As mentioned in my previous post I’ve hooked a Commodore 1084s monitor up to my XBox instead of a knackered old 14 inch telly. As requested, here are some photos of it…

Commodore 1084s monitor connected to an XBox showing XBMC

Rear of a Commodore 1084s monitor from 1992

Back in the pixellated, pre-Internet days of the late 80s and early 90s, the thing to buy for your computer was a monitor. Unless you’ve been alive during the time when computers plugged into TVs this will seem quite strange, computers have always plugged into monitors, right?

While it’s true PC and Mac computers have always plugged into monitors, before Microsoft took over the planet it was quite normal for computers to plug into normal TVs, with all the fuzzy RF-induced shimmering mess that gives.

But you know all this, so what’s the point?

Well these monitors weren’t VGA, at best they were TTL RGB which is sort of like RGB SCART. Most monitors had composite inputs, or Chroma/Luma inputs - and sound. This makes them excellent monitors for plugging into DVD players or chipped XBoxes running XBMC. Sure, staring at a 14 inch monitor isn’t going to be fun from across the room, but it works really well in my bedroom on a bedside table.

The image is pin-sharp, doesn’t flicker or lose focus in the corners and is a lot better than the TV I was using.

Thanks to Dom pointing me in the right direction, I’ve managed to make Fuppes share videos and music with my XBox 360, the Logik Internet Radio in my bedroom, the two regular XBoxes running XBMC and my N810 Internet tablet.

I tried this before, and it sort of broke down and I got horribly confused. Now it all works

This will also get written up and explained on my main website soon.

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.

My god, what a haul of goodies we managed today! It was like someone knew we were going and got out the goodies ready for us. I’ve always thought it’d be cool to have a second XBox running XBMC in my bedroom, but never thought it worth the £40-odd for a second hand XBox.

Well… how does £10 grab you? No? Well after taking advantage of our technical knowledge and bamboozling the seller we got it for £8. People’s brains fuse if you start prodding their stuff and saying “ahh the labels are intact, it’s not been opened. This one would be ideal”. It also helps if you have a female counterpart

The XBox even works. I’ve had to order a video cable from eBay, and a Modchip is now in the post too. Looks like I’ll be spending a fun hour with my soldering iron again soon. I get to go cross-eyed soldering SMD components again.

I also bought a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for 20 quid, including two controllers and a light gun. The light gun won’t work on my TV, but this is OK since the NES itself doesn’t seem to work either. It flashes the power light at me. Yes, this means the cart isn’t connecting properly and I need to repair the contacts. I’ve added that to my list. I’ll swap the cartridge slot from a working NES just to make sure the main circuit board isn’t faulty though.

I then bought a couple of books (a Red Dwarf book and a William Gibson), a cheeseburger and managed to block the toilets. Amy bought several of those TV games units that contain an FPGA emulation of an old console and its ROMs. She’s got a Sega Megadrive one that has Sonic the Hedgehog, Columns and other games, and a bizarre Tetris game.

We very nearly bought an Amstrad PCW1512 word processor, but having no money and no desire to carry it across the field stopped us. We also successfully resisted buying another Sega Megadrive, but David did buy a Sega Saturn. There were also many Gameboys for sale and those amusingly illegal “52-in-1″ games carts.

We will return another day looking for games and junk. I think I’ll have to start looking for a bigger house too

I hope not, Microsoft don’t like it… You may recall I had my XBox 360 stolen earlier in January. Well today I received an email in my inbox that was a little odd; in the “hello, we’re the bank and want to know why your card has just been used in Japan” style odd. After checking it for being a hoax or phishing email (I even went to the XBox Live website to confirm the phone number) I gave them a ring. First though, here’s the email:

Dear James,

We are trying to reach You to verify Your Xbox 360 console serial number, because another customer has called in wanting to register the same number.

It would be very helpful, if You could call us back and let us know, if You have sold or given Your Xbox away. If that is not the case, maybe we have the serial number written down incorrectly. Could You verify the 12-digit number on the back of the console (under the bar code, usually ending in 05).

Please give us a call back or reply to this email.

Best wishes,

Xbox Customer Support

So I gave them a ring. It was a freephone number, which is good considering I spent about 90% of the call on hold. Amusingly my call was routed to the US where a nice helpful person took my details and gave me a bit of a help when I got my address wrong and couldn’t remember my phone number. Top tip: when you move house, update your XBox details too!

So far the call was fairly routine and getting a little tedious. This soon changed when I mentioned my 360 had been stolen, not sold or given away. I had to have my call escalated to a supervisor - who seemed to be Danish, just where is my call going? - he took some more details, including my correct phone number, and said I would be called within 48 hours as this was very important and they would need some more information from me.

Looks like the new owner of my stolen XBox 360 has just kicked the giant wasps nest known as Microsoft. I hope they’ve got their receipt, I’ve got mine with the serial number on, and a crime reference number from the police.

I hold no hope of anything much happening except the 360 being banned from XBLA, but still… it’s interesting to follow.

Me and Amy spent the evening unlocking all the songs, and eventually completing GH3 on medium. I’ve got the PS2 version, and while it’s still a fun game to play it doesn’t feel as good as the second one.

For example, the singer has a really large chin, no lips and is kind of creepy looking. Then there’s the drummer who acts like some sort of robotic drumming machine. Whenever there’s a beat, one of his arms or legs moves in a very precise way. The cameraman also looks half asleep, with some really boring shots of the stage and people. In Guitar Hero 2 the Star Power used to make the crowd go wild, the screen would spark and you’d get really cool looking closeups of your guitarist playing away, fingers afire. In GH3 all that changes is the blue fizzy stuff along the note track.

I get the feeling the PS2 version has been ported quickly from the PS3 or XBox 360 version, rather than being specifically written for it. It reminds me of the times when an Amiga or Atari ST game would be back converted for the Spectrum.

We’ve now got hard mode to unlock… oh dear