XBOX 360 Modding

[Siji]

Does anyone know with any certainty if the XBOX 360 is still moddable? I'd heard something about a deadline date mid-year or something.. but then was talking with someone recently who said updates were available for current systems. So I'm curious if anyone knows for sure.

btw: when I refer to modding I don't mean just adding your own hdd, I mean playing backed up games as well.

[Gonzoie - Luclin]

Yes you can mod your 360 still in plenty of different ways. However, I would suggest that if you do mod it that you disconnect your internet connection from your 360. The last banhammer was when MW2 came out. They did an unannounced update on the system and banhammered a very large population of modded 360s.

Don't ever play it online, because eventually you will get banhammered.

[Siji]

Anyone here have any personal experience with the jtag mod? I've got the chance to get a system with it for 250 or buy a new 360 and get it flashed for the same price and I'm trying to decide which to do. Either way, both will have warranties voided so.. The older one with the jtag will be more susceptible to the RROD but if I bought a 3rd party fan/cooler thingie (isn't RROD mostly overheating?) would that suffice? Playing games from HDD versus having to burn a bunch of DL disks seems nice to me.

Thoughts?

[Winnow]

The RROD overheating on old models has to do with the X support bracket issues which causes the heatsinks to detach from the GPU/CPUs (among other things). A fan isn't going to help if that happens.

There's also crappy thermal paste jobs on the older 360's which I replaced when I modded mine.

I took pics of it here back in 2006, scroll down a bit in the thread to see my comments about the thermal paste, fans, etc:

http://www.veeshanvault.org/forums/view ... 14&t=18428

You can see the x-bracket in the upper left part of the first image, only partially in the picture.



That thing goes right below the CPU to hold the huge CPU heatsink in place that you can see in this pic:



I'd go with newer model if possible but not unless you know what you're doing. I think I saved my original 360 form RROD by loosening the bracket and applying the artic silver over the whole CPU and GPUs. I only have three

[Siji]

That sounds fixable.

Also reading through your post you referred to, it seems a pita to burn the disks (aside from the cost factor of all the DL's (My Wii has 180 games presently, I can't imagine having spent money on 180 disks - granted, I wouldn't d/l that many.. but being able to just because I have extra hdd space is nice).

I'm leaning towards getting the refurbed + jtag modded machine. Aside from possible hardware issues, I don't see the upside of doing just a dvd drive flash vs jtag and playing directly from iso's on a hdd..

--

My understanding is the newer models (at least to date) aren't jtag'able. They're flashable, finally, but it's a pita - with the 93xxx series requiring cuts and soldering (neither of which I'm up for myself). After reading more about the RROD stuff (http://www.se7ensins.com/forums/se7ensi ... -rrod.html) I'm actually thinking that burning the DL's and paying for the disks won't be such a bad thing.. I'm just so spoiled with playing from hdd on the Wii.. *sigh* There are lots of guides around for fixing RROD's though.. Ugh. What to do!

[miir]

Ugh. What to do!

Call me crazy, but why not just get a legitimate system and purchase the games you want to play.
Support developers who make good games.

[Siji]

Crazy.

Edit: Actually, to be honest.. I do buy games (music, movies, etc) I thoroughly enjoy. Right or wrong, I take advantage of my ability to try before I buy with what little spending money I have. If I had to guess, I would say people like Winnow are the same way. When I bought my Wii I bought several games along with it. Not a single one of them has made it to the drive as I immediately downloaded copies and play them directly from HDD because of convenience. I can sit my ass on the couch, turn on the Wii and choose from 180+ games without ever having to get up (insert fat ass jokes here, I'm actually down 45 lbs in the last 3 months, but that's another story, booyah!) When I bought my PS2 and my XBOX, I also bought many hundreds of dollars worth of games for each of those systems. On my Wii currently I've got just over 180 games. Of those, I've played maybe 10. None more than 10-15 minutes. Well, except Madden and Pitfall. I don't pay $50 for a game I'm going to play 10 minutes.

That's why I'm really asking about the jtag stuff. Homebrew sounds cool, but I'm really after the convenience. But my question to the wiser people like Winnow is whether the risk is worth it when I can't really afford to buy a replacement system within the next 6 months. I've got two great kids after all. (My daughter playing Dora on the Wii (which I bought!) is about the cutest thing I've ever seen - last night she told my wife (who was playing Mario (which I also bought!)) "Mommy, hit 2 on the contollur like this to jump!" I almost died..)

