Tomm Posted May 13, 2005 Report Share Posted May 13, 2005 Yo, just got an XBOX, and I thought it would be cool if I could use it as a media box thing for the front room. I've heard about XBox media player etc, and I was just wondering if I could use my Xbox for that stuff? I presume I'd need to chip it, can anyone recommend any good chips? Cheaper the better really. Not too bothered about running dodgy games, just the media stuff. But it has to play normal games too. Not arsed about Xbox live, really. So what are the options? I presume some people around here know. Or at least can point me in the right direction. Can I do it myself? How do you transfer stuff to it? DVD? Network? Can you file share on it? Will it play all my DivX movies and stuff. Even better, play them from other computers on the network. That might be asking a bit too much though... So yeah, anyone know about this shit? Mods, if you think this is bad (warez or whatever) then lock it/delete it whatever. But I'm not bothered about piracy. Just want to watch trials in the front room (Y) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaXsteri Posted May 14, 2005 Report Share Posted May 14, 2005 Its possible to use a software mod instead of a chip, all the information you need about it and chips can be found on Xbox-Scene, its the best xbox site have a look through the tutorials and FAQ's they should help. If you can solder then its a no brainer to install a chip, if not then there are solderless chips out there but last time i checked weren't that great. XBMC, Xbox Media Center, is the program/dashboard that you will want to be using. It does everything you need including playing files across the network. Streaming video from my pc is all i use my xbox for, chip it and come back with any software questions if you get stuck (Y) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giptown Posted May 14, 2005 Report Share Posted May 14, 2005 You can also install Linux on an XBox without any chip modding at all. I have an article in PC Pro that gives you a walk through guide, maybe they have it somewhere on the website? If you put Linux on i'm sure you could use that as a media center, and you should be able to network it to other PC's since PC Pro's justification for setting up Linux is that it can be used as a smooth wall or similar. Check out www.xbox-linux.org for more details. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zoojames Posted May 14, 2005 Report Share Posted May 14, 2005 I've always wondered about playing with my xbox, what chips would start affecting my ability to play live? Its the only reason I play games cause my pc is a bit poo and I prefer my xbox controller to a mouse/kboard! James (Y) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giptown Posted May 14, 2005 Report Share Posted May 14, 2005 To play XBox live you need a chip that can be turned on and off, since XBox Live will ban the account of any "altered" XBox consol. Some chips have the ability to be turned on and off so their functionality can be utilised when you are not wanting to connect to XBox Live. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomN Posted May 14, 2005 Report Share Posted May 14, 2005 My mate bought his box chipped and its great having it chipped, just download or even rent games upload load them to ye hard drive and there you go a game for 3 pound odd. He had a upgrade on HD aswell, play movies and everything, even got N64 roms on it and Snes, what more can you ask for (Y) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delusional Posted May 14, 2005 Report Share Posted May 14, 2005 Its possible to use a software mod instead of a chip, all the information you need about it and chips can be found on Xbox-Scene, its the best xbox site have a look through the tutorials and FAQ's they should help. If you can solder then its a no brainer to install a chip, if not then there are solderless chips out there but last time i checked weren't that great. XBMC, Xbox Media Center, is the program/dashboard that you will want to be using. It does everything you need including playing files across the network. Streaming video from my pc is all i use my xbox for, chip it and come back with any software questions if you get stuck (Y) ← What he said :) Xbox-scene is the place for any xbox modding info. It used to be that if you soft-modded the xbox (i.e. didn't install a mod chip) you weren't able to play normal games afterwards, however that's probably been overcome by now (I haven't been paying much attention to the xbox scene for a while now). I'd probably go for a chip anyway - they're fairly cheap (around £25-£30 iirc) and it's nice to have the facility to turn it off. The X-Ecuter chips always used to be the ones to go for, I've got the 2.1 lite I think, and I've never had any problems with that. XBMC is definitely the main app you will be wanting, although I run EvoX as my primary dashboard (OS basically) as well just because it makes it a little easier to upgrade XBMC if I have another dash on there that can run an FTP server. XBMC is frankly an amazing piece of software, it's based on mplayer, so will play pretty much anything. It'll often play things that mplayer on my linux pc won't! I think I've only ever found one or two videos it couldn't handle... it's a doddle to integrate with your network as well, simply set up sharing on your windows machines or a Samba server on a *nix machine, and then browse to the shares in XBMC. Easy. You can install Linux on it, although tbph I don't see the need for it. XBMC does practically everything I could want from a machine plugged into my TV :) edit Sorry, missed a few of your questions: How do you transfer stuff to it? DVD? Network? Can you file share on it? You may have picked this up from above, but... to transfer stuff to it in the first instance you're going to have to use DVD. This is probably the trickiest phase in modding your xbox, simply because some xbox's won't read a lot of DVD's. Generally, the newer your machine is the less problems you should have with this. After you have a dashboard on there though you can dispense with burning DVD's and start using FTP to upload stuff to the machine (most dashboards contain an ftp server). You can fileshare to the xbox, but I've yet to see a piece of software that will let you run a samba/nfs/etc server on the xbox. Although it would be a lot easier than faffing about with FTP everytime you want to upgrade something! