XBox modding

Background

Before I start with this story, let me say I've got absolutely no interest in pirated games or anything like that. What set me off on this trail was that I'd ordered an XBox 360 for Christmas (2005) and missed the deadline for the first batch. Amazon gave me a February delivery, so a little disappointed, I started to evaluate why I wanted a 360.

On reflection, one of the main reasons was to provide a media centre where I could access my CD collection and play it on the home music system. Not unreasonable...

So, what did I do?

Kicking a few ideas around at work, I knew one of the guys that works for me had a chipped XBox so I had a chat with him. Based on that conversation plus some other research (did you know the Technical boss at Amazon chipped his XBox?), I decided to take the plunge and chip my machine. After all, I can handle a soldering iron, and despite what some may think, I've get a reasonable understanding of computer guts.

So, off to www.whitedog.co.uk to buy a modchip. I've used whitedog before when the DVD on our XBox packed up (dirty disc errors - it probably sounds familiar to many). Last time I purchased a new Thompson DVD drive. This time, I bought an Xecuter 2.6 CE and a Xapt3r solderless mount. I'd already established that my XB had either a 1.1 or a 1.2 motherboard. The 1.6 ones are the real sods... MS tried to make them unhackable which means that there are a few more hoops to jump through as part of the chip installation process (but still chippbable). The earlier mobos are much easier.

The chip (actually a small daughterboard with some bits on it) and the adpater came with no instructions, but there are plenty of tutorials out there in cyberspace - just go and Google. Basically, you remove a screw, put a new one in that comes with the Xapt3r, put the D0 fly lead into the appropriate hole on the board, seat the Xapt3r over the LPC port and screw it in to the top of the new screw securely. The chiup than sits on top of the Xapt3r.

Getting the software is a different issue. The Xecuter comes with an open source BIOS which does very little apart from let you upload either over the LAN or from a disc a hacked MS bios. Make sure you find and read the instructions - I nearly cobbled mine through flashing a single bios file instead of the four needed. Look out for a bit of software called x2bm from the teamxecuter website.

Once you've got a bios on, you need a dashboard. I've installed the Evolution-X bios, so the Evolution-X dashboard was the obvious choice. Both this and the bios are available. You need to know some basic IRC stuff and be able to use FTP. More than that I've completely forgotten about and won't tell, ever.

The dashboard is first booted from a CD. I ended up using a CD-RW burned using Sonic on a Windows machine. The first attempt using K3B on my Linux box failed to boot. Heavens knows why.

Before you burn the CD with the dash on it, remember to edit the evox.ini file to set the network characteristics to suit your LAN.

You don't burn a regular disc though - the XB uses a different file system to regular machines. You have to assemble all the files you want into a modified ISO and burn the ISO. You need a special tool to create this ISO - XISO is the one I used. Once you've burned the ISO, you won't be able to read it with your PC. Don't worry - that's perfectly normal. The XB apparently has problems with 'small' disc images. For that reason, you're recommended to put a pile of junk into the ISO to pad it out. Anything will do - I seem to remember I put about 30Mb of rrubbish on. It will never be read so anything will do. There are some tools that will create a filler file for you. Alternatively, just pick a couple of big .exes or a photo directory or something.

Once you've got the dash booted from CD, you have FTP access to the XB using the settings you specified in the .ini file. From there on in, it's pretty much plain sailing. You ftp the dashboard to the XB hard drive, tweak a few configuration variables and reboot with the modchip enabled and Bob's your uncle.

The screenshot above is the settings page from the Evo-X dashboard booted from the XBox hard disc. I've got my XB plugged into a wireless game adpater and as you can see, I have a strange choice of LAN address! I've scrambled the MAC address in case anyone tries to ban me :-)

The media centre task is just as easy. I'd already found out about XBMC from googling, and found precompiled binaries lying around somewhere. Installing XBMC (I used the latest CVS build) as a seperate application and editing the evox.ini file for the booting dashboard was straight forward although you can use XBMC as a dashboard in its own right. To be honest, it's such a great piece of software, I'm even now tempted to do just that. It's easy enough to do. All I'd need to do is to rename the main .xbe file from default.xbe to evoxdash.xbe and stick it in the root of C along with all its other files. There is a program launcher in there as well, so it can be used to get at other stuff.

XBMC appears to be a very highly polished piece of work, and "hats off" to the maintainers. It will play music files from the XB hard disc, from SMB shares on my LAN (my library is on a Linux box), Shoutcast streams (check out Winamp if this is foreign to you), videos, picture slideshows, will take RSS feeds and even tell you the weather in your area. The DVD playback with XBMC works a treat as well, and you don't need the MS IR controller dongle.

What next? Well, I understand there's a MAME port for the XBox (that's the thing that lets you play all the old retro arcade games). That's a must. Also, I could really do with finding a quieter fan. The media centre is great, but the XB isn't the quietest of boxes!

A word of warning about using modchips in conjunction with XBox Live
If you do plan on using XBox Live, make sure you've got automatic logon turned off. I hadn't and now I've got a blocked XBox. Not that it really bothers me... I seldom used it, and at least now I don't have to worry about making sure the mod is off first. The auto-logon is on the MS dashboard. I can only assume it's this that has got my box barred. I did see the XB-Live logon screen a couple of times when switching the box on and it's highly likely the Xecuter was enabled. Ah well.

Update as at 21-Dec-2005:

I've got MAME working on the XBox. I've grabbed a handful of ROMs from a site I found on the 'net (google, as always, is your friend) and installing these in the \roms\ directory under MAME (and forcing a ROM re-scan) picks them up.

Places to visit

There are some links in the link panel for places to visit to find out more. I can only vouch for Whitedog. I've got information from the other web sites but as far as the purchasing experience is concerned, I can't help.