[Help With Sticking Trays On Samsung Dvd]

The drive belt is the likely cause of your issue. It operates the drive mechanism that causes the sled to move up and down and the tray to eject. If the belt is too loose (from being too old), it can't grip the pulley enough to drive the whole mechanism.

Clean the belt. Clean the tray. Lubricate the tray (if possible). If that doesn't help, replace the belt.

I've had mixed results with putting belts in boiling water. Replacing it is a more permanent fix.

[Newb, help - what the hell do i do!?]

Looks like the D0 wire fell off. The person who installed it probably used the "alternate" D0 point that's on the underside of the motherboard and it fell off over time. The D0 wire has to be hooked up for the Xbox to know that it has to boot to the modchip, hence why it's no longer lighting up.

The other two wires are for internet and hard drive activity lights.

To fix it, solder that grey wire back up to the D0 point. See attached pictures.

 

[How Do You Check Hdd Heath Og XBox Drive]

I usually use UnleashX to see basic SMART info about a drive. I'll also look to see how many times it has been powered on in its life to get an idea of how old it is. If you're using a stock hard drive, just remember that some of them are coming up on 20 years old and hard drives don't live forever. If the drive works, then great. But backup important data you wouldn't want to lose to a PC.

[Question About the Dangers of Nulling the Hdd Key.]

@feudalnate - First off, thanks for compiling a concise list of the cons to nulling drive keys. I'm kind of surprised this is your first post, since you registered 10 months ago and you seem know quite a bit about this pretty obscure topic. I'll admit as a proponent of nulling drive keys that I don't always make these side effects clear. I'll make an effort to be more vocal about that risk in the future. I think it would also be good if softmod packages that alter the hdd key (such as Rocky5's softmod tool) were more transparent about this side effect too.

Quote

Zeroing the XboxHDKey makes recovery easier in the event of a failed hard drive sure but is simply keeping a backup of the original EEPROM data and leaving the XboxHDKey as-is really that much more difficult? Never really understood people always suggesting zeroing this EEPROM setting [...]

It really depends on the user. If they have DLC (which can be reinstalled) or happen to have gamesaves for the minority of games that are non-roamable, then yes it could be annoying to them to realize that nulling their drive key just broke that data of theirs. But if it's someone looking to dust off their old Xbox to use it for emulators and to play new games on, then nulling the key wouldn't be a problem for them and the benefit of being able to recover easier later on may outweigh the cons. For someone like me, the benefit of never having to deal with eeprom backups or keep track of which drive is locked to which console is incredibly convenient. I keep them backed up on my computer (and a memory unit), but I generally never need to touch those backups. All my consolesare locked with the same key, so if something goes wrong with a softmod, I can drop that hard drive into a hardmodded Xbox and fix the issue rather easily.

Back in the day, unlocking a drive using a PC meant burning a CD with that Xbox's eeprom on it and making sure you used the right disc for the right hdd. I remember mixing that up a few times in my early days. These days, Xboxhdm can be run within Windows 10 even, but I've experienced issues with my PC not being able to send security ATA commands for some reason or my USB-IDE adapter not passing ATA commands to unlock my hdd. I'd prefer to skip all that and use a 2nd Xbox to deal with locking/unlocking.

Quote

Any gamesaves signed as "non-roamable" become invalid

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the number of games that sign their gamesaves is rather low. There's Phantasy Star Online, Dead or Alive X, Forza Motorsports, and Burnout 3. I bet there's more, but I believe it's a small minority of games. For some, there's trainers to get around the key signing issue. There's also a re-signing app floating around for PSO.

Quote

those same people never seem to explain the reasons why doing so can be detrimental and carry heavy risk

The risks you mentioned assume that the homebrew app being used doesn't work properly or that a random hardware fault occurs. Yes it's possible, but the casual modder would likely not experience that. And if they do, they should really go out and buy a lottery ticket. I would disagree that it's unsafe enough to be deemed "risky". I've never had issues with homebrew apps screwing up the process in the dozens (>hundred?) Xboxes I've owned over the years. The real risk is if a newbie unlocks their softmodded Xbox's hdd, then forgets to lock it and turns off their system, but Rocky5's popular HDD nuller app doesn't even give the person the opportunity to leave it unlocked.

