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Ide To Sata Adapter Comparison


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IND BIOS, always says init dvd.Does not effect anything. Boot up time is around 12-15s, I have downloaded new Hexen disc and will be putting M8+ BIOS and run my preferred. setup. This will presumably cut my power needs even further, a pico power supply is in the mail. Hopefully that will work out.

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Î just bought a startech adapter to see if it improves the boot times as compared to the cheapo adapter. But the xbox still takes the same 40s to boot. Using an IDE HDD the boot time was ca. 25s.

I noticed something interesting: I use the Full System UX skin by neverwill. After booting into UX, the animation will play very choppy and navigating is quite sluggish for the first 5s. Thus I guess the xbox uses a lot of CPU time on boot and therefore takes that much time. Additionally, I did not notice any difference in boot times comparing an almost empty HDD (no games etc.) and 250 GB filled with games and emulators. I use a 500 GB 2,5" harddisk.

I also opted to remove the DVD drive to make room for a top-blowing 120mm cooling fan, which makes the xbox more silent than my PS3 slim, but that is another topic. The takeaway is that you can indeed use a TSOP-flashed xbox without DVD drive; no shenanigans required.

If you have issues getting a sata drive to boot, make sure your IDE cable is 80-wire and as short as possible.

Edited by Tosnic
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I cannot edit my preivous post, so I must double post 😕

I tried some different BIOSs yesterday: IndBIOS and EvoX. The stock EvoX M8+ BIOS will always freeze at the flubber animation. IndBIOS (standard) does boot sometimes times, but the flubber animation will play choppy. I ended up modding the standard EvoX M8+ BIOS to disable the DVD check. Now the flubber animation runs choppy, but out of 5 tires the xbox booted every time, taking ca. 33 seconds.

Before, I had the M.2 BIOS (512 kB), which played the flubber animation perfectly, but took 40s to boot. I also tried the 256 kB M.2 BIOS, which did not like having the DVD drive disconnected, resulting in a freeze during the flubber animation. According to XBtool the DVD check is disabled by default in the 256 kB M.2 BIOSs and cannot be enabled. Strangely enough, the DVD check is enabled in the 512 kB M.2 BIOSs and may not be disabled in the BIOS file. Yet it worked fine on my Xbox without DVD drive.

All above tests were done with only the SATA HDD connected, without a DVD drive. Of course, all BIOSs boot normally when using both the IDE HDD and DVD drive. "standard BIOS" refers to the ones coming with the HeXEN Boot disc 2017. I only used the "xbox 1.0-1.5" && "only F drive" BIOSs.

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6 hours ago, Tosnic said:

I cannot edit my preivous post, so I must double post 😕

I tried some different BIOSs yesterday: IndBIOS and EvoX. The stock EvoX M8+ BIOS will always freeze at the flubber animation. IndBIOS (standard) does boot sometimes times, but the flubber animation will play choppy. I ended up modding the standard EvoX M8+ BIOS to disable the DVD check. Now the flubber animation runs choppy, but out of 5 tires the xbox booted every time, taking ca. 33 seconds.

Before, I had the M.2 BIOS (512 kB), which played the flubber animation perfectly, but took 40s to boot. I also tried the 256 kB M.2 BIOS, which did not like having the DVD drive disconnected, resulting in a freeze during the flubber animation. According to XBtool the DVD check is disabled by default in the 256 kB M.2 BIOSs and cannot be enabled. Strangely enough, the DVD check is enabled in the 512 kB M.2 BIOSs and may not be disabled in the BIOS file. Yet it worked fine on my Xbox without DVD drive.

All above tests were done with only the SATA HDD connected, without a DVD drive. Of course, all BIOSs boot normally when using both the IDE HDD and DVD drive. "standard BIOS" refers to the ones coming with the HeXEN Boot disc 2017. I only used the "xbox 1.0-1.5" && "only F drive" BIOSs.

What's M.2 BIOS?  Never heard of it.

There's X2 but not M.2.

There are many different X2 releases - latest being 4981, 4983 (both 256KB in size) or 5035 (512KB in size).

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2 hours ago, KaosEngineer said:

What's M.2 BIOS?  Never heard of it.

There's X2 but not M.2.There are many different X2 releases - latest being 4981, 4983 (both 256KB in size) or 5035 (512KB in size).

Ups. Yeah, I meant X2. The 256 kB version I used was x2.4981.06 (on HeXEN 2017)

Now I would really like to edit my posts 😕 This will confuse ppl a lot.

Edited by Tosnic
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On 4/26/2019 at 1:37 PM, Tosnic said:

Î just bought a startech adapter to see if it improves the boot times as compared to the cheapo adapter. But the xbox still takes the same 40s to boot. Using an IDE HDD the boot time was ca. 25s.

I noticed something interesting: I use the Full System UX skin by neverwill. After booting into UX, the animation will play very choppy and navigating is quite sluggish for the first 5s. Thus I guess the xbox uses a lot of CPU time on boot and therefore takes that much time. Additionally, I did not notice any difference in boot times comparing an almost empty HDD (no games etc.) and 250 GB filled with games and emulators. I use a 500 GB 2,5" harddisk.

I also opted to remove the DVD drive to make room for a top-blowing 120mm cooling fan, which makes the xbox more silent than my PS3 slim, but that is another topic. The takeaway is that you can indeed use a TSOP-flashed xbox without DVD drive; no shenanigans required.

