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Found an XBox In the Trash and Now Here I Am!


Newk
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Hi people!

So i was walking pass a garbage dump waiting to be picked up by the trashmen that day, when this big bag caught my eye with some electronic gear in it. To my suprise it had loads of cables and controllers and this Xbox! That cool thing i wanted back then at the start of the millennium,.. but didn't had the money for it :ph34r:.

Took it home, hooked it up and to my surprise it is working fine! (that attitude of people throwing working things away makes me quite angry >:()
I am in luck i guess.

Looking up i found out it's best to mod it these days.. and found this:

But it seems i can only get error 11 and not 12... i think thats why its not unlocking... as my computer can find it but Xplorer360 can't.

I have Kernel 1.00.4034.01 and Dash 1.00.5960.01 ...so far my first steps into modding my xbox :$

hope one of you know how to go further

Edited by Newk
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Yeah, it's easier to use a game save exploit to softmod. That being said, don't softmod with anything other than JCRocky5's Xbox Softmodding Tool. Everything else is outdated, not streamlined and not as stable. It's also very important to null the HDD key after softmodding. This can be done with NKPatcher Settings, which is an app that is installed along with the softmod.

Afterwards, you'll want to replace the original, aging HDD with a much newer and bigger one, and rip all of your games to it and play them from the HDD. Never play games from the DVD drive because the lasers are very old and are a frequent point of failure these days. Prevent further needless wearing down of the laser by not using it, so it has a better chance of lasting longer, should you ever need to run a recovery disc.

Additionally, standard maintenance is needed too, like cleaning out the inside of the Xbox and replacing the thermal paste. It is also extremely important that you check which revision the Xbox is because if it is a 1.0-1.5, it has a faulty clock capacitor that will leak and destroy the motherboard, so it needs to be removed immediately. It is highly likely that the leaking has already begun too, so get on that ASAP.

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  • 10 months later...

Okay so i ran into some issues back then.. had to shelve it for later on due to some other stuff that happened in life.

Meanwile i did order the Splinter Cell game and modded one of the controllers to have a working USB port... yes i checked and it works in the xbox :)

But... after switching on the xbox and putting in i remembered why i shelved this (almost a year ago)...
while using Xplore360 i somehow lost the partitions where the save-games need to be storwed... upon checking in memory menu on the xbox it has 0 blocks on the hd :(

When i tried to softmod it using the hotswap method with xplore360 i did made backups.. but sadly i believe the backup got lost with a pc hdd that died recently :((

So before i make any further steps and possible mistakes i wanted to ask if this is a good option to fix things:
https://www.se7ensins.com/forums/threads/using-xboxhdm-updated-2019.1902/

(i do have a lot of experience with linux and booting liveUSB so that would not be a problem, its just that there is a mention of getting C partion files somewhere but that link to theisozone.com is dead)

edit: oh never mind me mentioning linux, looks this is an ms-dos based tool... makes sense since the linux FATX tools cannot write yet

Edited by Newk
tool is ms-dos, not linux (?)
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Is the HDD unlocked? Do you have a dump of your eeprom? If so and If you have a SATA to usb adapter you should use xboxhdm23usb to rebuild the drive and install Rocky5s softmod installer at the same time. Then when you put the hdd back in the xbox the installer will run and the softmod will be installed. I am siting here with 6 hdds already to go in this exact state, hdd keys all zeroed out to so they will work in any xbox with a nulled hdd key. If your drive is the original IDE drive and you have a way of connecting it to your computer you will need to use an older version of xboxhdm.

