x-box - softmodding

[alexh]

I disagree. This "extra control" is an illusion formed from lack of knowledge and experience.

The only reason to get a hard-mod is if your xbox hard drive breaks and you do not have the EPROM data backed up.

Name one "extra control" you get with a hardmod other than booting unlocked hard drives and booting unsigned media with an unformatted hard drive?

You can do everything a hardmod can do with a softmod. That includes upgrading the hard drive of a softmod XBOX in minutes. All you need is a PC, the software XBOXHDM, a USB key or CD/DVD together with the EEPROM key and you press YES when asked. Can't get easier than that.

Fitting a hardmod is a waste of time, money and may ultimately damage your xbox if you are poor at soldering.

[Supamax]

Originally Posted by Adropac2

Just a mention of a compatible memory stick for use with Xbox XBMC as it's a right pain getting one to show up

Recently bought this one having had success with Forza3 memory stick - the same one as this essentially

http://www.bmcdigital.co.uk/catalog/...r-xbox-360-ps3

It's the 2gb version though they do also go up to what is the 4gb limit for Xbox - i guess that would also work

Might not show up straight away in XBMC and you may want to plug it into the usb adaptor before you even turn it on to ensure this - after a few attempts it should show up as memory card 2 fat 16

Transfer speed is very fast on a pc but around 600k for Xbox

Iv'e tried lots of usb devices and only managed to get my camera showing up so it's good to finally find one of these that works

Do you mean that you successfully managed to make XBMC see your USB flash memory?? And to play an .avi DivX/Xvid from there??

I knew that USB sticks were seen by the Xbox (with an adapter for one of the 4 Xbox front gamepad sockets, of course) as gamesaves memory only.
How can XBMC see them?

[Adropac2]

Originally Posted by Supamax

Do you mean that you successfully managed to make XBMC see your USB flash memory?? And to play an .avi DivX/Xvid from there??

I knew that USB sticks were seen by the Xbox (with an adapter for one of the 4 Xbox front gamepad sockets, of course) as gamesaves memory only.
How can XBMC see them?

I'm using this to transfer files from pc to my Xbox hardrive.I tend not to watch anything on my Xbox anyway so i couldn't really help there.It's not the very fastest of transfer speeds you get on Xbox - certainly compared to how fast these sticks are on pc anyway - but 600k is probably fine to watch some avi.I would probably save them to hardrive were i to watch any videos

But yes XBMC reads these as storage devices - you cannot write to them from xbox like you can of xbox memory cards.It's a real pain finding one of these that does actually show up as 99% of the time you only get a can't mount error

[alexh]

You're mad not to use Ethernet. Just plug the X-box into your wireless router or crossover to your PC and enjoy 7MB/s plus the XBOX can mount any drives on the network and stream files from the internet such as iPlayer or YouTube. If you don't you're missing out terribly on the XBMC experience.

[killergorilla]

Couldn't agree more!

[Adropac2]

Hmm

I mostly just like to use XBMC because it feels a slick way to run my Xbox emu and games so i'm not too fussed about some of those but i'll certainly give it a try

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Adropac2

I mostly just like to use XBMC because it feels a slick way to run my Xbox emu and games

What?? Using XBMC as a dashboard replacement and never using the XBMC bits seems madness. It takes ages to load compared to the other dashboards such as EvoX

Also a lot of emulators have SAMBA support built in so they can play game images stored anywhere on the network without copying

[Adropac2]

I don't use XBMC as my dash as it goes but in any case the wait isn't all that long unless you're really impatient

I guess my way would be a real problem to how you enjoy the Xbox.Me personally, i really only like playing emu, Xbox games and the feel of being in the XBMC enviroment, without wanting to use it for anything else - i just enjoy the atmosphere i suppose.I'd also rather my emu collection of games is on a disc - even if discs do eventually die - so the idea of finding a game on the net while on xbox doesn't appeal.Of course it doesn't stop others enjoying what else XBMC can provide or the way they go about doing/getting any of it.Perhaps there is a sense of pride for some that do it this way

It's really just a case of doing things the way that suits me

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Adropac2

I don't use XBMC as my dash as it goes

You load the dash, then you load XBMC, then you load a game / emulator? You masochist At the very least you should reconfigure your dash to be XBMC.

Originally Posted by Adropac2

I'd also rather my emu collection of games is on a disc - even if discs do eventually die - so the idea of finding a game on the net while on xbox doesn't appeal.

Erm, it is identical as loading from disc (or do you mean disk?). SAMBA mounts the directory of your choosing under the name of your choosing just as if it was another partition/folder on the disk. You'd never ever know the difference.

[Eclipse]

Really, if you have XBMC it's a waste not to use it as intended. It's very good at what it does.

[Retroplay]

A friend of mine just bought his 3rd XBOX today (his 2 daughters have one each) for movie watching.
First I got rid of all the crap the HD was cluttered up with like Evo-X, Avalaunch etc.
5 minutes later and XBMC played DVD movies over his network.
You gotta love XBMC.

[Antiriad]

Yep, listen to Alexh, XBMC is the best dashboard to have by far. And if you can softmod, then do.

