More Xbox Surgery

A few weeks ago I successfully replaced the DVD drive that was giving some read disc errors. I decided this past weekend to do a bit more hacking. I bought through the Internet one of those mod chips. No, no, I don't plan on pirating any games. But here's why I did it. With the hack I'll be able to store all my xbox games on the hard drive without having to reach for the DVD itself.

Anyway, installing the mod chip was a bit of a pain but was able to do it in about 2 hours. There were a few tricky parts to deal with. First, there was a "pinheader" that I needed to install. Basically this pinheader has about 12 pins that go into the motherboard. The first major problem I ran into was that the holes that the pinheader goes into were filled. Since I have the original 1.0 xbox, these holes were filled. Later versions of the xbox had these holes open. Though painstaking, I removed the solder from the holes with a soldering iron. After that I was able to install the pinheader.

After that I had to solder three cables to the back of the motherboard. There was one point that was extremely difficult to do but I was finally able to get it. After that I install the mod chip onto the pinheader and closed up the xbox. On the first try, the xbox wouldn't boot properly. I thought, oh, oh, I just fried my xbox. But after reading a bit on the Internet, I figured I forgot to solder something. Opened up the xbox again and this time soldered the back of the pinhead. This did the trick.

So now I was presented with a flash screen. Oh, brother, I have to flash the mod chip? After some more reading on the Internet, I found the flashing software. Burned it onto a DVD and put it in the xbox. According to the instructions, the flash program will detect the DVD and start flashing the thing. But nothing would happen. I tried several DVDs and CD's, but nothing. So I pulled out my old DVD drive and bang, the DVD with the flash worked.

Ok, so I have this thing flashed. Now what? More reading. Ok, now I need to install a dashboard. A dashboard is kind of like a menu where you can run games from your hard drive, copy games from DVD to the hard drive, ftp from your PC to your xbox and back, and more. So after lots more reading, I found some software that will let you do everything. Install the dashboard, install a new hard drive, flash the xbox, etc, etc. So, I installed the dashboard. FTP'ed to the xbox. Copied all my saved games to the PC. Then I installed an 80 gig hard drive into the xbox and copied back my saved games. Then I copied my copy of NHL 2K5 to the hard drive. All is good now.

The other things I want to do on the xbox is replace the fans inside as they are ultra loud. Since I have a 1.0 xbox, there's two fans inside instead of one in 1.1 and up. I've already orderd a headsink and new fan.

I really enjoy hacking and stuff. I mainly do it for fun. In the past I've added bigger hard drives to my tivos. I've also replaced all fans in my Dual 800 Mac and my Dell. My office is now very quiet :)

In closing I'd like to say that I don't in anyway condone pirating. Hacking my xbox is just a hobby for me and while I know it is illegal and all to hack your xbox, I'm di it because I have a 2 year old who destroys my bought xbox dvds.