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substituting original Xbox DVD drive with PC DVD drive?


Tartarus
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I believe I seen a Reddit post couple days ago by KaosEngineer touching on this topic the post was sometime back, I'm wondering if it's practical today to even attempt or even flash an pc optical drive.

I am aware that you can of course get parts from other consoles..

I asked this out of curiosity as I lack the information and experience on the topic.

 

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14 minutes ago, Tartarus said:

give a damn about bragging rights

 

the practicalities of Versatility and Longevity is my goal exercise all options know as much as I can

You plan to play games from dvd only? Collectors mostly dump their disk and play from HDD or any other digital storage. This preserves disks, and at the same time doesn't use up the laser.

So softmod or hardmod, is better.

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No.. I've heard of it being done though it was something I wanted to know.. I wouldn't go out of my way to do it as drives would be extremely hard to locate now or as I would presume anyway.. 

The reason I ask is because I stumble across a lot of old-tech from the 90s all the way to I don't know 2009.. part of a former job I  inherently end up getting a lot of this stuff so running into an old drive might be a potential

so I got to thinking of what someone told me one time and thought well what if I ended up with one of these might be nice option for the future.. some type of project something different who knows options on the table

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19 hours ago, Tartarus said:

I believe I seen a Reddit post couple days ago by KaosEngineer touching on this topic the post was sometime back, I'm wondering if it's practical today to even attempt or even flash an pc optical drive.

I am aware that you can of course get parts from other consoles..

I asked this out of curiosity as I lack the information and experience on the topic.

 

If the Xbox is hard modded then you can use a PC DVD drive but it will only read backup game disks.

Other wise get a DVD drive from EvilBay but keep in mind all the original DVD drives are starting to fail so it may not last much longer..

 

Cheers

SS Dave


Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

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yes I noted up top I'm aware I can get parts I usually just go and pick these Xboxes up pretty cheap.. I'm probably going to have several of the consoles I want to try to do different things with each one

 

I need to really start learning the tools that are needed to effectively utilized pre-existing downloaded games.. much like most of you I've have had some of these games for very long time since they came out and I even have multiple copies of the same titles to clarify original none burn copies

 

Some of you probably find this to be a big waste but I only have a handful of my games on my console, I really didn't do any of the emulators or have a whole bunch of games

I used to mess with this probably back around 2015 and set myself up to get a good start in the future (now) I essentially just have a bunch of Xboxes all the original copies that I want and have just started getting into it, my plan is to back up what copies I have then learn how to move them around from console to console

FTP simple not a big deal that's easy, I've already done a little bit of it with the Xbox so I'm not completely new to it 

where I'm having a hard time once I get the game burned to the console how do I take the game off of the console.. not necessarily burn disc but to take it off the console and put it on a backup hard drive and then if I get another console and I've modified it or whatever I've done to it move that game to that console

don't you need a piece of software on the console that will prepare the game so that you can FTP it and be something that's actually usable

now what I have been doing is modding the console upgrading the hard drive with all the stuff I want on it then take the original hard drive that was in it mark with some kind of information showing that it came that particular said console

now I have done this with two consoles so I now have three hard drives per console so I will have the original one that is stored away as a backup and the new one that is now in the console and the third one just being another backup to go with the original

Overkill perhaps but that's what I've been doing. 

I've also been wondering the game that I put on there with the disc is the media still any good how can one tell can it be tested, haha what I've been doing to get around that is just play the game through.. so far so good

 

Edited by Tartarus
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  • 1 month later...

I am trying to solve this problem. If anyone with knowledge or knows anyone with knowledge of firmware modifications, this is being revived here: 


There is buzz on Reddit as well:

If enough band together, we preserve not only this beautiful machine, but also all our physical game collections. 
 

I also created a community on Reddit to hold all the information as I gather it 

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/OGXboxDVDDriveRevival/
 

Lets save the console!

 

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Just an idea but maybe the easiest path would be a raspberry pi in between. I've seen some ide protocol emulation coming out that can run on the pi through the GPIO pins. You could do something like pc-dvd drive --> pi --> pi mounts iso --> pi emulates OG xbox drive with that iso mounted. Actually that project stellar thing is already doing a sort of ODE, could develop an extension to it that mounts the filesystem from pc drive. 

