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Restarting Old Projects, Years Later


Eridyne
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31 minutes ago, Eridyne said:

Hah, true, but I think I could've rushed this a liiiittle bit more.

Ten years is a long time, long enough for most of the modding scene to vanish, and for me to need to relearn everything from scratch.

Hiya, how far did you get last time? You can’t rush a good thing!

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Weeell... not far enough, but I did get Xecuter 2.6 chips installed in both. Never fixed the crashed HDD on one or got a BIOS on it, and the other never got more than Avalaunch installed, but at least it works.

Ooon the other hand, I never did the thermal paste, clock caps, or HDD upgrades on either, so there's plenty of work to go around~

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23 minutes ago, Eridyne said:

Weeell... not far enough, but I did get Xecuter 2.6 chips installed in both. Never fixed the crashed HDD on one or got a BIOS on it, and the other never got more than Avalaunch installed, but at least it works.

Ooon the other hand, I never did the thermal paste, clock caps, or HDD upgrades on either, so there's plenty of work to go around~

Do the clock caps providing they are 1.0-1.4. Also check the caps around the heat sinks for domeing as well.

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6 minutes ago, Eridyne said:

The clock caps are first on my (new) to-do list. One's a v1.0 and the other's v1.1, so they need it. None of the caps look bulged or seem to have leaked, so I think I'm okay for the rest...

I wouldn’t bother changing the thermal paste unless they are cutting out as you could give yourself more problems.

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10 years eh..sounds like how long my box has been in storage....just got it fully revived today, only thing not working is bank 1 with a 2.6ce

 

just remove the clock cap and leave it gone,  you probably got lucky on the clock cap like i did...it hasnt seen power in soooooo long that it didnt splooge all over the board, in fact ive got a couple that have all been sitting that long and the clock caps in every one of em look fine....mine actually was still functional-ish

atleast youve been gone long enough to now be able to swap to sata and get a real big drive in it

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I meant to fix them up nicely the first time I started this whole thing, then life happened and they ended up stuffed in a box and hauled around for a while...

I wasn't sure if the clock cap was also intended as a decoupling cap for a nearby chip, but if it removal hasn't been shown to cause any harm... it's probably okay-ish. I don't think mine have seen power in as long as the whole time they've been stored, either.

Oh, true! Big drives are definitely way cheaper (and bigger), and midsize SSDs are pretty affordable, which is tentatively the plan. I don't need to keep a whole archival library on it, just my own personal (very modest) collection, and I've no intention of using it for storing media or running emulators. I was considering TSOP flashing too, as a backup for the chip since the 2.6's don't have an integrated recovery mechanism, but I dunno. Kinda wish I could've gotten the 3.0 instead of the 2.6 for that.

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3 hours ago, Eridyne said:

I meant to fix them up nicely the first time I started this whole thing, then life happened and they ended up stuffed in a box and hauled around for a while...

I wasn't sure if the clock cap was also intended as a decoupling cap for a nearby chip, but if it removal hasn't been shown to cause any harm... it's probably okay-ish. I don't think mine have seen power in as long as the whole time they've been stored, either.

Oh, true! Big drives are definitely way cheaper (and bigger), and midsize SSDs are pretty affordable, which is tentatively the plan. I don't need to keep a whole archival library on it, just my own personal (very modest) collection, and I've no intention of using it for storing media or running emulators. I was considering TSOP flashing too, as a backup for the chip since the 2.6's don't have an integrated recovery mechanism, but I dunno. Kinda wish I could've gotten the 3.0 instead of the 2.6 for that.

Don’t bother with ssds for speed as you will not get the benefit, they are a good idea if you plan on making an ultra slim because of the size.

plenty of xeniums available due to the open source version, x3s come up for sale on eBay regularly.

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I'd never really looked into the xenium chips, but I might now if they're semi-readily available. X3's seem like they're fairly expensive when they appear... I just really liked that backup bank on the X3s so you never need a chip programmer - which I don't have and am not sure I could get, these days.

Oh, I didn't mean speed, as the SSD goes. I'd be mostly interested in it because, well, I like that you can't have mechanical problems with an SSD. (Related: I've lost one too many HDDs to people and sometimes their pets knocking stuff over.)

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In my view using a SSD in a Xbox is a waste of money and not really any more reliable, The Samsung Evo 960 in my laptop died after 3 years and a also seen a 256 gig SSD boot drive in a desktop PC stop booting and after a scan 1/3 of the blocks where shown as bad.

With the X2.6 mod chip just flash the same bios in bank 1 and 2 and if in the extremely rare occasion you might have a actual BIOS fail on bank 1 then use bank 2.

