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OGXBox Bios Flasher Disc


sweetdarkdestiny
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On 5/11/2022 at 11:50 AM, KaosEngineer said:

The first line of that message is part of the X-Changer OS. 

Found it in the source code file BootIde.c:

/* -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */

int BootIdeReadData(unsigned uIoBase, void * buf, size_t size)
{
	u16 * ptr = (u16 *) buf;

	if (BootIdeWaitDataReady(uIoBase)) {
		printk("BootIdeReadData data not ready...\n");
		return 1;
	}

	while (size > 1) {
		*ptr++ = IoInputWord(IDE_REG_DATA(uIoBase));
		size -= 2;
	}

	IoInputByte(IDE_REG_STATUS(uIoBase));
	if(IoInputByte(IDE_REG_ALTSTATUS(uIoBase)) & 0x01) {
		printk("BootIdeReadData ended with an error\n");
		return 2;
	}
	return 0;
}

The second line from this section of the BootIde.c source code:

	...
	BootIdeWaitDataReady(uIoBase);
	
	if(BootIdeReadData(uIoBase, baBuffer, IDE_SECTOR_SIZE)) 
	{
		printk("  %d: Drive not detected\n", nIndexDrive);
		return 1;
	}  
	...

Have you upgraded the hard drive?  Is it IDE or SATA with an IDE-to-SATA adapter? 

If SATA with adapter, which adapter are you using? And, did you swap out the stock IDE cable with a high-speed 80-wire 40-pin one?

I am using the Startech adapter and an 80wire 40 pin cable yes . I swapped it with a different 80/40 cable in case the cable was the issue. It appeared like I was getting a bit better (maybe a wire got mangled in packing back in the console), but this still is giving me an issue. 

I have tried a bunch of scenarios,

I formatted the drive for Titan, and tried using Titan bios packed without the UDMA flag. This seemed to work a bit better but then it would not see games on the F:/ in the dash, even though I could see them in filexplorer. Then I also did it with the udma 5 flag and packed.

I was using the C/ and E/ from the OG Xbox Installer 2021 package. I tried with EvolutionX dashboard too because I thought that was more supported with titan but I would get crashes loading up anything from hard drive or disc. So I began seeing maybe if I tried with another bios

Since then I tried changing to Cerbios, formatting the drive for Cerbios (fatxplorer3 beta) and I was able to play ObiWan from disc with no issues, however when I tried to load up Halo 2 I get a crash right after the bungie logo. I tested this same disc in my Soft modded xbox and I get in game no issue. I took the DVD drive from the softmodded and put it in the hardmodded but halo 2 crashed at same spot.

I put the old IDE hard drive back in with the old IDE cables, still on cerbios, I tried to load from disc (halo2) but it froze, same spot. I put JSRF on the Hard Drive via FTP, it booted up but gave dirty/bad disc error (not sure, it is an older Evox dash though so maybe no auto patching was enabled?) There is not enough space to test more hard drive games. 

 

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On 5/23/2022 at 4:10 AM, oysterjetski said:

I have a question.  I have a 1.4, no mod chip, that is flashed with EvoxM8.  Can I flash the TITAN bios to take advantage of UDMA5 without having to reformat the drive?  

 

3 hours ago, coldasijs said:


@oysterjetski I have exactly the same question. I would love to install titan m8+ to enable udma5. But it is not fully clear if I would need to format my HD. There are a few people commenting this, but it is not clear to me why. Is this due to the larger sector size?

 

I would say that you don't have to reformat your HDD. TITAN 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 had a bug but that is fixed now and the 1.1.0 should work without reformating your HDD. 

One thing though, the UDMA5 is for the StarTech adapter. If you use a generic china adapter, better use the UDMA4 patched version. 

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2 minutes ago, sweetdarkdestiny said:

 

I would say that you don't have to reformat your HDD. TITAN 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 had a bug but that is fixed now and the 1.1.0 should work without reformating your HDD. 

One thing though, the UDMA5 is for the StarTech adapter. If you use a generic china adapter, better use the UDMA4 patched version. 