If you dont have your eeprom  xboxhdm is no good to you. You will need y=to use an eeprom reader to dump it to your pc, I use a Raspberry Pi to do it with every xbox i have and then zero out the hdd key using liveinfo beta 3. This makes all of my hdds interchangeable with all my xboxs :)

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5 hours ago, Newk said:

(i do have a lot of experience with linux and booting liveUSB so that would not be a problem, its just that there is a mention of getting C partion files somewhere but that link to theisozone.com is dead)

edit: oh never mind me mentioning linux, looks this is an ms-dos based tool... makes sense since the linux FATX tools cannot write yet

The newest XboxHDM23USB Beta 2 starts in Windows and runs Linux under QEMU. The Linux build does format and writes to the FATX partitions. (Xbox HDD connected to the PC via a USB-to-HDD interface adapter as delivered. For SATA HDDs, the scripts can be modded to use a PC's SATA ports instead. However, the user has to make sure they work with the correct HDD else they format their PC's OS drive.)

The older versions, XboxHDM v1.9 or v2.2a boot from CD or USB key and they too, I think, start QEMU to boot Linux to prep the Xbox HDD.  Xbox HDD connected to a native IDE interface on the PC's motherboard.

You need the Clean_C_and_E_files_for_Xbox.7z archive  that was hosted at theisozone to add the files from it to XboxHDM's folders hdm/C and hdm/E (well E's not really important a couple of empty folders that the Xbox will create on bootup if not found.)

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well i didn't got to the part of getting the eeprom codes when the save partitions vanished (due to xplore360) :(

But i do own raspberry pi's :D so please tell me how to utillize the GPIO (i presume) and program to read out the eeprom.

I also have a FTDI232 (usb thingy to do stuff like this) if it's easier that way

 

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ah Kaos.. just missed your reply when typing last one... i will check that out too...  the linux build would prolly make more sense then to try it from windows7 partition i hardly use.

But wouldn't that still need the eeprom codes beforehand like mikey said?

Edited by Newk
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8 minutes ago, Newk said:

well i didn't got to the part of getting the eeprom codes when the save partitions vanished (due to xplore360) :(

But i do own raspberry pi's :D so please tell me how to utillize the GPIO (i presume) and program to read out the eeprom.

I also have a FTDI232 (usb thingy to do stuff like this) if it's easier that way

 

PiPROMis the Rpi prgram that i have use ultiple times to read/write eeproms on xboxs. Heres a couple of links for the program and a mini tut.

 

https://github.com/grimdoomer/PiPROM

http://icode4.coffee/?p=22

 

Ive done this with little to no knowledge of compiling/runnig anything on an rpi before :)

You will need either a pin header ot solder in to the LPC port on your xbox motherboard or to solder the wires directly to the port. I use pin headers and socketed wires that connect up in secs :)

Edited by nikeymikey
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oh wow awesome stuff! It looks a bit fiddly but straightforward description.
I think i can manage soldering those connection pins onto the xbox' motherboard after taking it further appart.. might as well check the dreaded clock capacitor while i'm at it 😬

Thanks guys!

Edited by Newk
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allright, soldered headerpins on to the motherboard's LPC debug... it was quite annoying getting the holes open with the soldersucker and wick.. also scary not to damage the board as thin traces run through it aswell.. but tested the Xbox afterwards and it still works and boots to the original dashboard 😎.

The clock capacitor has indeed leaked some but no real damage to be seen.. after snipping it out, cleaned the place on mobo with 96% alcohol.
(maybe when it did leak, the previous owner thought it was dead for good and that's why it ended up on the trash)

now i am making a backup of the raspberry pi sd to copy it onto a new sd and then compile PiPROM on it and finally get the female-female jumperwires on their spot to read out the code... exiting! 😛

Edited by Newk
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ah one thing i would like to ask before i connect the raspberry to the xbox...
does SCL connect to SCL ...and SDA to SDA?
or does it cross connect like RX to TX, and TX to RX (receive to transmit, and vice versa)

i would guess the first from the description in that blog post, but i wanted to be a bit more sure and ask here

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You will need to use Liveinfo beta 3, I have linked to it for you below. 

