Black Screen Issue with Games on Cerbios Xbox

[shatrovich]

I bought an Xbox from an excellent technician — a PAL Xbox with a hardmod, Cerbios BIOS, XBMC, SATA adapter, and a 500GB HDD.

I uploaded 4 games via FTP. Two of them work perfectly, while two result in a black screen.

All these files run perfectly on another Xbox with an EvoX BIOS from the same technician and an IDE hard drive.

The problematic games are Thief: Deadly Shadows (2.5 GB) and Curse: The Eye of Isis (500 MB). They appear in the regular XBMC menu and in dvd2xbox. These are PAL versions, and I’ve tried launching them in PAL, PAL-60, and NTSC modes — always a black screen.

I’ve re-uploaded the games several times, re-extracted the files, ensured the file names are short and without special characters, and FileZilla confirms that everything is successfully transferred. The games are placed in the F folder alongside other games preinstalled on the Xbox. I’ve also tried changing the UDMA speed — nothing works.

What could be causing this issue, and what can I do to resolve it?

Thank you!

[Benur75]

Hello,

I will send you another one next week to compare.

Bye

[Amethyst]

Unsure whether this is related to you, but thought I'd mention it seeing as you are trying to select your video mode in XBMC and you're using Cerbios. Video switching in XBMC (soft eeprom patching) no longer works with Cerbios 2.4.x bioses. The bios now controls what video mode a game will boot in. Unfortunately this is incorrect for some games. I've flagged it with them. If you want to select your video mode in XBMC to launch a game in, drop back to Cerbios 2.3.1.

Edited December 27, 2024 by Amethyst

[NokSueCow]

If the older bios doesn't fix your video mode switching, like Amethyst suggested, I would start by never using ftp to install games with.

Team Resurgent says FatXplorer is the only recommended option. It's aware of the fatx limitations, ftp isnt. Connect the xbox hdd to fatx and compare your games sha256 hash against the official source listed here...

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vSewa5ynfmFC6Dg9FeF9nBF511dGgHc6VwtmR5AH3yyba-bqXO2OAvR-_xxPSLk84xCiM8LxntTYzHX/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true

If the hashes match, you can rule out the game files. Even if the ftp'd files gave a successful hash, I would never trust it in the future.

[Bowlsnapper]

I found this. It may be helpful. 

https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox:DVD2Xbox

 

[Amethyst]

I've looked into this a bit more and it's as I suspected, Cerbios 2.4.x is the issue. The PAL versions of 'Thief: Deadly Shadows' and 'Curse: The Eye of Isis' should be run at 576i/50hz, but Cerbios 2.4.2 is forcing them into 60hz (if your Xbox is running as an NTSC Xbox) causing them to black screen. I tested them with Cerbios 2.3.1 and they boot fine and in their correct video mode (PAL50hz). Since Cerbios 2.4.0, the soft video switching XBMC and UnleashX uses is no longer possible and the video switching Cerbios now does itself is a bit of a mess. Micro Machines should run at 50hz too, but Cerbios forces it to 60hz, and while the game does boot, it causes problems. There's some other stuff too like NTSC-J being forced into NTSC-U and certain PAL60 games not being allowed to run at 480p, instead being forced into 480i ('The Thing' being one of these). Yet 'Fahrenheit', also a PAL60 game, will boot in 480p. These issues weren't present on 2.3.1. 

@shatrovich All I can suggest is either drop back to Cerbios 2.3.1 or use the US/NTSC versions of these games. You could also switch your Xbox back to 'PAL' (but you would be sacrificing progressive modes) and the games would work. If none of this is suitable for you, then you can PM me and I can send you modified 'default.xbe's' for these two PAL games that will trigger Cerbios 2.4.2 into forcing them into 576i/50hz and stop them black screening. Also, make sure you have 'Force480p' set to 'false' in your 'cerbios.ini'.

Edited December 28, 2024 by Amethyst

[shatrovich]

Thank you all so much!

I'll try to figure out how to downgrade the Cerbios firmware.

I'll check Force480p, thank you!

[Amethyst]

7 hours ago, shatrovich said:

Thank you all so much!

I'll try to figure out how to downgrade the Cerbios firmware.

I'll check Force480p, thank you!

You're welcome, I've sent you some working xbe's for use on Cerbios v2.4.2.

On a side note, Cerbios really doesn't like the PAL version of Thief. It has a small band down the left had side of the screen (where it's mirroring part of the screen). It doesn't get in the way of gameplay but it can be distracting. The other bioses I've tested and Softmods don't have this issue, just Cerbios, even version 2.3.1.

Edited December 29, 2024 by Amethyst

[nikeymikey]

14 hours ago, shatrovich said:

Thank you all so much!

I'll try to figure out how to downgrade the Cerbios firmware.

I'll check Force480p, thank you!

Why not just grab the NTSC versions instead?