I just posted the question asking the developer of the Titan patches for M8plus if a currently formatted hard drive will need to be reformatted or is Titan able to work with extended partitions already present on the hard drive.  

Awaiting their answer.

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Just curious but...... isn't the discussion on the Cerbios discord currently debating if UDMA5 is actually worth it.... It seems quite few peeps are testing it and reporting very little actual speed difference. I know that's the Cerbios version but UDMA5 is UDMA5 right........ :)

 

 

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On 5/26/2022 at 12:54 PM, KaosEngineer said:

I just posted the question asking the developer of the Titan patches for M8plus if a currently formatted hard drive will need to be reformatted or is Titan able to work with extended partitions already present on the hard drive.  

Awaiting their answer.

Here's the Titan patch developer's response:

gaasedelen commented yesterday

There's nothing special about Titan's disk format, but the BIOS computes the length of the F partition based on the physical size of the disk. Scene tools and BIOS' do the same, but would clamp at 0xFFFFFFFF sectors in the event of a larger disk.

So technically Titan should be compatible with drives formatted using old scene tools under the following conditions:

  • The HDD must use standard retail partition sizes & clusters for the first 5 partitions
  • The HDD must be formatted with 'F takes all' / 'F takes the rest of the HDD' for the 6th partition
    • This means that Titan does NOT support F & G schemes or drives
  • The HDD must report its drive size as less than 2199023255040 bytes (2.2tb, or 0xFFFFFFFF sectors)
    • I assume most/all 2TB drives should be well under this? If you're using a 1TB drive you should certainly be fine.

Using a 3TB drive formatted with 'F takes all' will not work under Titan. It might boot, but files will be missing or start getting corrupted on the F partition. A 1-2TB drive should be fine though.

--------------------------------------------

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On 5/27/2022 at 5:05 PM, nikeymikey said:

Just curious but...... isn't the discussion on the Cerbios discord currently debating if UDMA5 is actually worth it.... It seems quite few peeps are testing it and reporting very little actual speed difference. I know that's the Cerbios version but UDMA5 is UDMA5 right........ :)

 

 

20% improvement on loading time is always a plus in my book;)

But I realized I did not do enough research. IGR is missing and I forgot I have 2 partitions. So 2 reasons to wait for a later release of bios.

 

 

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1 hour ago, coldasijs said:

But I realized I did not do enough research. IGR is missing and I forgot I have 2 partitions. So 2 reasons to wait for a later release of bios.

IGR is already there since some versions.

; IGR Master Port,  0 to 4, 0 = All Ports
IGRMasterPort = 0

; A = 0, B = 1, X = 2, Y = 3, BLACK = 4, WHITE = 5, LEFT_TRIGGER = 6, RIGHT_TRIGGER = 7
; DPAD_UP = 8, DPAD_DOWN = 9, DPAD_LEFT = A, DPAD_RIGHT = B, START = C, BACK = D, LEFT_THUMB = E, RIGHT_THUMB = F

; IGR Dash Combo, Resets back to dashboard, If ISO is mounted then keep it mounted as D:
IGRDash = 67CD

; IGR Game Combo, Resets the current loaded game
IGRGame = 467C

; IGR Full Combo, Full system reset
IGRFull = 467D

; IGS Shutdown Combo, Full system shutdown
IGRShutdown = 678D

 

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16 hours ago, coldasijs said:

20% improvement on loading time is always a plus in my book;)

But I realized I did not do enough research. IGR is missing and I forgot I have 2 partitions. So 2 reasons to wait for a later release of bios.

 

 

It seems that the UDMA5 results do vary massively from console to console. Some people are claiming to see huge speed gains where as others claim to notice little to no difference.  I am going to finally flash it to my X3 box later and give it a try for myself. 

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Decided today to install the Titan patch which turned out to be a lot more work then intended.

First problem was that the freshly installed dash after formatting would nog load properly, it could also no longer boot from disc for some reason. So reformatting it is. Afterwards I was not able to install the new titan bios (or s as no other bios for that matter). It would fail on the step were it extracts the bios zip file and copy it to the HD. Looks like a similar issue as @futurepr0n reported earlier.