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted May 14, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 14, 2005 Wow, cheers for the replies. I don't think it's that old. Second hand, but it's a Crystal one, so it can't be too old. So I get a mod chip from somewhere or another and install that somehow. Would THIS be the sort of thing I'm after? How difficult is the soldering? My soldering iron isn't too dainty... So software. Do I just download XBMC and EvoX and burn them to DVD, and then copy them to the XBox's HDD? I'm a bit confused how they all work. EvoX replaces the Microsoft shizzle when you turn it on? But pop a game in and that will work too? So how does XBMC work? And in terms of stuff like updates/codecs etc, can you connect to the internet to get them? Or do you have to do it via DVD-Rs? Lot of questions (Y) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaXsteri Posted May 15, 2005 Report Share Posted May 15, 2005 http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/beginnersguide.php http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?act=ST&f=18&t=105495 http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=231250 http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/xenium-pinheader-evox.php [url=http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php#?act=SF&f=23]http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php#?act=SF&f=23 Try having a read of those they should help answer any questions (Y) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted May 19, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 19, 2005 OK, so I buy THIS yeah? Is that a good place to buy it from? Anyone know of anywhere better? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delusional Posted May 20, 2005 Report Share Posted May 20, 2005 That's almost certainly the chip you want, and it seems a pretty fair price. If I remember correctly most of the soldering was a doddle, if you're any good with a soldering iron you'd almost have to be trying to mess it up. There is one wire which is a bit fiddly (the d0 contact) though, although how fiddly it is in soldering terms I really don't know. I'm not even sure if that connection is ubiquitous across the various xbox versions... Your best bet for learning how to install stuff is to browse the articles on xbox-scene - I don't really remember any of the detail for the installation. But basically the initial install is all done via burning a DVD, and later updates can either be done via DVD again (if you like wasting disks) or using the FTP server in EvoX to directly transfer the files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted May 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 20, 2005 Ok cheers. I will do a bit more reading before I get around to installing it, but I thought I may as well order it so I have it sooner rather than later. I think I'm all set now, I've got the soldering iron and the Torx keys too. Will probably do it some time next week :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted May 26, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 26, 2005 Just a small bump for anyone who cares how I got on. I bought a chip (An X-ecuter 2.6CE) from Bald Bouncer for a smidge over £20. Great service, and the thing came the next day. So that was an example of a good shop. I would definitely recommend them. I tried to buy the chip from Kanection because it was cheaper (although with the postage added it was actually more expensive), and they charged my card and then sent me an email saying that it was out of stock and I'd have to wait a week :(. Anyway, in the end they refunded the money so it wasn't that bad. So I got the chip and I was amazed at how small it was. Fitting it took ages because I wasn't really sure what I was doing, and the sodering is VERY fiddly. Took me the best part of yesterday afternoon to work out all the soldering and get that done, but now I know what to do, I could probably do it in about an hour tops. It's not too difficult to do if you're confident with a soldering iron - I tend to just go for stuff and worry about breaking it after. Some of the things you have to solder are VERY small, so if you are at all nervous about taking a soldering iron to your Xbox, leave it to someone else. So I fitted it and put it all back together, and it didn't work. Turns out I forgot to solder one one of the points (Y) Anyway, once you've installed the chip, you can tell that it's working, but you need to download a bios for it from somewhere. Technically, these are illegal I think so they're very hard to find, as no-one will tell you where to find them. You have to use mIRC to find a server or something. There's a tutorial on Xbox-scene on how to use this. Once you have the bios, you have to convert it into other forms, and then use a program to package it correctly. In short, really f**king annoying. But there's loads of tutorials again on xbox scene, so once I had found the bios, there was no problem :o Anyway, when you get the bios installed, you have to add a dashboard which is like the operating system. That was easy enough - you just burn it to a CD-RW or DVD (CD-R's don't work). And then here comes the clever bit - once you've installed that, you can connect the xbox up to your computer via the network and use some FTP software to just copy stuff across to the Xbox hard drive. VERY easy to do, and fast. So once you've copied the dashboard to the xbox's hard drive, it works without the CD and you can concentrate on installing the fun things. So far I've put on a SNES emulator and a Mega Drive emulator, and a few games. All on the xbox's disk. Very cool. The other thing I installed was XBMC (Xbox media center), which is actually the best piece of software ever invented. Once I copied that across to the Xbox, you can access anything on your network. Music, Videos, Pictures etc. Just browse the network and find it. No setting up required. So now I can watch all my trials videos, and any other movies you may have "found" on the internet. It even plays DivX, .wma, .mov without having to download any codecs. Absolutely awsome. Oh, and it connects to the internet to tell you the weather :- All in all it took me about a day to set the thing up. Not too difficult really, and definitely worth doing. Everyone who has an xbox should do it :) P.S. Big thanks to Delusional who helped me out when I was stuck. EDIT 20/08/05 I just installed a new hard drive in it, which is pretty easily done. They're just normal PC IDE hard drives. I used the old 120Gb out of my PC, and just whacked that in. Once it's in you have to make another boot