softmod HDD to TSOP unit swap sanity check

[ieblj01]

Hello All,

Long time listener, first time caller here.   I have never modded an XBOX before, but looks like a fun project and I wanted to run my plan by the gurus on this forum to avoid any potential pitfalls (i.e. destroying the data on the original HDD doing something stupid being a newbie) after watching a ton of YouTube videos on the subject.

I have an OG XBOX v1.6 that was modded and setup around 6-7 years ago.  The motherboard died and I am looking to swap that drive into a new system and upgrade it to an unlocked SATA HDD (I don't want to have to deal with locked HDDs anymore).  I have no knowledge of how it was built originally aside from the HDD password, but I love how it is laid out and boots up directly in to the emulator menu, etc and want to keep that. 

There is no evidence of any hard modding on the motherboard (no chip, no bridged soldering, etc), so I am assuming some version of soft mod. 

I  have two working units (v1.2 & v1.4) and both are currently soft modded with the latest Rocky5 build with stock HDDs.  I did install XMBC-Emustation on one of them, but aside from that, they have nothing special going on with them and I don't need anything off those drives. 

30K foot view of my plan is as follows:

1.  TSOP mod one of the working units and flash the BIOS with Evox M8 with F & G (HeXen 2020).

2.  Take the currently modded HDD (400GB) out of the dead unit and using Victoria, remove the user password.

3.  Install that HDD in the new TSOP modded unit and test (I assume that since the password is removed from the drive and the BIOS is flashed, it will simply boot even though I have no idea how the HDD was originally prepared).

4.  Assuming steps 1 - 3 go as planned, convert the TSOP unit to an 80-pin cable and IDE/SATA adapter and clone the HDD to a WD Blue 500GB SATA using Chimp. 

     -Am I correct in that I should pick the TSOP hard mod option in Chimp even though the HDD itself is soft modded?

     -Since my new SATA is bigger than the drive I am cloning, pick option 2 for select partitions and pick option 4 so partition G takes up all the remaining space on the larger drive

5.  Shut it all down and remove the stock hard drive and install the SATA in the unit and hopefully it all boots up correctly.

6.  Assuming everything up to this point went well, clone the new SATA drive with Chimp to another WD Blue 500GB (this time I can just pick the full disk clone option)

7.  TSOP the second working unit and install the cloned drive and have 2 working, upgraded units.

Let me know your thoughts and if you have any suggestions.  I appreciate the feedback!

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by ieblj01
added more info

[bolofski]

on point 3, if the old xbox was softmodded and your new xbox would essentially be running a custom bios then you may have to change the path that looks for evoxdash.xbe, ie the softmod drive may be set to e:\evoxdash.xbe and the hardmod bios may be looking for c:\evoxdash.xbe, you can either use a bios that allows you to change this or boot the console using a boot disk that has file explorer (ie AID) and physically move/copy the evoxdash.xbe file

[ieblj01]

13 minutes ago, bolofski said:

on point 3, if the old xbox was softmodded and your new xbox would essentially be running a custom bios then you may have to change the path that looks for evoxdash.xbe, ie the softmod drive may be set to e:\evoxdash.xbe and the hardmod bios may be looking for c:\evoxdash.xbe, you can either use a bios that allows you to change this or boot the console using a boot disk that has file explorer (ie AID) and physically move/copy the evoxdash.xbe file

Thanks bolofski.  I was wondering how that would differ between the hard and soft modded setups.  I will look into that and see what needs to be done.

[ieblj01]

I ended up just building the new SATA drive from the group up.  Definitely learned a lot.  The new TSOP unit is up and running.  Now I am going to be playing around the look and feel of it and continue to optimize it to my liking.  I just got CoinOPs 8 running.  Very exciting.  Thank you to everyone that has helped me get this far.  I appreciate the insight!