Other than that, don't like it, too bad, I don't care. The piracy argument has been beaten to death.

[Winnow]

The 20 packs of Verbatim DL DVDs are sometimes 29.00 now at best buy. That's not bad for 20 games. Thankfully, most of them all are manufactured in Singapore but be sure to check the label and avoid any from India.

But my question to the wiser people like Winnow is whether the risk is worth it when I can't really afford to buy a replacement system within the next 6 months.

I wouldn't do it if you can't afford it possibly not working for you sooner than you anticipate. My 360 hack has worked for 3.5 years and counting with zero maintenance required after the initial hack but I went into it knowing that it might not even survive the hacking process as I had to hotwire it to jumpstart the firmware hack which had a good chance of frying my system right off the bat.

When I used to hack DirecTV cards, I researched and went the emulator/programmer card route. It lasted me for years as I was able to reprogram bricked cards and also use the emulator without even having to use a card sometimes while other people bought pre-hacked cards which sometimes went down before they even got them back in the mail from Canada. The easy hack isn't the best most of the time.

I'd recommend never relying on a hack. Look at what happened to all those people who thought they were in "stealth" mode on Xbox live.

I hack everything I can, even if the hack sometimes cost more than if I had a legit subscription, etc, because it's fun and usually a challenge. If it's too easy, and becomes too mainstream, the hack doesn't usually last very long after that. In the case of DirecTV, it was in order to get the local Arizona Cardinals* games when they sucked and were always blacked out and I couldn't see them even if I had a legit sub, but hacked I could. One year I bought the NFL package and still hacked a card so I could see the local games. In fact, almost the entire time I had hacked DirecTV, I also had a legit sub. if my card/emulator softward went down, I'd pop in my legit card until things were up and running again.

BTW, local NBA games are blacked out (no matter what) on the NBA Live iPhone app as well so that's hacked for the same reason as the NFL ticket used to be.

If you stay off of Live gaming, the 360 hack seems pretty reliable but I think MS could brick my 360 if they wanted to because I still get on live to download demos and look around, download game patches, etc. At the same time, I have no clue about the recent hacks. I haven't bothered keeping up with them since I've had no issue for years. YOu also are forced to accept updates if you want to play recent games so there's no avoiding possible brickage if MS chooses to do so.




*all the porn and movie channels were a bonus! Talk about something you'd only watch if free...there was ZERO chance I'd ever actually buy a PPV pron movie so they lost no revenue "due" to my hack.

[Aslanna]

I'm not sure they are legally allowed to 'brick' anyone's console. There's no (dvd firmware) hack that's stopped working they're just not undetectable so that means no Live and no game updates. So having said that I'd probably get any updates and Live games in advance of any sort of drive flashing you're going to do because after that if you go on Live your machine will more than likely be banned.

[Siji]

My assumption is that like other platforms (wii, iphone, etc) the new updates have hack updates to take care of them (that'd be iXtreme, yes?). I'll admit I still don't know the difference between a dashboard update and a firmware update, or what it is MS updates when it pushes updates. Also, is it the flash/hardware that's detectable (and thus, once done you're never safe again), or is it the copied game that's detectable on Live (so as long as you're playing an original you should be ok)? I've already told myself I won't be going on Live with a hacked system, so I don't expect to be able to do so. That being said, I would like to avoid a ban if possible.

Trying to look up answers to 360 questions is a challenge I've found. There's been so many different versions and the same question may have several different answers depending on the date asked and version of hardware in question.

[Aslanna]

My assumption is that like other platforms (wii, iphone, etc) the new updates have hack updates to take care of them (that'd be iXtreme, yes?).

As far as I know there's been no dashboard update that has made a flashed DVD drive no longer work.

Also, is it the flash/hardware that's detectable (and thus, once done you're never safe again), or is it the copied game that's detectable on Live (so as long as you're playing an original you should be ok)?

Nobody knows for sure since Microsoft doesn't usually do an instant ban they gather their stats over time and ban a bunch of people at once but the current theory is that they can now detect that the drive firmware is no longer the original and that's wat gets you flagged for a ban. With the last wave there were people who had their console banned with never even playing a game just having the custom drive firmware.