Hacked my 360

[Winnow]

I wanted to see what Madden 07 was like on the 360 but didn't want to buy it and there's no demo for it. (pay per view movie on Live pissed me off as well)...got a wild hair up my ass, read a little on Xbox Scene forums and decided to mod my 360 with a DVD hack.

First, I don't recommend anyone do this. It works fine with Live and I guess you can even play your backup/copied games on Live but I can't imagine that will last long. There's lots of opportunities to screw up your 360 doing this. The fun factor is high for tech geeks though.

The first thing I had to do was take apart my 360. It's a lot more difficult than the original Xbox but doable with #10 and #8 Torx screwdrivers along with some other common tools to pry open the case.

You can see a five minute video of someone taking apart a 360 here:

http://www.informit.com/content/images/ ... box360.wmv

You can tell what kind of DVD drive you have by looking at the tray. I knew I had a Hitachi but not which of the seven different Hitachi models that were known to be in 360's.

After getting the case open, it turns out I have a Histachi 47D type drive. Not good. In order for Windows XP to recognize your 360 drive, you need to put it into mode-b. The common method to do this is by using SLAX, I small linux bootable CD slightly mod'd which puts your 360 DVD into mode-b, you then you do a soft reboot of WinXP and you're ready to flash your DVD with new firmware.

Since I have the 47D (and possibly because I have a Nforce 4 motherboard, I had to either buy a xecuter 360 connectivity kit or use a technique called crossed wiring. ...No idea how much those connectivity kits are but I think ~50.00 and I wasn't up for that. That left my only option as cross wires. To do this I had to find/make two thin wires and take apart the power cable connected to the 360 DVD drive, place one wire in with the pin 0, and one wire in with pin 9. With the added wires stuck in those pin slots, I had to hold the two wires together while turning on the 360 and then release them "instantly" or fry 360 DVD drive. I guess I was fast enough as the 360 circle green light flashed fast like it should and the drive went into mode-b.

With my 360 DVD drive in mode-b, Windows XP assigned a drive letter to it. From there, I had downloaded the firmware required off the newsgroups. It's been awhile so the firmware method has been refined so you only need to bring up a DOS window, enter a command, I think mine was "FLASH21.BAT F 1572" where F is the 360 DVD drive letter and 1572 is the name of the folder that the original firmware for the drive will be stored so the drive can go back to stock if Microsoft does something.

The firmware flash went smoothly. I put the 360 back together and had already downloaded the 7GB+ Madden 07 image off the newsgroups. I had to make a trip to Best Buy and pick up some Verbatim DL+R Double Layer DVDs as they appear to be the most compatible. Also, there are only three brands of DVD drives that work well burning 360 DVDs...Panasonic, Lite-On and something else. Luckily, I have one of the Panasonics on the list. CloneCD works best for burning 360 DVDs (DVD Decrypter also works). The image I downloaded was already patched so all I had to do was fire up my freshly pirated copy of CloneCD and burn it (took about 25 minutes).

I popped the copy of Madden 07 into the 360 and it loaded right up. Madden 07 looks great on the 360...totally different than the standard Xbox version. I'm glad I didn't buy it though as I only use it for simulation and with Madden 07, there's no way to have the computer play both sides as there was in the past. You can simulate games but only in the background. Bummer. As for gameplay and animation, Madden 07 360 really is impressive. Seems to play well. I used practice mode to throw a few passes.

Edge ended up with 1600+ yards and 12 TDs for the year. I hope that turns out to be accurate.

Anyway, it was a fun day of hacking. It's not easy to do atm, and risky, so hopefully Microsoft will wait awhile if they have plans to do something about it.

A nice bonus to the hack is that it will play old Xbox backups as well. Sucks that all you can do is play copied games atm though.

Here's the firmware notes for the Hitachi hack:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
OPA - Xtreme v2.1 firmware - Hitachi 7in1 - v32/v36/v40/v46/v47/v58/v59
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW PACKAGE: "OPA-XTREME-HITACHI-7IN1-V2_1.RAR" 08/08 - 991,956 bytes

* ALL NEW XTREME V2.1 FIRMWARE FOR ALL BUILDS OF THE HITACHI DRIVES!

- Now includes "Security Sector Extraction" for all Hitachi Drives

- No other improvements, same as our earlier "Xtreme v1.3", this
release just supports SS Extraction within Windows without the
need to re-flash your drive back and forth between PLAY & RIP!

* SMALL BUG fixes from last night release of our Xtreme v2.0 - 7IN1

- #1: The new delay command frozed on some user's computer setups.

- #2: Users with v46 drives had no TRAY FUNCTION after flashing...

* To fix your BRICK (We are very sorry!, But it is fixable!)

- manually open the dvd tray!
- now power up your PC system
- power up your bricked drive
- re-flash the drive with 2.1

- #3: Users with v47 drives had random "64" errors when playing...