P.s. another downside to nulling your HDD key is you won't be able to use the upcoming Xbox Live replacement, Insignia, when it comes out. The workaround is to use all 1's instead of all 0's (or 1 followed by 31 zeroes), or your original hdd key. (Rocky said he was updating his softmod package to account for this. Not sure if he did that yet.)

[XBox 360 Memory Unit for Og XBox]

6 hours ago, bulkchart32 said:

what flash drive did u use? i know it is tricky to find one that the xbox likes.

"SanDisk Cruzer Blade". 4GB is the largest size the original Xbox supports. I'm not sure if you can get larger sizes and just format it to 4GB, but I would recommend just getting a 4GB (or smaller) stick to be safe. Smaller size sticks are actually getting harder to find these days.

Here's one on ebay for example https://www.ebay.com/itm/254732627087

[Modchip Hotswapping]

Update- I used a different Xbox and a different modchip during boot (an Aladdin instead of OpenXenium) and was able to hotswap and fix the flash on my Duo X2 chip. Problem resolved.

I also suspect that the Xbox I was using was being problematic because it apparently has a corrupt eeprom, probably from running 5849_Recovery on a retail console. I know it tries to flash the debug BIOS but I didn't know it also altered the eeprom. So I'll come back to fix that one later.

Anyways, DVT4 is back up and running.

Mods- feel free to delete my thread. Or keep it in case someone in the future stumbles upon it.

[Modchip Hotswapping]

I could use some guidance here as I'm feeling rather dumb. I see plenty of forum posts about how you can simply boot up an Xbox with a modchip (D0 grounded), swap modchips, and flash the 2nd modchip as a means of fixing a bad flash. I'm trying to do this with a Duo X2 Lite chip that has a bad bios flash on it and every time I go to flash it, the app I'm using says "flash write protected" or something similar. Basically, the end result is that it can't flash the Duo modchip that I swap in. I've tried several times using different timings and different flashing apps (chimp vs evolutionx). Is there some obvious step I'm missing here? Should I be booting from a disc (hexen)? Loading into a special/BFM bios first?

D0 is grounded to a screw mount. I'm sure it's booting from LPC.

I'm booting with an OpenXenium, then swapping in an X2 Duo Lite (bad bios flash). I flashed a debug BIOS onto it first to use on my DVT4 kit, then later I flashed Yoshihiro's debug bios (which I found out is not actually not meant for debug/dvt consoles). I then used the 5849_Recovery disc to try and flash the modchip back to the official debug bios, but that bios is 1MB in size (2 copies of the identical 512KB debug BIOS), whereas the Duo X2 Lite can only hold a 512KB BIOS. So I guess it failed part way through? I have other modchips, but they either aren't compatible with the MCPX2 found in dev/debug Xboxes or aren't big enough to hold the 512KB debug BIOS.

I'm basically booting with OpenXenium, then getting to my dashboard (XBMC), then loading Chimp. If I swap the chips prior to Chimp starting, Chimp just fails to start. The Xbox just freezes on a black screen. If I swap the chips after Chimp loads, it says "flash not writable" (or similar message). Same experience with evolutionx. The BT point is soldered on the Duo X2 if that matters (to enable always-on mode).

Any tips on what I'm doing wrong or steps to try? Is my X2 Duo just screwed? Should I be using a different modchip other than OpenXenium on first-boot for some reason?

By the way, the whole reason I want to flash this Duo X2 is to get my DVT4 kit back up and running. It has a bad TSOP flash (came to me like that). I might skip all this and focus on figuring out how to fix the TSOP, since using the Duo is just a bandaid fix anyways. I've already tried splitting the TSOP and that didn't help so I'm not sure what to do next other than desolder the tsop and program is externally... and I don't have a hot-air rework station anymore, nor a programmer.

[XBox 360 Memory Unit for Og XBox]

It should work. Both the original Xbox and 360's memory units are just USB drives formatted to FATX. Just make sure to look up wiring diagrams so you're sure which wire goes to which pin (and that they're using the same voltage rating).

