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Halo 2 unable to join system link game


SuperAkuma
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I've been racking my brain on this for awhile now and with the holiday break upon us I figured I'd revisit it. Some table setting: I have 2 softmodded Xboxs one is 1.0 and the other 1.6. They are both on dash 5960 and have the latest Rocky5 softmod update. Using this same utility I ran both units back to stock and re-softmodded them just because of this issue, thinking that something must have gone wrong when I originally softmodded these about 10 years ago. After all of this, I'm still getting the error within Halo 2, "unable to join party, try again later" whenever I attempt to join the created system link game. I can see the game that has been created, regardless of which system I create it from. I can FTP to either system just fine, and taking the router out of the mix and directly connecting the 2 units (this time setting a static IP in each) ends in the exact same scenario where I can see that game that has been created, only I cannot join it from the opposing console. Happy to provide more details if needed, but does anyone have a clue as to what could be holding this up?

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I put the same copy of Halo 2 on both systems and then ran the test, which failed. I then used the Halo 2 DLC installer and brought both instances up to 1.5 and installed all the maps and tested again, same results. The oddest part is that I can see the other game started (regardless of which unit I make the host) but always get the unable to join error message once I select it.

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This will happen when there is a version mismatch of the game itself. It will also happen when there is a version mismatch of retail / debug bios I've unexpectedly found. 
Your networking settings inside of your dashboard have no effect on your system link game. System link uses its own networking and ignores anything else. 
Did you happen to clone eeproms? If both devices have the same mac address it will cause problem such as this. 

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19 hours ago, SuperAkuma said:

This may be my ignorance so please throw a flag and help me better understand where needed. I nulled out both HDDs with 32 instances of the character 1 and wrote out the eeprom prior to locking the drive (same process on both units), is this a consequence of what you mention?

If you just nulled the hdd key, I don't think that would cause this. There is much more in the eeprom than just the hdd key though. If you nulled the entire eeprom, yeah that's what caused this. 

 

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I am going to throw down my experience with this. Had this Issue with Brute Force. Thanks to all the community that threw in suggestion. I found that I had no stock MS dashboard on the /C: partition. Yes I know you updated both, but I suggest deleting them and get some fresh dashboards and check the results. I Agree with OGXbox Admin the settings don't matter. Maybe it just needs to see something exists. Once I did this no issue at all with system link.

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That's an interesting thought, but when I ran everything back and removed the softmod one of the additional steps I conducted was re-installing the MS Dash 5960 from the Xbox Mod Tool Disc collection. This is essentially what you are recommending, correct? No snark, just a noob trying to make sure I'm following your thought process.

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Check my post on the similar issue. 

Yes, I Had to FTP dashboards to my softmod boxes. I got the stock dashboards not from disc. Just a raw clean dump around the net. Also what soft mod did you use Hexan, SID Rocky or OGX ? If its old like you mention, 10 years plus, Hexan is most likely the issue. A lot of users curse that disc and what it does on auto install to a lot of system files. 

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That link seems to pertain to network hardware and ethernet adapter configuration, but if untested would otherwise be worth consideration. I used the 2020 release of Rocky5 but couldn't tell you what it was originally softmodded with, too much fog and cobweb. I've re-captured my eeprom on both units yesterday via the LPC and PiProm, and noticed they're showing the unique HDD key I wrote. Not an issue as I'm not replacing the HDD at this stage, just trying to correct the system link issue. 

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8 hours ago, SuperAkuma said:

That link seems to pertain to network hardware and ethernet adapter configuration, but if untested would otherwise be worth consideration. I used the 2020 release of Rocky5 but couldn't tell you what it was originally softmodded with, too much fog and cobweb. I've re-captured my eeprom on both units yesterday via the LPC and PiProm, and noticed they're showing the unique HDD key I wrote. Not an issue as I'm not replacing the HDD at this stage, just trying to correct the system link issue. 

Do both consoles have a unique MAC address?

The MAC address is stored in the EEPROM at offsets 0x40-0x45 (6 bytes). 

EEPROM contents explained at: https://xboxdevwiki.net/EEPROM

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Using LiveInfo (Beta_3-Xbox_v1.6-Yoshihiro) I can see that both eeprom.bin files have unique MAC address', however a couple of things stand out;

  1. DVD Kit Zone value is 00 on both units
  2. Confounder value on one of the units has the first half as all zeros
  3. HDD Info is missing for both units as I disconnected the HDD while readng the eeprom, would this be a concern?
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On 12/29/2021 at 9:58 AM, SuperAkuma said:

Using LiveInfo (Beta_3-Xbox_v1.6-Yoshihiro) I can see that both eeprom.bin files have unique MAC address', however a couple of things stand out;

  1. DVD Kit Zone value is 00 on both units
  2. Confounder value on one of the units has the first half as all zeros
  3. HDD Info is missing for both units as I disconnected the HDD while readng the eeprom, would this be a concern?

I don't think so.

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