Beginner - Bios FAQ.

[sweetdarkdestiny 140]

Bios “FAQ”:

 

What does CEE or EEC meen and what is different?

CEE/EEC is the boot order of the bios file.

CEE will boot it’s first Dashboard from the “C:\” partion of the drive. In most cases it’s “C:\evoxdash.xbe”.  Which can be either a the EvolutionX Dashboard or a shortcut to a different Dashboard on any other partition (C,E,F or G). So you could place a shortcut on C:\ and point to E:\Dash\UnleashX\unleashx.xbe and when you boot up your XBox, UnleashX will show up as Dashboard.

Screen : https://imgur.com/a/hf6nG5Z

In some cases, the evoxdash.xbe can be found, for what ever reason. Then the bios tries to boot the second letter “E:\” which points to UnleashX (In the pic above – E:\Dash\UnleashX\unleashx.xbe).

If that can be found it will boot UnleashX. And you guessed it, if that can’t be found either, the Bios tries a last time with “E:\Dash\EvolutionX\evoxdash.xbe”. When all of these options has failed, you will get an fancy error screen.

Note: For some apps like Dashloader ect. you should use a CEE bios to avoid any trouble. I would say, a CEE is the most user frindly option even, if you have more experiences, it makes no differend.

EEC will boot it’s first Dashboard from the “E:\” partion of the drive. They point mostly strait to a Dashboard like “E:\Dash\UnleashX\unleashx.xbe” or “E:\XBMC4Gamers\default.xbe” as you can see in the screen below.

Screen : https://imgur.com/a/GsFOZCo

So that’s the main difference between them and they are the most common bios variations.

But every “rule” has his exceptions. Some times you have bioses like “EFC” or “FFC”. If I remember right, the X-Disk from FireFucker has those bioses. Not sure why but if I had to make a guess “FireFucker – FF” = F partition. But thats just a guess. So you see, you can point your bios to what ever you want. C,E,F or G, it just depends on you. But there is a little “twist” in here.

Some old Dashboards lile tHc, BlackStromX (BSX) and some other will need a bios which boots C first because those are “Hacked” MS Dashbaords. Ofc you could HEX-Edit the hell out of it, like some ppl. Have done with BSX or tHc Lite but at the end, it’s not worth it. All “modern” dashboards boot from everywhere.

So let’s move on to iND.

iND bioses are a bit different. A iND bios has, not always but most likely, a config file in which the bootorder is stored (you could inject the config to the bios but, for 1 sec it’s not worth the trouble you could get into and in case you use a 5004.06 bios it could breake your XBox). To edit the config of the iND bios you can use the IND-BIOS Configurator or notepad. It just depends on your personal taste. Like you see in the screen below, in the “ind-bios.cfg” and in “ IND-BIOS Configurator” appears the same. It’s almoste or is the same like you have already seen in the EvTool for EvoX bioses.

Screen :  https://imgur.com/a/YSWRajj

And they work the same way. You can do CEE, EEC configs if you want and inject them and you would have an EEC, CEE bios like you have with the EvoX bioses but that not very common. Most ppl. prefere to use the config. A plus here is, you can edit the config fast and you don’t need to re-falsh a bios just to make the change work.

Example - iND bootorder (ind-bios.cfg)

• DASH1=\Device\Harddisk0\Partition2\evoxdash.xbe
• DASH2=\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1\Dash\UnleashX\unleashx.xbe
• DASH3=\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1\Dash\EvolutionX\evoxdash.xbe
• DEFAULTXBE=\Device\CdRom0\default.xbe

The rest is the same like for EvoX. And now the last, the Xecuter bios.

Like the iND, the Xecuter bios has a config, the “x2config.ini”. And like in the iND config you can edit it with x2-config-maker tool or with Notepad like you can see in the screen below.

Screen : https://imgur.com/a/81liMNt

nd yes, it’s the same like in EvoX or iND but you have 2 Dashboard options more which can fail before you get that fancy error I have talked in the beginning.

You can change the boot order here as fast as in the iND and you don’t need to re-flash it in case of a change. One different here, you cant inject the ini to the bios like you could do it with the iND but again, who want’s that.

Example - x2/x3 bootorder (x2config.ini)

• dash1Name = e:Dash\UnleashX\unleashx.xbe
• dash2Name = e:Dash\EvolutionX\evoxdash.xbe
• dash3Name = e:Dash\XBMC4Gamers\default.xbe
• dash4Name = c:evoxdash.xbe
• dash5Name = c:xboxdash.xbe

So that it about the CEE, EEC, XBMC or X4G bioses.

Some other interesting things which should be cleard up are, that even the name “noDVD” seems to say that you don’t have a DVD drive, that is not true.

As we all know the XBox will not boot up when you remove your DVD drive or it’s gone bad.

A noDVD bios just disables the check for it so the XBox simply didn’t care if it’s there or if it’s working. And because more and more drives beginning to fail because they get old it’s a smart choice to flash a noDVD bios. BUT you have to keep your eyes open.

Because, since HeXEn/TruHeXEn has faulty noDVD bios on it, ppl. Start to belive that you can’ t boot a DVD and some just belive you can use it at all, like I said above. Both isn’t true.

So if you have a “good” noDVD bios, you can boot/cold boot any DVD you want. Let’s take a look at the screen below.

Screen : https://imgur.com/a/1KA1gmZ

Like you can see, the left one is a “good” noDVD bios. It has still “default.xbe” in the DVD box.

The one on the right is missing that. So even you have a good working DVD drive the bios don’t know what it should boot. That meens, when you have such a bios on your XBox, you will only be able to launch the DVD from your Dashboard but not if you power on your XBox with the DVD already in the drive. We have the well known HeXEn cold boot bug which hopefully get fixed in the 2021,2022,2023 version? We will see – or not. That depends on Heimdall and his finger.

So whats left to say? Oh right.

F, G or F+G. And what stand this letters for? They define the layout of the hard drive. So if you have a huge 2TB HDD in your XBox, you have to use F+G (Partition F and G) if you like to use that space.

For smaller HDD’s up to 250GB max, a F only would be fine but, you could also use a F+G because there is basicly no downside (Did your PC care if you have just C partition even Windows supports up to 5 partitions? ).

That leads us to the last question.

Which bios you should choose? That depends. I would say. If you don`t have a 128MB XBox, I would recommend a “EvoX m8+ F+G noDVD CEE” bios. You flash it once and then you can forget it.

EvoX is fast it does make the job well and you can do pretty much the same with it like you can do with the others. And if you have an v1.6 you have to use it in case you have a Aladdin, LPC2 or any other “cheap” modchip which just has 256kb. The other option for a 1.6 would be an x2 5035 but that’s an 512kb bios.

But if you have a fancy schmancy bling bling 128MB XBox, I would choose the iND but, I have to point out here that there isn’t a “becasue of”. Some nerdynerds have a reason for that, I don’t.

So… I think, thats it for this little weivrevo which turned out to be a little bit longer.

 

I hope that I gave you some more or less usefull information and that I cleared things up a little for beginner or HeXEn/TruHeXEn noDVD user.

 

If so, hit the like and subscribe button and don’t miss the next video …

 

PEACE!

 

PS. If you have found a typo, congrats, you have found the copy protection.

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by sweetdarkdestiny
Hell no BB code images work. So you have to click links. :(