A Modchip installed inside an XBox

I’ve finally got around to writing up my experience chipping my XBox. Despite my troubles, chipping an XBox is an easy task that shouldn’t take more than half an hour. I was hampered by a damaged modchip and all the associated testing and trouble-shooting it took to diagnose this - although having to flex the chip to make it power up was a major hint something was not right.

Follow the story on my main website by visting my main website, or by clicking on the image. I’ve not written yet another “How to install an XBox modchip” document since what’s the point? The XBox is dead, chipping them isn’t the big novelty it used to be. Instead this is my experience chipping my XBox and how I trouble-shooted it. I learnt quite a bit and it was fun

My replacement modchip arrived today. Installing it was easy, the only tricky bit being removing solder from the holes for the LCP. The pin header went on easily, and the new chip - an Xecuter 2.5 - started up correctly.

I recorded the installation in great detail - including the attempted installation of the broken modchip, and will upload and sort through them later on. The BIOS in the Xecuter is a much more advanced one than in the previous chip. It comes with the Linux-based FlashBIOS installed which has the wonderful feature of flashing over HTTP. A very easy and simple procedure, much better than burning a CD image.

Now, when the previous modcip didn’t work it was suggested by several people that I just softmod my XBox instead. I had a look, but since it requires specific versions of specific games and then a rather lengthy and complicated looking procedure - with the chance of making my XBox unbootable if I did it wrong, I decided to use a modchip. Finding places selling modchips for a 6 year old console is hard enough, but finding specific versions of specific games would seem to be even harder. Installing the modchip was very easy, the hardest part is soldering the D0 line.

I now have an XBox that boots XBMC and, once I’ve made up a longer ethernet cable, can sit in bed and watch films and listen to music across my network.

After trying various permutations of modchip, bypass wires, reflashing and a second XBox and its modchip I have come to the conclusion my new modchip is faulty. I’ve sort of confirmed this by hot-swapping it and by accident, noticing that by pressing down on the chip with my finger it flashes its little red LED.

I think there’s a bad solder joint on the chip itself, or a damaged track. I’ve probed the soldering I did extensively and the chip appears to have continuity with everything… but having to bend it isn’t a good sign.

I was going to simply return the chip to the place I bought it from, and wait for a replacement, but there was a problem; the place I bought it from has a slightly irritating £7 “testing” charge for all returned items, and the postage is at my expense. I paid £10 for the chip so paying £7 plus £3 postage just to send it back is not a sensible cost-effective idea. Also I think I bought the last modchip so there isn’t a replacement for them to send to me.

So I’ve done the next best thing; I found a different place and bought a different brand of modchip. It also cost a different price (£20) but hopefully it’ll work too. A bit of searching the web revealed that the modchip I bought is actually a clone and looking at the PCB reveals some rather cheap and bad manufacturing. The edges of the PCB are quite rough with pieces of fibreglass sticking out, and some of the tracks run very close to the edges.

Or not… as the case may be. I’ve got a modchip, while installing it I took many photos with the intention of documenting it for the interested and curious. Unfortunately, for reasons I can’t work out, the damn thing doesn’t work. All it does is flashes the CD light red and green and fails to boot. If I pull the modchip out, the XBox boots as normal.

I’ve just spent several hours fiddling, resoldering connections, burning my fingers and melting plastic in an attempt to fix it. I’ve also learned quite a bit about what the modchip does. It’s quite interesting… but not as interesting as a working modded XBox with XBMC, which is my intention.

Tomorrow I will try putting the modchip in my working XBox to see whether it’s the machine or the chip. I suspect the modchip is faulty, or the BIOS in it is corrupt. There’s a way to reflash the BIOS, so I’ll give that a go.

On Friday I ordered a Gelaskin from UrbanRetro. What is a Gelaskin you’re probably thinking? Well, to put it bluntly it’s a giant sticker that is applied to the back of a laptop’s screen. They’re supposedly to protect it from scratches and damage, but their main purpose is to make your laptop look really really cool

They’re fairly pain free to stick on since the glue on the back is scored with lots of little lines allowing trapped air to escape. The glue doesn’t leave any residue when peeled off should you want to remove your Gelaskin (which would be an absurd thing to do).

When sticking mine on I had to peel the Gelaskin off a few times before it looked straight and wasn’t crinkled in the middle. My advice is to gently stick one edge on, peel off the backing and carefully smooth it over the rest of the lid. Don’t fret if it all goes wrong and the thing needs taking off, just gently start pulling and try to avoid touching the sticky side or letting it stick to itself. The vinyl is a bit stretchy so apply even force over an entire edge rather than just a corner or it might stretch out of shape.