Manually copying the bios did the trick in the end. 

Now for the performance improvement, I did not benchmark a lot of games. But Mafia at least went from 10 secs loading to the taxi driver mission down to 4 secs. So that at least has a huge improvement. Small sidenote is that the game is now on 480i iso 480p.


 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I hope someone can help, I am new to this. I found my xbox in the loft, when I boot it loads showing EvoX (pink logo) in the top left corner. It seems to boot open the original dash though. Is there anything I can do to unlock the 720p / 1080i features to get better visuals on my 4k TV? Heard I can use a DVD with HeXEn or something? But when I tried to burn this to a DVD-RW it would not let me? 

Sorry, I know you probably get this a lot from newbies! 

Cheers. 

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  • 4 months later...
On 5/27/2022 at 9:57 PM, KaosEngineer said:

Here's the Titan patch developer's response:

gaasedelen commented yesterday

There's nothing special about Titan's disk format, but the BIOS computes the length of the F partition based on the physical size of the disk. Scene tools and BIOS' do the same, but would clamp at 0xFFFFFFFF sectors in the event of a larger disk.

So technically Titan should be compatible with drives formatted using old scene tools under the following conditions:

  • The HDD must use standard retail partition sizes & clusters for the first 5 partitions
  • The HDD must be formatted with 'F takes all' / 'F takes the rest of the HDD' for the 6th partition
    • This means that Titan does NOT support F & G schemes or drives
  • The HDD must report its drive size as less than 2199023255040 bytes (2.2tb, or 0xFFFFFFFF sectors)
    • I assume most/all 2TB drives should be well under this? If you're using a 1TB drive you should certainly be fine.

Using a 3TB drive formatted with 'F takes all' will not work under Titan. It might boot, but files will be missing or start getting corrupted on the F partition. A 1-2TB drive should be fine though.

--------------------------------------------

@KaosEngineer So apologies for what seems to be a stupid question... but I've got a 2TB drive formatted with F/G (927GB each) - that means I cannot use the Titan patches to enable higher UDMA speeds? If so, doesn't that mean that essentially anyone who had previously set up a 2TB drive wouldn't be able to utilize the Titan patches without re-formatting?

I had originally formatted the drive w/ XBPartitioner 1.3 (with proper cluster sizes, and no ER) when initially setting up the drive a while back.

Edited by SaturnX
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11 hours ago, SaturnX said:

@KaosEngineer So apologies for what seems to be a stupid question... but I've got a 2TB drive formatted with F/G (927GB each) - that means I cannot use the Titan patches to enable higher UDMA speeds? If so, doesn't that mean that essentially anyone who had previously set up a 2TB drive wouldn't be able to utilize the Titan patches without re-formatting?

I had originally formatted the drive w/ XBPartitioner 1.3 (with proper cluster sizes, and no ER) when initially setting up the drive a while back.

You can manually hex edit the Evolution-X M8plus BIOS's dot bin file to change the UDMA setting.  it's a one byte edit.  You don't need to use Titan for a 2TB hard drive.  

With the Titan LBA48 patch, the one extended partition, drive F, can be over 1TB in size instead of being limited to 1TB maximum with the older LBA48 v3 patch.  

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5 hours ago, KaosEngineer said:

You can manually hex edit the Evolution-X M8plus BIOS's dot bin file to change the UDMA setting.  it's a one byte edit.  You don't need to use Titan for a 2TB hard drive.  

With the Titan LBA48 patch, the one extended partition, drive F, can be over 1TB in size instead of being limited to 1TB maximum with the older LBA48 v3 patch.  

Oh that’s amazing!! Are you aware of where that byte is / and is it detailed anywhere?

Thanks!

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2 hours ago, SaturnX said:

Oh that’s amazing!! Are you aware of where that byte is / and is it detailed anywhere?

Thanks!

Yes, it's in the source code of the Titan patcher file - written in Python.

I don't suggest doing it unless you are 100% sure that your IDE-to-SATA adapter can support it.  Not all do.   Only those with a Marvell 88SA8052 bridge do.  Startech's IDE2SAT2 and DeLock's 62510 adapters are built around this chip.