I'm assuming something like this would still require some flashing of the dvd drive, I'm not sure if you could just dd the right sectors of an xbox disc through a standard drive to get the xiso filesystem off the disk?

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1 hour ago, dust08 said:

Just an idea but maybe the easiest path would be a raspberry pi in between. I've seen some ide protocol emulation coming out that can run on the pi through the GPIO pins. You could do something like pc-dvd drive --> pi --> pi mounts iso --> pi emulates OG xbox drive with that iso mounted. Actually that project stellar thing is already doing a sort of ODE, could develop an extension to it that mounts the filesystem from pc drive. 

I'm assuming something like this would still require some flashing of the dvd drive, I'm not sure if you could just dd the right sectors of an xbox disc through a standard drive to get the xiso filesystem off the disk?

Man I love that this stuff is running through peoples minds. The most buzz I’m hearing and personally wanting is to use my legitimate Xbox discs. With those setups, assuming the OG drive is dead, there is no way for the pi to recognize the discs. The whole issue with the pc dvd drive. Which is why my thinking is going down the path of: modify firmware , flash new drive, use OG discs. I don’t have the firmware knowledge for this step though…

 

If a replacement drive is acquired from an OG manufacturer where the firmware already exists, I think the success rate of reading a disc increases since you’re only modifying firmware rather than writing brand new firmware. A possible problem is the sata to ide conversion that would be needed. The conversion could harm the drive…

Edited by icanswim70
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10 minutes ago, icanswim70 said:

Man I love that this stuff is running through peoples minds. The most buzz I’m hearing and personally wanting is to use my legitimate Xbox discs. With those setups, assuming the OG drive is dead, there is no way for the pi to recognize the discs. The whole issue with the pc dvd drive. Which is why my thinking is going down the path of: modify firmware , flash new drive, use OG discs. I don’t have the firmware knowledge for this step though…

Makes you wonder how nobody has cracked this after 20+ years. It's a whole new era of console modding now. One could have the right mind to say if it was possible it would've been done already. But then we get Cerbios, Titan, StellarOS, etc all in the last few years. I love this community ❤️

Edited by MadMartigan
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7 minutes ago, MadMartigan said:

Makes you wonder how nobody has cracked this after 20+ years. It's a whole new era of console modding now. One could have the right mind to say if it was possible it would've been done already. But then we get Cerbios, Titan, StellarOS, etc all in the last few years. I love this community ❤️

I think with enough momentum we can get this done.

gotta get the word out… 😁

 

someone somewhere has the knowledge.

Edited by icanswim70
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9 hours ago, MadMartigan said:

Makes you wonder how nobody has cracked this after 20+ years. It's a whole new era of console modding now. One could have the right mind to say if it was possible it would've been done already. But then we get Cerbios, Titan, StellarOS, etc all in the last few years. I love this community ❤️

Probably because there is too many different PC DVD drives makes and models and once you have a large HDD you don't need the DVD drive again.

 

Cheers

SS Dave


Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

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15 minutes ago, SS_Dave said:

Probably because there is too many different PC DVD drives makes and models and once you have a large HDD you don't need the DVD drive again.

 

Cheers

SS Dave


Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

True but the bigger hdds didn't come until not too long ago. 

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3 hours ago, SS_Dave said:

You can still use any PC DVD drive but it will not read an original game disk, It will read copied disk and the pirate game disk's that come from china and the like.

 

Cheers

SS Dave


Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

I suppose.

The only problem with using "any drive" is that solder points have to be found to make the drive work properly.

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4 hours ago, sweetdarkdestiny said:

I wonder if XBox 360 drives could be start point since they can read original xbox games. And they also have the same connector for the yellow cable (not to sure about the pinout on the 360 but I would guess MS was lazy and the signals are the same). 

 

You raise an interesting point. They already read some OG games so they must have a form of the firmware already. Question is, can it be modified to recognize all OG discs? Is a copy of the firmware available?

Edited by icanswim70
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