By the way, if you're just looking to have a high-capacity memory unit on the original Xbox, consider modding a memory unit and putting a usb flash drive in it like I did. Here's my 4GB MU:

[Can You Softmod, Install Dlc, and Then Un-Softmod?]

As others have said, yes you can softmod (or simply gain FTP access via a gamesave exploit), install DLC, then remove the softmod. Softmodding in this case is just a means to gain access to the hard drive in order to copy DLC (or a DLC installer app) over to it. The softmod itself isn't needed afterwards and can be removed if desired.

While you're softmodded, I highly recommend backing up your EEPROM just in case your hard drive ever dies. Your hard drive is locked to your Xbox using a unique password. Backing up your eeprom allows you to keep a copy of this password for if your hard drive ever dies and you need to build a new hard drive for it (which is common in 20 year old Xboxes). Consider nulling your hard drive key too for added convenience.

P.s. I'm with HDShadow. Personally, I see modding as getting the full Xbox experience plus more. You're not missing out on anything... only adding to it. But it's your decision.

[XBox Dev Kit Video Teardown]

On 5/29/2020 at 11:44 PM, ttsgeb said:

If anyone has a Raptor card I can pair with it, please send me a PM.

Did you check ebay? There's one there. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Xbox-Development-Raptor-PCI-card-Dvd-Emulator/392452485313

Thinking about getting it to pair with my DVT4. Although mine didn't come with the dvt4's hard drive caddy... so I need to figure out how to secure those extra boards in place. The last person to work on it seemed to struggle (bent fins on the top metal cage, cracks,

On 5/29/2020 at 11:44 PM, ttsgeb said:

I also might be willing to sell this to someone that wants to use it for its intended purpose.

Sent you a PM.

[Oled 20x4 Display Screen Installed - Looks Nice.]

Very cool! I plan on doing an OLED panel after I get these two LCDs installed. I love the look of OLED. You should post photos of the finished install once you're done.

[McPX X2 Compatible Bios]

On 8/31/2020 at 6:45 PM, KaosEngineer said:

Try that DuoX2 modchip.  It has 512KB BIOS banks and the debug BIOS is actually a 512KB BIOS not 1MB.  The 1MB file is used to flash the entire 1MB flash chip on v1.0/1.1 motherboards.

The only BIOS I know of for X2 MCPX's is a debug BIOS used on Debug or Dev Kits.

This method worked for me. 

I split the 1MB debug bios to a 512KB version, flashed it to my Duo X2 Lite using a retail console, then moved the modchip over to my DVT4 kit and it booted right up. Now I just need to get the TSOP flashed properly so I can hook the serial debugging daughter board back up again.

On 8/24/2020 at 5:24 PM, OGXbox Admin said:

Yeah you can boot a debug bios on a lpc modchip just fine. You can also unground d0 and run the recovery disk and it will reflash your tsop. I know because I recovered one this way. 

I tried this with my dvt4 unit and it didn't work. I tried a few times using different timings. I even tried leaving the chip on and just removing the D0 wire. I can flash the modchip on the lpc port just fine using the recovery disc, just not the tsop.

Is your success due to the fact that you're using a Chameleon modchip? https://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=433

[Repairing XBox Debug Kit]

On a somewhat related note, I was successfully able to flash the debug bios to my X2 Duo Lite to get a separate DVT4 kit Xbox working. I split it from 1mb to 512kb, flashed it using a retail Xbox, then transferred it over to my DVT4.

While this is great progress, I want to recover the TSOP on this DVT4 just so I don't have to leave the modchip in there. All of the resources I've found online describe how to fix a bad tsop flash using special bioses and grounding the D0 and A15 points at specific timings. These special bioses were made for retail boards and not debug/DVT boards in mind, and so I assume these bioses wouldn't be compatible.

Edit- I'm going to continue the conversation over in this thread, which seems to be relevant to what I'm trying to do.

[Internal OgX360 Installation (With Relays)]

As someone who isn't in this private group, what does the post say?

