOS 3.0.3 (3.0.3 and 3.0.3-1)  Use the latter.  The description states that this BIOS boots on all version Xbox's not just v1.6/1.6b. However, if you have a v1.6/1.6b Xbox, standard definition (SD) AV cable are required or NO video output.  The v1.6 Xbox's Xcalibur video encoder is only supported for SD not HD output -- no documentation on the Xcalibur chip's register set was ever leaked to help decipher how to fully support it.

Hi @KaosEngineer,

Sorry for the ~1 year lag... I left off this in frustration then, but want to come back to thank you. Your last post mentioned about the need for the SD AV cable and that actually did the trick - the "blank screen" attempting to boot the backup/recovery FlashBIOS 3.0.1 was due to my use of the HD component cables (duh).

Once that was resolved, everything else was "as expected" - I managed to "erase"/overwrite the 2x 1MB 3924 with 4x 256KB ROMs, then re-flashed 1MB bank #1 again with 3924 and my Xbox was working again, replete with all my saved games, profiles, et. al. still on my HDD...

Thank you so much, @KaosEngineer!

[XEcuter 3 Flashing Bios]

On 8/27/2017 at 9:09 PM, KaosEngineer said:

If the latest version 3924 is installed nothing to do there.  Only thing I was thinking of is since it's a 1.6 Xbox.  Most had problems getting FlashBIOS 3.0.1 running which is the recovery BIOS pre-flashed to the modchip.  It has a separate 256KB flash memory chip to hold it. Recovery BIOS loads by pressing both the Eject and Power buttons to power the  Xbox.  If you get a black screen instead of the FlashBIOS 3.0.3 screen, it needs to be updated. 

<SNIP>

IIRC, DO NOT use Settings -> Password Protection feature it's broken. Doing so will lock you out without any way to get back in. A bug that was NEVER fixed before the Xbox 360 came out and Team Xecuter stopped updating the X3 BIOS. (There was some sort of x3_erase.xbe to fix it but .???)   P.S. There is mention of reflashing the BIOS may get rid of the password.  Haven't tried. The bug might have just been in older releases too.

Hi @KaosEngineer,

I am, unfortunately, in a similar boat... Unfortunate that in this case, as I believe my recovery FlashBIOS is still 3.01 on my XBox v1.6 (blank screen and purple X on backup power+eject boot), and both 1MB banks on my Xecuter 3 have 3924 on them and a password was set on both (which was working fine for some ~4 years from 2006). Both banks currently stopped accepting any passwords.

I only knew of those password problems and the FlashBIOS incompatibility now, after things fail.

Any suggestions? Is there a way to connect a serial port directly to the Xecuter 3 to flash it, or pull the backup and/or main EEPROM to re-flash externally?

Thanks!