The only faulty Modchips I have seen is when the owner tries to flash it and in 75% cases it's they use a non 1.6 BIOS in a version 1.6 or they flash the FlashBios 3.0.3.bin to a non X3 chip and that's a user error not the chips fault.

 

 

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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I guess you've had much worse experiences with SSDs than I have. Neither of the two boot drive SSDs around the house have had any issues, and they're several years old each. They're not even anything special, just basic m.2 nvme models. I haven't heard of any issues from friends, either. I agree that it's kinda overkill for the performance, to put one in an xbox.

I'd just planned to put some-or-other well-liked BIOS in bank 1 and flashbios (or maybe xblast) in bank 2. Oh, I couldn't figure this out, but perhaps someone around here knows. Is it possible to flash just bank 1, with a 256 or 512 bin? Or does the chip require the full 1MB flash every time? I got the impression it was the latter, but some scattered old comments left me wondering. Also, what's up with X3BM wanting two copies of any 256kb-sized BIOS loaded into each 512kb bank? Is it just to fill up the rest of the space in that bank? With how X3BM illustrates it, it almost looks like you could split the individual banks, but I can't imagine that would work?

I briefly considered also flashing the TSOP, but I'm very much not sure I want to futz with that.

Also unsure how much in the way of capacitor replacements should be done (aside from the clock cap, I mean). Lots of the caps on the board look like electrolytics, and I know they have finite lifespans before they dry out, but is that worth doing as preventative maintenance? I'm leaning toward no, but I'd be curious to hear what the prevailing opinion is.

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On the X2.6 you need to combine the two bios file into one 1024 kb file and flash that.

So a x2.5035.bin is 512kb and Xblast is 256kb you add the 512 kb + 2 copies of the 256kb to one file to = 1024 kb

Or use X2BM.exe to combine the BIOS in to one file ready to flash. The prg will have a fit because the parallel programmer is not connected but it still works.

 

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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i too have killed far tooo many ssd's to trust them, honestly the only drives i trust now are the hitachi/hgst "nas" drives, and at 40$ a pop for refurbs off amazon..its impossible to go wrong

ive actualy got a truck i tore apart about 15+ years ago im just finnaly being able to get back to..so be thankfull you still have all your pieces!

dave, whats this about a dual flash of bank1/2..would this fix my "no boot" from bank1?

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  Good to know, and odd that so many others seem to have much worse luck with SSDs than I do...

I actually found an HGST 1TB that I forgot I had, removed from a laptop during an upgrade and stored away. It's now handling, after some prep work, my entire meagre collection of games, though a couple need to be run from ISOs due to apparently-unresolved issues. Thankfully I found a post detailing (most) of the steps for running ISOs from the HDD, via PBL, m8plus metoo, the "CDROM modchip" patcher, and driveimageutils attacher. It's not really viable like that for more than a few games, but I couldn't get the BIOS patcher to work when trying to load it at boot, sooo...

Now I'm just seriously eyeing that internal HDMI mod, Project Pineapple. https://www.reddit.com/r/originalxbox/comments/igv7if/xboxhdmi_preorder_announcement_project_pineapple/

 

2 hours ago, sh0rtlife said:

dave, whats this about a dual flash of bank1/2..would this fix my "no boot" from bank1?

#NotDave, but... if you mean on the 2.6CE, you could use X2BM - load a BIOS, 1x 512KB or 2x 256KB, into each bank, save the resulting "image", boot the working bank, and flash the image with BIOS or app/dash.

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yeah that new hdmi full digital is my next buy, that thing is slick, full digital with no hicups..its perfection imo

honestly the box after a ton of work is clean and fully functional just..only on bank2, and i REALLY dont want to start over, so if i can fix it without a "clean start" then im game, but if ive gotta do it all again..screw bank 1 LOL

what i do miss with the previous setup was if it failed to boot id get a red texted screen that there was an error and it would allow FTP and nothing else, was a nice "failsafe" of sorts

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Agreed about the HDMI, it's very cleanly done and the demo pictures are just amazingly clear. Having digital audio over HDMI too is just the icing on the cake.

As for the 2.6ce, if you've already tried to flash it with something and had issues, then I'd be a bit cautious and double check everything.

Otherwise, you could always assemble a bios file with something new in bank 1, and the same bios you're already using in bank 2, to minimize the risk. Not sure what you mean by a clean start though, since the bios loaded on the chip is separate from the rest of the Xbox.

I wonder whether it was an app or a bios that provided the ftp failsafe, that does sound awfully nice...

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