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How to Build an EEPROM Reader/Writer


T2Steve
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OK kids, this goes into the repair section as it will allow for the manual extraction/edit of an EEPROM in the event of a dead hard drive on an xbox and no EEPROM backup is present because of course it wasnt backed up...

 

There is another method that involves using a Pi that may some day become easier/more frequently used, but for now this is what i've built and what i know. Unicron2006 gets full credit for the design. The pic was stolen from Llamma, which no longer is a site. 

 

EEPROM.gif.1c273dc5fb098a2964df0a1c4b1262d6.gifIn order to read the EEPROM you will need to use a program called PonyProg. it can be downloaded here. (http://www.lancos.com/prog.html)

you will need to choose the Serial port and calibrate once PonyProg is up and running (sorry, no pics at the moment). Once you have it all setup you attach the wires to the applicable places - Ground can be any ground on the xbox (I usually gator clip it to the case, but you can also just place the wire under a screw on the motherboard and screw it down). Shown below are the two points you will need to hit with your EEPROM reader/writer. For this reason, on my device I attached the SDA and SCL reading lines to pin header so that i can just place the pins into the holes.

 

59018e45200ac_ScreenShot2017-04-26at11_21_34PM.png.c146e3667f57abdba068d2f9bb176978.png

There are a few different results that can happen here. The 1.0-1.5 xbox will give an error message and you have all the time in the world to tinker with the EEPROM. a 1.6 xbox seems to detect that it is under attack and tries to defend itself by powering itself off. for this reason you need to dump the image pretty quickly on a 1.6.

After capturing the EEPROM, the next step would be to create a new hard drive for the xbox. Xbox HDM is quite useful for this. You may also want to take this opportunity to use an app to edit the EEPROM to your liking, since your existing hard drive is dead or missing altogether... a popular edit is to change the hard drive key to all 0000000s so that it is relatively easy to clone and distribute hard drives into new xboxes. 

Regardless of how you want to go about doing it, you are effectively good to go. 

 

Final thoughts - this is a kind of thrown together how-to, and there are other tuts that are more complete than this one. At some point i might edit it and give it more info, but the basics of what you need to know are here. It's my gut feeling that we are going to see a Pi replacement option in the future that eliminates the need to build an EEPROM reader altogether. A Pi with the right image would allow us to relatively easily grab the EEPROM and edit it and flash it back all from the Pi without needing to find a computer with a serial port etc. On a side note as well, I'd like to work with someone to dev up a device that we can use to slip in between the vents on the side of the xbox and then place the SDA and SCL into the applicable spots so that the EEPROM can be captured and edited without having to open the xbox. This would prove to be invaluable for those of us who have JAP special edition xboxes that we dont want to open up - we could grab the EEPROM, edit the region to North America, and then use the regular soft mod game save exploits. 

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Feel free to post your own Kryptic :P

yeah when i read through it I thought it was kind of bunk, it doesn't go into enough detail on the software etc, but honestly this isn't a hard thing to do and I (greatly) suspect that these are going to be replaced entirely by the Pi method. Someone just needs to dev up a bit of software to use the windows app for editing EEPROM data on a Pi, and then how to tag on the three pins needed for this on the GPIO. 

 

A Pi zero and a few pieces of header total what like $9? and you dont have to find any resistors or a computer with a com port or anything. It's an all in one solution..

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  • 3 months later...

[UPDATE: Opps see this info posted in it's own thread]

An ingenious fellow, Ryan, who goes by the handle "Grimdoomer" has written software ,PiPROM, that allows one to use a Raspberry PI as an Xbox EEPROM reader.  

NO PC with a legacy serial port required!  No resistors, zener diodes, 9 pin RS-232 connector, no soldering, just two or three Dupont jumpers connect from the Xbox LPC header to the  RPI GPIO header.  For those without a Raspberry PI, one more reason to buy one.  

The project write-up, READ/WRITE AN XBOX EEPROM WITH A RASPBERRY PI, is available at his website http://icode4.coffee/?p=22.

Code repository at https://github.com/grimdoomer/PiPROM

 

 

Edited by KaosEngineer
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  • 2 months later...

This is the same circuit I have in the one I have, bought on eaither XBox-scene or eBay can't remember which, it has worked flawlessly each time. Even used it once to read out a rom on a control board at work.

in my experience the USB to serial adaptors are meh when it comes to this kinda thing. Tried so many over the years with varying success. 

I have an old Dell notebook that runs XP purely for uses like this and the diagnostic software for my car, which will run under Win 7 but not as well,

The Pi option looks interesting, an excuse to buy another one maybe.

Edited by big F
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  • 8 months later...
  • 1 year later...
11 hours ago, jimmyjamz said:

What a neat project .

I love how many uses the pi has 

There is also this and it's dirt cheap to make almost as cheap as the 3 wire to serial port reader depicted  in the 1st post.

https://github.com/Ryzee119/ArduinoProm

 

 

Cheers

SS Dave


Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

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