[Adropac2]

Alex

Well i don't always load Xbmc after iv'e booted to Unleash, just sometimes.I'll likely make XBMC boot at some point - i don't really get to play as much as i would like and haven't set it up truly how i would want

I have all my stuff on dvd and retrieve it this way - it may not suit how others do this but i'm happy to do it

Yeah there is no disagreement that XBMC is the best but i only play games from it.I enjoy how classy it feels but that is all that interests me from this cool dash, apart from the excellent music visualizer - i'm more than happy to watch stuff on pc.There is more to XBMC of course but despite it's excellence, i'm not too fussed

To others: i have over 6 xbox set up this way and have enjoyed it like this from the very start.Emulation though is why i use Xbox

And yes alex although emulation will always be superior on PC what with where being more choice, more power, more filters etc, i like my little crt 14" xbox rgb as it just feels more authentic an experience that when i use my pc for this stuff

[alexh]

The only downside to XBOX emulation is that no emulator has proper 240/288p mode and so you get interlace artefacts not present on the original.

You can up the filter to hide the artefacts but it goes fuzzy.

[Adropac2]

Originally Posted by alexh

The only downside to XBOX emulation is that no emulator has proper 240/288p mode and so you get interlace artefacts not present on the original.

You can up the filter to hide the artefacts but it goes fuzzy.

I tend to use mine for 8bits mostly and of course it was only ever an rf back then so i usually have it purposely fuzzy.And while there may be artefacts, i don't find them to be in any way a big deal compared to how much closer things do feel and look the xbox way

When i'm sitting in front of my crt playing a C64 emulated game, it's a much close experience than that of a pc one - for the simple reason it's on a crt and filters although pretty good on pc, just don't cut it for a lcd for example

Also when i emu on pc and i sit in front of a monitor, it feels quite detatched, like im playing an emulator - i very much less get this feeling with the xbox and a crt.I suppose i could have my pc output to a tv but it still comes down to how for me at least, pc and emulation although clearly much better in so many ways, can't beat Xbox set up the way it is like this

[mully]

Originally Posted by alexh

[ Show youtube player ]

I finally got it done! Thanks to Alexh for your instructions throughout this thread. I reckon anyone with enough persistence can do it. Took me a while to figure out the xbins via IRC and FTP bits. The trickiest part was getting the game save exploits onto the xbox. Used a generic usb stick lying around and xbox-usb adaptor from ebay. Then found that I had to drag and drop the files onto the Action Replay software to get them onto the memory stick.

But after that, the Unleash desktop, XBMC and Zsnexbox installs were a breeze.

When I cable connected the xbox to wireless router to get streaming MP3s off a shared drive on the PC, with absolutely no fiddling, this is definitely the best no cost upgrade of the year for me.

[alexh]

Switching to XBMC as the dashboard is perhaps your next step. Very easy to do. If I've not already mentioned it in this thread I could go through it for ya.

[cosmicfrog]

I`d like to hear how that is done alexh, plz
don`t think its coverd in this thread, least I cant remember reading it
as I oughta pull my finger out and put XBMC on my xbox seeing as how everyone says how good it is

[alexh]

After you have completed your softmod (using the Krayzie Softmod installer) you'll have UnleashX as your dashboard. (the dashboard is the program which automatically loads on boot up.)

The first thing you need to do after any softmod is to FTP in and transfer the backup files to your PC so that if the hard drive ever dies or you accidentally screw it up you can make a new one using a PC and XBOXHDM

FTP in (username/password = xbox, IP is in the corner of the UnleashX window) and transfer the entire directory E:/backups to your PC.

Then you probably want to FTP over the latest known good copy of XBMC. I usually keep mine in the default E:/APPS/XBMC location. After installation it is prudent to launch XBMC from UnleashX to make sure it is installed and working before making it your dashboard.

Now this is all done you can make XBMC your Dashboard. The files which are loaded as the dashboard are always (on a NDure softmod) in E:/Dashboard if you look in there you'll see default.xbe and some config files... this is UnleashX (or perhaps EvolutionX depending on what you chose when you softmodded). If you want your old dashboard to be available as a program XBMC can launch later on it is best to COPY these files to somewhere like E:/Apps/UnleashX

If you get the T3CH (http://t3ch.yi.se/) build included is a sub directory called _tools inside here you'll see two files

"SHORTCUT by TEAM XBMC.xbe"
"SHORTCUT by TEAM XBMC.cfg"

You need to rename these files to default.xbe and default.cfg

Quickly edit default.cfg which is a txt file and make sure the path inside points to where you've installed XBMC (i.e. E:/Apps/XBMC)

Now you can transfer these files to E:/Dashboard (perhaps copying your old Dashboard first).

Now comes the shit or bust moment. Rebooting. Time to double check everything.

Is XBMC working? - Check
E:/Apps/XBMC/default.xbe ? - Check
E:/Dashboard/default.xbe ? - Check
E:/Dashboard/default.cfg ? - Check

Press that button. Power back on and you should see the XBMC logo and voila!

Then comes installing the "Must have" XBMC plugins. If you live in the UK then iPlayer v2 is fantastic.

Be aware that the very latest versions of XBMC often have bugs in them and they tend to be slightly slower as they are more and more targeted towards higher power HTPC's and not XBOX. But damn does the new Confluence skin look good!

After you have made XBMC your dashboard you cannot use the XBMC FTP server to update XBMC. You must either use an installer script from within XBMC which will download and install the latest version for you OR (and this is what I do) you must launch a program with an FTP server in (i.e. UnleashX) from XBMC and THEN ftp across a new version. Also from past experience it is better not to directly overwrite XBMC... upload to a new directory (i.e. E:/APPS/XBMC2) and then rename each before rebooting. Keeps your system in a viable state for longer should anything go wrong.

[cosmicfrog]

thanks alexh appreciate the txt