Corrupted Debug Console TSOP

[bpopilek]

I am trying to help out a friend of mine that has a genuine xBox Debug console. Apparently he tried to upgrade the hard drive, but inadvertently used an older XDK boot disc to format the new drive. At that point, his flubber animation would freeze and the box was useless. Even putting the original HDD back in did not fix it. We assumed that the TSOP had been corrupted. A couple of other things to note were that if I had the DVD and HDD both unplugged, the boot sequence would complete to the xBox logo but no errors or any other information would appear. Additionally, using the eject button does not actually eject the disc tray, the green LEDs just flash as if it was actually doing something. 

Where I am at now is I have created a Raspberry Pi PiPROM setup and tried to read the TSOP. The initial image file was 1mb in size, but when I tried to read it on my PC, it was just corrupted data. Since then I have tried to erase and flash different debug bin files. Oftentimes the flash says successful, but when I tried to read the TSOP back to a file, it is only 4k in size. Other TSOP images I have tried just fail to flash at all. What I have found is that If I do an erase, I can actually get the box to boot up off the of an XDK disc and it successfully formats the HDD and copies files over. However, once it completes, I am left with a black screen on boot up. The only thing I can then do is erase the TSOP again to get it to show the boot animation and boot off the XDK disc again. It just seems that while I am able to erase the TSOP, nothing is allowing me to actually write to it. Could the chip be corrupt or is there something else I am completely missing? 

It has been years since I modded my own xBox, and I have been trying to re-learn and read as much as possible. However, I am stumped at this point and would appreciate any and all help. Thanks for reading!

[KaosEngineer]

3 hours ago, bpopilek said:

Where I am at now is I have created a Raspberry Pi PiPROM setup and tried to read the TSOP. The initial image file was 1mb in size, but when I tried to read it on my PC, it was just corrupted data.

PiPROM is used to read the 256 bytes (2,048 bits) of data from the 8-pin serial EEPROM (configuration data) on the motherboard, not the BIOS from the 40-pin 1 MB TSOP flash memory chip on the motherboard.

[bpopilek]

So, I feel a bit dumb! Haha! It has been YEARS since I have messed with the OG xBox. Now looking back on everything, the PiPROM makes so much more sense! DOH! Anyways, I did some more testing tonight and still cannot make heads or tails as to what is going on.

I have an Xecuter3 mod chip in a v1.6 xBox. Tonight, I flashed the 1st 1mb bank with the X3 3294 1.6 BIOS and the 2nd 1mb bank with X3 3294 standard BIOS. In my 1.6 system, the mod chip boots fine when I select bank 1 and crashes out when I try to boot from bank 2. I can still access the backup FlashBIOS mode by hitting eject/power together on the 1.6. 

Next I installed the mod chip into the damaged debug system. No matter what I do, it will not work. It turns on and off 3 times before flashing the red/green leds. Additionally, I am unable to load into the backup bios by hitting eject/power. It just does the on/off 3 times as well. After placing it back into the 1.6 console, it works perfectly. Is there something more wrong with this debug system other than just a corrupted TSOP flash? I'm kind of stumped at this point and could use some guidance. Thanks!

[KaosEngineer]

You cannot boot a retail or modified retail BIOS on a debug console.  The MCPX on a debug motherboard is an X2 release without the hidden boot code found in the retail motherboard's X3 release of the chip.  The key(s) used to decrypt the BIOS are different between a debug and a retail motherboard.

You will need to flash an original DEBUG BIOS (512KBs in base size) to one of the X3's 512KB banks and set the bank select board to boot it.

[bpopilek]

4 hours ago, KaosEngineer said:

You cannot boot a retail or modified retail BIOS on a debug console.  The MCPX on a debug motherboard is an X2 release without the hidden boot code found in the retail motherboard's X3 release of the chip.  The key(s) used to decrypt the BIOS are different between a debug and a retail motherboard.

You will need to flash an original DEBUG BIOS (512KBs in base size) to one of the X3's 512KB banks and set the bank select board to boot it.

Thank you! There is so much info out there, that it makes it difficult for me to find. I will go try this now and see what I can do. I'll report back my outcome. Thanks!

[bpopilek]

With a 512k copy of the x2 debug BIOS installed on my x3 modchip, I was able to get the xBox to boot up and run a copy of the 5849.6 recovery DVD. I got the HDD formatted and can now boot into the debug main menu. However, I cannot get the xBox to boot in to the MS dashboard. The hard drive just cranks away for about 2-3 minutes and I have to reset the xBox. Any ideas as to what would cause this? Also, I have a TSOP40 adapter on the way for my programmer. I obviously need to flash the TSOP with the correct BIOS to get this back to stock. How do I know the most recent version of BIOS to flash to it, or is there only one supported version? Thanks for all the help!