Load you eeprom into it (make 2 backups first just to be extra safe and put them away somewhere) then you overwrite the hdd key shown with 32 zeros and save. That will null out your hdd key and then you can use the eeprom file with xboxhdm23 to lock your hard drive.  Once you have done that, use you Pi to write the eeprom back to the Xbox. 

Nulling the key means that any hdd locked with a zeroed out key will work in your Xbox.

you could skip the whole nulling of the key if you wished but it does make things simpler in the future. If you do it then make fresh backups of the eeprom and store them away with the others making sure to label them as nulled 😃

 

LiveInfo_Beta_3-Xbox_v1.6-Yoshihiro.zip

Edited by nikeymikey
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First i need to fix my hdd so i can softmod the lovely thing, not? Or could i (now with the key) just get a new hdd and set it up with all softmods and make backups of games on it? Bear in mind i'm new to this whole thing.. never had an xbox and didn't had friends that modded one.

I could not even find info on what LiveInfo does.. the original site seems down

i think i read that XboxHDM23 could repair partitions if you had the key to unlock it

Edited by Newk
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 Using the eeprom dump you made you can use xboxhdm23  to build a brand new hard drive with an in built softmod installer. If you use it to build a new hard drive from scratch, it will install rocky5s softmod installer. Once you put the hdd in the xbox and power it up it will start the softmod install for you to softmod the xbox.

 

I would just connect your existing hdd usig a sata to usb adapter and run xboxhd23, then select create xbox hard drive from scratch and let it do its magic.  

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Hi! I successfully reformatted the hdd from a linux liveUSB by adding the content of  XboxHDM23USB and adding this.

I used the clean C and E files to make it like stock and have save-partition working again.

Then did the Rocky5 Xbox-Softmodding-Tool over usb and SplinterCell... it worked! \o/

It might be a bit of a roundabout for most experienced xbox modders.. but my previous actions all paid off in the end so it' s quite a satisfaction getting the awesome stuff finally to run from HDD. 😎

The HDD is in bad shape though if i look at the S.M.A.R.T. data in the dashboard system information. 10GB is too small anyway.. can have 3 games max on it (if you don't put big games on it) ..of course when i would do emulation on it (looking forward to that) it prolly could hold much more.
But as it stands i need to get a brand new hdd in it (sata-to-ide converter too), silent fans (mine has a small fan on the cpu-sink too).. and maybe a videocable that outputs RGB (scart) instead of composite.

Is there anything i should also be getting to make this cool thing last a couple of decades more? :)

When i FTP into it i see the directories UDATA and udata.. with both the same content.. don't know if they are separate doubles or connected.. must have happened while trying to get the folders right from the dashboard filemanager... wil straighten it out when cloning the data over to the new hdd when it arrives.

Besides the recommendation of Nulling the eeprom...
(which i find still risky and since i have the dump and headerpins to read-out in place.. still feels a bit needless at this point, unless you tell me the xbox might be doomed when meanwile the original HDD dies or something)

 

edit PS:
to copy the files onto the memstick-usb i still needed to do that with (scary) Xplore360 on Windows7 (it didn't find devices via WINE).
xboxhdm filemanager (MidnightCommander) could not do it as it seems only focused on making fatx-hdd's and not fatx memorycards.

Edited by Newk
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If you have the eeprom backup you made stored somewhere safe then you wont need to worry about nulling the eeprom. I do it to all mine  as it makes it so i can swap hdds between xboxs without any hassle. 

The first thing you should do is get a new/bigger hdd because as you rightly said 10gb is not big enough!! I would not worry about getting too much stuff (emulators, roms etc) on your current hdd, i would wait until you have anew one and then really get stuck into getting everything you want on there and set up exactly as you want. Just use the current hdd as a test system add some emulators etc and play around with them so you know what you want and what you dont want when you get the new hdd.

Thats my personal suggestion/opinion but its realy up t you what you do next.

Congrats for bringing this xbox back from the brink tho :)

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