[XBox 360 Rf Boards]

I wired up a USB cord to the rf board I got from a broken Xbox a while back. I have no idea where I put it (or if I even have it anymore) to test with my ogx360. I do have another rf board I could test with though. Hmm

Side note- I remember it being a pain to sync controllers because the only way to do it was to plug the rf board back into an Xbox 360, then press the sync button on the 360. Once sync'd, the board could be moved. I think that's why I ended up tossing it. It's annoying needing to keep a half-assembled Xbox 360 around just to sync controllers to an rf board.

[Push Fit Pin Headers for Chips]

Personally I don't like them. I've had several Xboxes come to me that were "broken" and it just ended up being a solderless chip that came loose.

I'd suggest just honing in your soldering skills. The right tool can make a tough job easy, so consider getting a better soldering iron (one with a fine tip and temp controls).

[XBox Development Kit (Dvt4) Pcb Photos]

Correction- the port on the DVD emulation board is actually a USB port. Source: Reddit

[XBox Development Kit (Dvt4) Pcb Photos]

I recently acquired a Development Kit (DVT4) and decided to take some high-quality photos of the daughter boards from this console. They're pretty rare and obscure and I wanted to take some good photos for preservation's sake. I'm going to get a Raptor PCI card soon, so I'll add photos of that too later.

More info-
These boards were in development kits and consisted of two parts:

• DVD emulation board.
  • When paired with a Raptor XDK PCI card installed into a computer, it allows a developer to master a game disc before sending a final copy to Microsoft for review, and later into production. This allowed them to test loading scenarios and figure out where certain files for the game should be physically located on a disc in order to reduce load times. When loading a level for a game, for example, all the files needed for that level could be grouped together on the disc to reduce the amount of skipping around the laser needed to do, which decreases load times.
  • There is also a USB port on this card. While it uses a USB connector, it's actually a JVS port. This was used for hooking up arcade sticks and special components built for Sega Chihiro arcade cabinets, which is based on the Xbox's motherboard.
• Serial debugging port
  • This allows a developer to get debugging information from the Xbox to see how their code is behaving on real hardware. When writing software, it's useful to see technical info about when and how a bug happens in order to fix it. This board connects to a PC's serial port to read diagnostic info from the console in real time.

More info: https://xboxdevwiki.net/Development_Kits

Photos taken with a Canon 5D Mark iii, touched up in Lightroom.

Link to photo album (includes high-res copies of the photos below): https://imgur.com/a/YRb11os

[Rev 1.0 Replacement Cpu Fan?]

I've read of people using these fans as a replacement for the out-of-production Iceberq4 fans: https://ebay.us/7BoiuG

Here's a fan that is (mostly) a drop-in replacement for the main CPU fan: http://a.co/63utNWa

You can see my video of installing this^ fan here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkiX-0qyWNY

[XBox Slim]

I just tried making one for the first time recently. It's not too hard so long as you have the right tools (a dremel + eye protection + mask) and a space to to the cutting & grinding since it produces a lot of plastic dust in the air. I messed up and made the DVD caddy too short my first time, but luckily I have spares.

If you're curious, I'd say give it a try. I wouldn't recommend doing it to your primary Xbox though. My first attempt had some rough edges.

[Optical Drive Emulation?]

On 9/18/2020 at 7:33 PM, KaosEngineer said:

I have not heard of anyone creating an independent/homebrew ODE for the ogXbox.  There were easier methods to run the games. Simply copy the files to and load them from HDD. Thus, no one bothered to make one.

Yup I was expecting to hear that no one made a custom one, but I was moreso interested if anyone's tried using an "off the shelf" CD drive emulator. They exist... it's just I've never seen or heard about someone putting one in an Xbox. I'm wondering if there's something that would prevent that.

On 9/18/2020 at 11:34 PM, Boured said:

While an ODE would be neat, it isnt required. As you can just get a modchip in it if the DVD doesnt work and proceed to use XboxHDM to setup a hacked drive.

This isnt like the Gamecube where an ODE was a very welcome addition for dying lasered consoles.

Right. Running games off the hard drive is super easy. It's a very luxurious feature to have that some older consoles don't have. I know with other consoles, people have made custom boards that emulate the actual laser module itself and push that data back to the console's existing disc drive. In other cases, they've made boards that replace the drive entirely. The Xbox hasn't really needed either of those things because repairs have been pretty cheap and easy, plus you could swap in a PC CD rom drive and read burned backups if needed.