They make them for iPods and normal laptops too, so go buy one

Amy has a slightly naff keyboard, it’s a small laptop-style one with the only redeeming feature being it’s bright pink (not that I like pink you understand, but on Planet Amy, anything pink is good… no matter how bad it is ) And you know, the keys stick and she gets frustrated with it so I thought I could lend a hand.

Read on to see some photos of the progress…

(more…)

I modified an old hifi to have line inputs so I could connect it to my XBox. I’ve written about it and included photos on my Wiki. Follow the link to read more. It was good fun doing this mod since I didn’t really know what I was doing

I came across this website a while ago when looking for a new stove to take with me when I go camping. Seeing how my idea of camping involves walking for a few hours into the middle of nowhere weight and size is a big issue. There’s a company that sells these stoves, made from old coke cans for about ten quid. They’re called Antigravity alcohol stoves but seeing how my neighbour is a hardened alcoholic and has a bin full of potential stoves I decided to have a go at making one.

So, after checking he was out I had a root through his bin and found a few tins. Several minutes of chopping and bending resulted in this

As you can see it’s a popular Scottish drink and looks a little black. That’s what happened after I lit it for the first time. They run on methylated spirits (denatured alcohol) which is something I don’t have in my house for reasons that escape me. I do however have a lot of lamp oil. Lamp oil burns therefore it must be good to use.

wrong!

lamp oil doesn’t set on fire that easily, it’s like trying to light diesel or cooking oil. You have to sort of boil it up first to get the vapours escaping and then it burns very well. So I whipped out a small gas stove I had, put some lamp oil in a pan, whacked it on the heat and gave it a good boil. At the same time I carefully placed the stove I’d just made into the - now smoking - pan of oil and applied some fire.

You know that cool sound when things suddenly set on fire? 

It’s supposed to look like this when it burns…

Mine resembled this…

Will go and buy some meths tomorrow and try again. It was working, but the flames were a bit too “vigorous”.

Firefox is a great browser, but for some reason it has moments where it seems someone has poured treacle into my PC or the code has been written in BASIC. Quite a bit of this is probably my PC, the randomness of the Internet and other things I can’t control but being a “power user” there must be something I can fiddle with…

Open a new tab and type “about:config” into the addressbar. Look at all those cryptic options! It’s like browsing through /etc or poking the Windows registry with regedit. Fancy a fiddle with the settings? I found two sites that tell you to change things and type in new configuration options - all with the promise your browsing experience will be “faster”. They don’t quantify what this “faster” means, but hey! ignore that and have a fiddle, it seems to have made things load quicker.

Now if only there was a way to make Flash not clog the browser up, or Java bring the whole thing tumbling down.

Firefox Can be Faster

13 Tweaks 

As part of my University course, I’ve had to produce a lesson plan. A seemingly simple task that needs to be done before each lesson I’ll be teaching. I think it took me about an hour and a half or so. It’s not that it’s difficult, it’s just time consuming producing everything that I would need, were this a real lesson.

Not to worry, when I go back to school on Tuesday I’ll be doing them for real. Hopefully after making a few it should get easier and I’ll churn them out quicker.

After visiting Retrovision in Oxford last weekend, I decided buying an original XBox was a good idea. Following from this I also decided buying a modchip and installing it myself would be a good laugh. Well I managed to solder it in myself without destroying anything or burning myself. I did a practise solder on an old hard drive PCB and found it wasn’t so bad attaching wire to tiny surface-mount components.

Naturally, when it came to the real thing my hands were wobbling all over the place and I had to go and do something else for five minutes. Maybe this is what surgeons feel like the first time they chop someone open

It’s not until you need to solder a PCB that you realise just how small the stuff on one is. Yes, I know we’re not supposed to be soldering onto PCBs that have been produced in a clean environment with precision tools that need resetting if there’s so much as a loud cough in the room, but it’s like they don’t want us attaching bits of random circuitry to our electronics

I have to say, XBMC is an excellent piece of software. It really is. It does everything I wish the 360’s dashboard did. I have no idea why Microsoft didn’t implement Windows File Sharing for playing music off a remote computer. Using a non-standard version of UPNP is really really dumb. What’s the point of a supposed media player if it won’t work with anything but XP Media Centre?

Oh sorry, this is Microsoft we’re on about… forgot that part didn’t I :-/

The stupid electricity meter is down to 90p. I’ll have to go and buy some more tomorrow. I can’t wait until we’re properly set up with our new supplier, they can then come round and remove this antequated method of paying.