If you have issues getting a sata drive to boot, make sure your IDE cable is 80-wire and as short as possible.

Sorry to change topics can you start a new threat with that 120 mm fan, I'm interested on that project thanks, btw I use red adapter the expensive one, never had issues.

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I'm using a cheapo adapter and my boot times are faster then the startech. I'm not sure if you are using a 40 pin cable, but the cheapo's do not like them. 80 pin is required for sure. 80 pin in general avoids crosstalk and makes sure the ide signal is much cleaner. in combination with the cheapo adapter and my WD Green 2TB drive, it makes the xbox boot instantly. 

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13 hours ago, paultje162 said:

I'm using a cheapo adapter and my boot times are faster then the startech. I'm not sure if you are using a 40 pin cable, but the cheapo's do not like them. 80 pin is required for sure. 80 pin in general avoids crosstalk and makes sure the ide signal is much cleaner. in combination with the cheapo adapter and my WD Green 2TB drive, it makes the xbox boot instantly. 

What, it boots instantly? Like, 1 second until dashboard?

I think of "booting time" as the time for the xbox to reach the dashboard (e.g. UnleashX) menu. My xbox setups boot right away, but booting takes ca. 30s. I am not sure if we are using the same terms for the same meanings.

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6 hours ago, Viggen66 said:

Can anyone please provide me a link to those working cheapo IDE adapters?

I bought mine (working) at Aliexpress

MrMario over on Youtube also links to different places for the adapters and other related hardware: link

Alternatively, you can search for "sata ide adapter" on Aliexpress or Ebay. I have the large ones with the fat Molex power connector directly on the board and the 2 non-SMD (throughhole) capacitors. The cheapo-adapters cost around 2.5 $.

Maybe someone wants to try one of the slim ones that imitate the startech adapter. However, you should make sure you buy one with a 3.5" IDE connector, since the 2.5" IDE connector is different!

Edited by Tosnic
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11 hours ago, Tosnic said:

What, it boots instantly? Like, 1 second until dashboard?

I think of "booting time" as the time for the xbox to reach the dashboard (e.g. UnleashX) menu. My xbox setups boot right away, but booting takes ca. 30s. I am not sure if we are using the same terms for the same meanings.

What i meant with instant is that i don't have those crazy long hangs. It just shows the boot logo > instant xecuter rox my box after> Goes into UnleashX. Takes about 15-20 secs total. 

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Ah, I thought so. I get that time, too. But only when I use an IDE HDD w/ DVD drive. 

The boot speed difference seems like there is an adapter "lottery": some adapters are fast while others are slow. Or the HDD makes the difference. I use a Samsung 2,5" HDD. I thought that the 5400 RPM should not impact the loading, because even the fastest IDE standard is slower than the HDD's transfer speed. It might also be the cable, but I use a very short 80-wire IDE cable. 

I should try different cables and other adapters of the same make (I have 3 lying around each).

Edited by Tosnic
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Hi folks.

I made a quite elaborate comparison of boot times for different scenarios and using 3 different adaptors with or without the stock DVD drive (only the HDD connected). All adapters gave me the same boot times, but the cheapo adapter with SMD capacitors made the Xbox's power LED blink green all the time. Therefore, those are the same to me. I also tried my other 2 cheapo adaptors of the same make. All have the same boot times. So no "lottery": confirmed. Pls keep in mind that some adapters are said to be more compatible to HDDs than others, Startech being most compatible. I cannot confirm that. All tests were done using an 80-wire SATA cable. The IDE HDD was 3,5" wtih 120GB. The SATA HDD was 2,5" with 500GB. The BIOS was EvoX M8+  v1.00.5838.01, modified only to disable the DVD drive Check.

  • (orientation value):
    IDE HDD & DVD drive installed, IDE: 18s
  • IDE HDD & DVD drive installed, SATA via cheapo adapter: 25s
  • IDE HDD & DVD drive installed, SATA via Startech adapter: 25s
  • Only HDD installed, IDE: 27s
  • Only HDD installed, SATA via cheapo adapter: 31s

It made not difference whether the HDD was at the end or middle of the IDE cable when using only the HDD, nor was there a difference when using my super-short IDE cable with the end cut off.

You can compare the 2 cheapo adapters I have with these pictures. The first two pictures are the ones with SMD capacitors, which are not recommended by others. Mainly, because they offer no jumper for switching between Master and Slave mode (top left corner in pic 3). Interesting detail: their IDE ribbon cable connector is reversed, which allows for slightly easier installation using a normal 80-wire IDE cable in reverse (blue plug in the HDD).

SMD1.jpg

SMD2.jpg

THS1.jpg

THS2.jpg

Edited by Tosnic
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3 hours ago, TEK Nemesis said:

Very nicely done.  If you run the same tests with different BIOS', are the results the same? 

thx

I did test different BIOSs with my DVD-less config and a few with the default config (IDE + DVD drive), as posted above.

AFAIR, I found that with the default config as far as boot times are concerned:
X2 (256 kB): 18s 
EvoX M8+: 20s
X2 (512 kB): 27s

The boot time for each BIOS grows for using a SATA HDD (with DVD drive), and for not having a DVD drive connected, (E.g., EvoX M8+):
IDE HDD w/ DVD drive: 18s
SATA HDD w/ DVD drive: 27s
SATA HDD w/out DVD drive: 33s

(all numbers are from the top of my head)

Edited by Tosnic
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