But with it being 20 years later, the pool of Xbox drives that are out there is shrinking. The more time that passes, the less parts there are. So maybe over time, it could become a more realistic option to look at.

12 hours ago, OGXbox Admin said:

I think an ODE would be VERY useful. ISO's of the entire library on a hdd connected as the dvd drive would free up the regular hdd for apps, media, and emulators. 

Softmodding would be incredibly easy. 

If this were running on something like a raspberry pi with gigabit nic, uploading games wouldn't take long at all. 
It could really expand the possibilities. If I had the know-how I would do it. I just don't at present. 

Hooking up a RaspberryPi in place of the DVD drive opens up a bunch of possibilities. The NetPi project's website talks about this a little:

Quote

The greatest advantage of virtual IDE disk emulation is the ability to manipulate the images outside the scope of the host machine the emulator is connected to.  One may keep a menagerie of image files representing dozens of configurations, boot disks, application use cases, or special use scenarios.  Those images can be selected statically when the Pi process is launched or even changed during run-time when the emulator senses an IDE reset pulse or a ‘Read Identification Sector’ command from the host.

I bet you could even mount a network path and stream ISOs from a network share, negating the need to have a huge hard drive.

About copying games and not taking a long time, I think FATXplorer solved that issue. It did for me at least. Now days when I build a hard drive, I don't use LAN/FTP, I just hook it up to my PC directly and let the copy process work at 100MB/s.

[Optical Drive Emulation?]

Before you ask, yes I'm aware this is kind of a stupid question since you can just load Xbox games right from the hard drive. I also understand that any standard CD-ROM drive will also work in an Xbox. Don't read too much into "why would you want to do this". There isn't a really compelling reason. Now that that's out of the way...

Has anyone had success with any sort of optical drive emulators in an original Xbox? There seems to be a few projects floating around out there made by people who wanted to replace optical IDE drives for certain obscure arcade cabinets and old PCs...

• There's an "IDE Simulator" by Tattiebogle that runs for a whopping $200.
• There's the NetPi, which uses a RaspberryPi as an ODD emulator, but isn't fully developed yet.
• There's plenty of IDE to SD (or CF) adapters, but that would just appear as a 2nd hard drive to the Xbox, which as we all know doesn't work (outside of Chimp).
• SCSI2SD - SCSI isn't IDE, but perhaps an adapter could be used?
• There's this project on Vagons.org where a guy is working on an ODD emulator, but it's still in development
• Memkor apparently makes (made?) a product like this, but I don't see it directly for sale anywhere.

But I'm wondering if anyone has tried using something like one of these devices in an Xbox.

The official DVT kits had optical drive emulation built-in from the factory- official Microsoft parts and everything (technically outsourced, but still). This route however has a pretty high bar for entry: the DVT kit itself + a Raptor PCI card + obscure drivers (which I assume only work for Windows XP) + the software and know-how to use it all. I recently bought a DVT4 kit and want to experiment with this feature purely because I find it fascinating. We'll see how that goes.

[Cpu Upgrade + 128mb]

On 9/16/2020 at 8:40 AM, prtscn said:

cpu upgrade not worth it.

It's not useful for everyone, but I enjoyed owning a 1ghz Xbox. It's not so much for Xbox games as it is for homebrew apps, dashboards, and emulators. If you use that kind of stuff often, it can be a cool thing to own.

I liked it so much I plan on getting a 1.4ghz from N64freak soon.

[All Limited Edition XBox Consoles]

I took that photo of the Launch Team Xbox. You can find more high-res photos here: https://imgur.com/gallery/8Avf3

[Beta/Test Development Apps?]

I recently acquired my first debug kit, and unfortunately wasn't able to salvage the hard drive and had to swap in a new one. I'd like to recreate some of the original debug kit experience and also get a better idea of the kinds of apps you might actually find on a debug kit. I know there's plenty of betas for games that were in development, but I'm more interested in applications similar to the dolphin test and a few others I've seen in youtube videos floating around where there's demo apps made to show developers examples of what the console can do.

Is there a repo of this sort of stuff somewhere?