disk with a formatting option, which formats the drive to the xbox filesystem. One you've done that, you can just basically copy everything over again onto the new hard drive in the same way as before (via FTP from my computer), only now there is loads more space. Now all my trials and other videos are copied to the xbox itself, so I don't even have to have my PC on, which is good. Also, I downloaded a program called dvd2xbox which allows you to copy DVDs from the drive in the xbox directly onto the hard drive. I.e. games, if you want. So you can copy games to the hard drive so you don't have to use the disk, and they even load quicker too. Apart from that, I've installed a couple of other homemade games which you can download for the xbox. They are pretty rubbish :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Has anyone seen my shoe? Posted August 20, 2005 Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Got any pics of the beast? Sorry for clogging your sale thread. May buy something so i'm not utterly useless. (Y) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted August 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Got any pics of the beast? Sorry for clogging your sale thread. May buy something so i'm not utterly useless. (Y) ← It just looks like a normal (Crystal) xbox. The only thing you can see that is different is a little switch to turn the chip on or off, and a strange blue light emanating from the chip itself. All the differences are inside. And don't worry about the other thread (Y) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Has anyone seen my shoe? Posted August 20, 2005 Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 (edited) It just looks like a normal (Crystal) xbox. The only thing you can see that is different is a little switch to turn the chip on or off, and a strange blue light emanating from the chip itself. All the differences are inside. And don't worry about the other thread (Y) ← Ahh so whats the shiznit on the website above (first link the your post starting 'just a small bump.....). Looks like its got a mini tv ont front Oh and btw ive been interested in PGR2 for a while (Y) Edited August 20, 2005 by Has anyone seen my shoe? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicky Posted August 20, 2005 Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Im really interested in doing this on my old box. But the problem is the harddrive's dead (Y) Fancy selling me the old harddrive you took out of your xbox Tomm? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted August 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Ahh so whats the shiznit on the website above (first link the your post starting 'just a small bump.....). Looks like its got a mini tv ont front ← Yeah, you can buy all sorts of gubbins to go with the more expensive chips. Like USB support so you can use external hard drives I think, and keyboards and mice etc. In fact the controller ports on xboxes are just modified USB ports. I think then you can install some kind of linux and have a fully working PC. But there's not much point - I already have a PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted August 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Im really interested in doing this on my old box. But the problem is the harddrive's dead (Y) Fancy selling me the old harddrive you took out of your xbox Tomm? ← I'd probably rather keep it I'm afraid. The reason I bought a new HDD for the PC was because the 120Gb I had was really noisy and I thought it might die, so I'd rather keep this one as a spare. If you're gonna chip it, just buy a 40gig drive from ebuyer for about £25 (or in fact any hard drive you can lay your hands on), although I don't think that will work in the xbox if you don't chip it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
endofreak Posted August 20, 2005 Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Nice work Tomm. Can I ask how you access the music files on your PC through Xbox Media Centre? The network seems to be working fine on mine, as the weather can access the internet etc. I just cant work out how to access music off my PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted August 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Have you got sharing enabled on the PC? If you're running XP and you have some folders shared, XBMC should just find the workgroup and then you can explore the shares. It's under My files > Workgroups (SMB) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
endofreak Posted August 20, 2005 Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Just set my music folders as shared, but when I select SMB I get an access denied messege. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted August 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Just set my music folders as shared, but when I select SMB I get an access denied messege. ← You might have to restart the computer and possibly the router/xbox to see the changes. Have you got filesharing enabled between PCs on the network and does it work? If so and the xbox is in the same domain (I.e. 192.168.0.xxx, as I'm pretty sure it will be), then there should be no probs. On XBMC there are two options - one is SMB, the other is Workgroups (SMB). You want the workgroups option. The other option is for if you set up an SMB server on one of the PCs - which is something you can do if it still won't work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted August 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Also if it's saying access denied you might need to enable a guest account on your network if you're got some silly sharing going on. Does it allow you to see the workgroup in XBMC, or does it come up with something like "NT_FILE_NOT_FOUND"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicky Posted August 20, 2005 Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 I'd probably rather keep it I'm afraid. The reason I bought a new HDD for the PC was because the 120Gb I had was really noisy and I thought it might die, so I'd rather keep this one as a spare. If you're gonna chip it, just buy a 40gig drive from ebuyer for about £25 (or in fact any hard drive you can lay your hands on), although I don't think that will work in the xbox if you don't chip it. ← so my hdd in my xbox is dead at the moment, but if i was to buy i modchip i could simply burn the xbox bios only any hdd? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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