Intro

[fiftydkpminus]

Just a quick hello,

I got a 1.6 XBOX back in 2005 and used to play with friends on weekends.  Mostly Halo / Halo2, Kung Fu Chaos, and BattleFront 2.  

Around 2009 I had a friend who knew how to do the softmod and had 007 and a savegame to softmod my console.  Ran XBMC and a bunch of emulators on the stock HD.  Didn't use it very much during the 2010s.

Around 2020 I got back into the Retro gaming scene when I bought a PS Classic for $20 and then modded it with AutoBleem.  It reminded me that I still needed the OG XBOX to play my XBOX games.  I tried firing the XBOX back up and it would no longer turn on.  I took it apart and noticed the 5 CPU caps were blown.  I ordered some replacements and then put off  attempting the recap for a few years.

I finally recapped my XBOX and it was a success, my first real solder job.  I also redid the heatsink compound on both the CPU and GPU.  After getting it working, I discovered my DVD drive no longer reads discs (CDs or DVDs) - can't figure out if its the laser or the spindle motor - it doesn't seem like it gets up to speed.  Through watching YouTube videos I discovered I could FTP the rocky softmod extras disc and modernize my Softmod and then null (all 1s) the EEPROM key.  I then bought a 2TB Barracuda and a Startech adapter.  I couldn't get Chimp cloning to work so I used xboxhdm23usb-Beta2 to create a new HD image and lock it.  I'm trying to get this system image set up and work out all the kinks with patching for 480p on 1.6, etc.  

While I was doing this I saw someone was selling an XBOX that worked but didn't read discs for $20, so I jumped on it.  It turned out to be a 1.0  For this one, I needed to hotswap the harddrive and use FATXplorer to install the Rocky5 as the dashboard.  That's what led me to this site, I was having all kinds of trouble trying to get my USB IDE adapter to work with FATXplorer.  Long story short, I bought a more compatible adapter and was able to perform the hotswap.  I bought a used 1.1+ GPU heatsink off ebay and swapped it while redoing the heatsink compound on both the CPU and GPU. I also got rid of the dead clock cap - fortunately it hadn't leaked much.  My plans for the 1.0 is to TSOP it eventually (I bought a conductive pen and have connected the necessary traces) - I still need to figure out what firmware to run and whether I want to disable the DVD drive.  I tried doing a pot tweak, it still won't read DVDs or Games, it seems to be ok reading CDs.        

It's great to see so many people still involved in the OG XBOX Modding scene! 

Edited March 31, 2023 by fiftydkpminus