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13 minutes ago, KaosEngineer said:

Yes, it's in the source code of the Titan patcher file - written in Python.

I don't suggest doing it unless you are 100% sure that your IDE-to-SATA adapter can support it.  Not all do.   Only those with a Marvell 88SA8052 bridge do.  Startech's IDE2SAT2 and DeLock's 62510 adapters are built around this chip.

I’ll take a look - I’ve got a StarTech adapter and OpenXenium - figure I can give it a go and see how it performs. 

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2 hours ago, KaosEngineer said:

Yes, it's in the source code of the Titan patcher file - written in Python.

I don't suggest doing it unless you are 100% sure that your IDE-to-SATA adapter can support it.  Not all do.   Only those with a Marvell 88SA8052 bridge do.  Startech's IDE2SAT2 and DeLock's 62510 adapters are built around this chip.

Hmm... just looking through the code, unfortunately my Python skills are not as honed as I'd like... but reading through the following section and working through the additional routines, and my understanding is that I need to unpack the Kernel .IMG via EvTool, and make the following changes and repack.

Hex Address (unpacked kernel.img) 0x000453FF:

UDMA2:  0x42 (Stock - which follows the convention/code below so instills confidence in deciphering the code).

UDMA3: 0x43

UDMA4: 0x44

UDMA5: 0x45

 if self._udma > 2:
            patch_address = 0x800553FE
            print(f"[*] - 0x{patch_address:08X}: Patching UDMA to version {self._udma}")
            patch_bytes = self._assemble(f"push 0x{0x40+self._udma:02X}", patch_address)
            self._write_bytes(patch_bytes, patch_address)

Source: titan/tpatch.py at main · gaasedelen/titan · GitHub

@KaosEngineer if you have any thoughts/insight that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again!

Edited by SaturnX
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2 hours ago, KaosEngineer said:

Only those with a Marvell 88SA8052 bridge do.  Startech's IDE2SAT2 and DeLock's 62510 adapters are built around this chip.

I like to add the Renkforce RF-4886682, Conrad ST-106 (Not to sure if you can get these outside of good old görmany) and the Delock 61702 also support UDMA5.

I have testet all these adapters my self (incl. the Startech and Delock 62510). :) 

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13 minutes ago, sweetdarkdestiny said:

I like to add the Renkforce RF-4886682, Conrad ST-106 (Not to sure if you can get these outside of good old görmany) and the Delock 61702 also support UDMA5.

I have testet all these adapters my self (incl. the Startech and Delock 62510). :) 

Good to know! I've just built/packed two new M8Plus 1.6 BIOSes with the bytes changed for UDMA4/UDMA5.  I'll give it a go on my 1.6/OpenXenium later to see what happens. 

One other question, but I guess I'll get the answer when I test - I also have an old Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 IDE HDD that is rated for ATA133 (UDMA6) that I've setup as quick test HDD for OG Xbox mods.  I would assume by taking the SATA/IDE controller out of the equation, given the HDD is capable of ATA133, and using an 80-wire/40-pin cable, I should in theory be able to use UDMA5 without issue.

Edited by SaturnX
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10 hours ago, SaturnX said:

Hmm... just looking through the code, unfortunately my Python skills are not as honed as I'd like... but reading through the following section and working through the additional routines, and my understanding is that I need to unpack the Kernel .IMG via EvTool, and make the following changes and repack.

Hex Address (unpacked kernel.img) 0x000453FF:

UDMA2:  0x42 (Stock - which follows the convention/code below so instills confidence in deciphering the code).

UDMA3: 0x43

UDMA4: 0x44

UDMA5: 0x45

 if self._udma > 2:
            patch_address = 0x800553FE
            print(f"[*] - 0x{patch_address:08X}: Patching UDMA to version {self._udma}")
            patch_bytes = self._assemble(f"push 0x{0x40+self._udma:02X}", patch_address)
            self._write_bytes(patch_bytes, patch_address)

Source: titan/tpatch.py at main · gaasedelen/titan · GitHub

@KaosEngineer if you have any thoughts/insight that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again!

Looks correct. :)

 

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