As this is the forum for all things tech.art/modding/geek.craft, I decided to rant a bit about my failed xbox fileserver mod.
So, I've got this problem. I live in an itty-bitty tiny apartment. We have serious space vs stuff issues. I also have another problem... I have serious hard drive space issues. I have a 320gb drive in my old 500mhz file server... that won't recognize any more than 137gb of the drive. Now, I'm well aware that this is a BIOS issue... and that it simply needs a firmware update to bring it up to spec with lba48 support.... but the fact is, it's a piece of shit and I really don't want to keep it. The monitor takes up too much desk space... the box itself is loud... and it's relatively slow as is.
So, I purchase an xbox classic for $50, thinking to myself "damn, this should be easy to softmod and shove linux onto" ... and from all I've read on the subject, it by all means should be.
*epic facepalm*
No no... nothing is ever that easy. Well, no... some things are... this however wasn't. Murphy's law decided to rear it's ugly head.
The mod started off simple enough...
- manufacture a usb -> xbox adapter *check*
Simple enough... just spliced a female USB adapter onto the cord for a 3rd party xbox controller I wasn't using
- purchase mech assault game *check*
Got it for $2.50 at Electronic Boutique! pwn.
- download action replay and xbox controller drivers for windows *check*
Downloaded ... installed.
- plug usb keychain into xbox using adapter, format keychain as xbox memory card *check*
this went very smoothly
- plug usb keychain into computer, copy mod files over using action replay *che.....er.... wtf?*
This is the first time things went very very wrong. My computer recognized the keychain... but action replay couldn't see it at all. To top it off, I found out that the version of Mech Assault I had wouldn't exploit the xbox the way it needed to to install the mod.
It was because of this that I finally gave up on plan A.
Plan BPlan B, the hotswap. This went amazingly well, and I got the softmod installed and running quicker than I anticipated. I then proceeded to copy the xbox executable version of the cromwell linux bios to the xbox... and ran it... amazing! it worked! I plugged in a portable DVDR just to see if it reads it... no go... so I shut it off to see if I can get the portable DVDR to load in the xbox mod (unleashx i think?) .... and at that point, on reboot, my tv screen starts flickering. This doesn't concern me much as my TV sucks and often goes bonkers for no reason. But wait! I turn the TV off and on again.... AND IT'S STILL FLICKERING?
............ :O ...........! ..........
The damned thing is stuck in PAL mode. I don't even know how it got into PAL in the first place, as that's supposed to be something you need to flash the TSOP to accomplish, and this TSOP is most definitely not flashable without a solder hack.
So I proceed to reinstall MS Dashboard to no avail... still stuck in PAL
The box has since been sitting beside my desk. I'm not entirely convinced, but there's a chance I can fix it if I solder hack the TSOP and hack the BIOS.
Even then however, I'm gonna have to repartition my 320gb drive... and convert the NTFS to EXT3 .... among other things. I'm at a loss as to whether or not I really want to do such a thing.... without a way to back up my backup drive.
So yah... that's my epic modding fail. You guys have any experience with modding consoles? Want to share them?