* To fix this problem, just re-flash your drive with v2.1

* IMPROVED FLASHing & RESTORing SYSTEM

- Windows 2000 support & Windows '64bit compatible

- No freezing due to "firewall" or "ZoneAlarm" programs

- Still recommended to shut-down programs like "Daemon Tools"

- Can FLASH and/or RESTORE over any release of "firmware"

* Now hard at work the "Stealth" (Xtreme v3.0) firmware for Hitachi

- At least two weeks away, so please don't ask before then

- More news will be released on the boards when it is available

-=(Gary at OPA)=-


Flashing your drive
-------------------
FLASH21.BAT automatically makes a complete backup of your firmware system

* To FLASH a drive, it must be in "Mode B" and have "Drive Letter"
* Then just run FLASH21 from "Command Prompt" while inside windows
* Prompt must be at the same directory with the rest of the files!

* FLASH21 needs two variables, the assigned "Drive Letter", and any 4
numbers for the BACKUP directory, use a new unique number like 1572

- This is used to make your BACKUP directory!

- For Example: FLASH21.BAT H 1572

- Will cause the FLASH after running to have, a BACKUP directory
"X21-1572.OPA" and the program will store FIVE firmware files:

---- key.bin ---- DRIVE KEY /// DRIVE KEY
---- was.bin ---- Your drive before FLASH
---- gdrXX.bin ---- The untouch original fw
---- XX_21.bin ---- The patched Xtreme21 fw
---- now.bin ---- Your drive after FLASH!

- Where the XX in the above names will be the version of your Hitachi

* Program will not start unless a BACKUP is correctly made and stored!

* Flash will auto-detect your firmware build of your Hitachi drive.

* You can flash any drive, even "v1.1" or "f900" or your own hacks.

* System will check flashed firmware, and redo until 100% completed.

* Once you get the PASS / DONE line, you can shut-down the system.


Restoring your drive
--------------------
RESTORE.BAT automatically restores your drive back to original state

* To RESTORE a drive, it must be in "Mode B" and have "Drive Letter"
* Then just run RESTORE from "Command Prompt" while running windows.

* The new RESTORE does not need any backup, it will 100% restore your
drive back to "ORIGINAL" state as long as it is visible in Windows!

* Program will not start unless it detects the version of your Hitachi!

* You can restore any drive, even "v1.1" or "f900" or your own hacks.

* System will check flashed firmware, and redo until 100% completed.

* Once you get the PASS / DONE line, you can shut-down the system.


Features
--------
Here it is, the long awaited World's first Xbox 360 backup firmware
modification to boot game backups on Hitachi GDR-3120-L DVD drives!

But, now complete with "Security Sector" Extraction to make your
own backup of original Xbox 360 and XBOX 1 games on your system.

Boots all Xtreme Xbox 360 backups
Boots all Xtreme Xbox 1 backups supported by emulator
Boots all Xbox 360 originals
Boots all Xbox 1 originals supported by emulator

Use on Xbox Live at your own risk


Technical details
-----------------
Security sectors are read in this order:

Reads Xbox 360 security sector from PSN 04FB1F (Layer 0)
Reads Xbox 1 security sector from PSN 605FF (Layer 0)
Reads Xbox 360 security sector from PSN FD021E (Layer 1)

Flashes sector 90003000 (Xtreme Custom Code)
Flashes sector 9003e000 (Master Checksum)
Flashes sector 90035000 (Security Sector Read)
Flashes sector 90034000 (Media Detect)
Flashes sector 90027000 (Challenge Response 2/2)
Flashes sector 90026000 (Challenge Response 1/2)
Flashes sector 90025000 (Mode B to A 2/2)
Flashes sector 90024000 (Mode B to A 1/2)
Flashes sector 9001d000 (Game Unlock)
Flashes sector 9001c000 (Drive Response Table Decrypt)
Flashes sector 9000a000 (UNDO Tray Tweak)
Flashes sector 90006000 (Mode B Tweak)

[Animalor]

You know, you could've probably just walked into EB and taken a look at Madden 07 running on the demo unit and played it there.

That's what was in the 360 at mine when I stopped there yesterday.

[Mr Bacon]

Winnow is still on his learner's permit and no one wanted to go to EB with him, obviously

[vn_Tanc]

Did you notice how the 360 is hackable in a much superior fashion than the PS3 ever will be, though?

[*~*stragi*~*]

lol

[Boogahz]

Did you notice how the 360 is hackable in a much superior fashion than the PS3 ever will be, though?

BUT WHAT ABOUT BLU-RAY?!

[Winnow]

Did you notice how the 360 is hackable in a much superior fashion than the PS3 ever will be, though?

The original Xbox reigns supreme for hackability although the Xbox 360 has already surpassed the PS2's non-chip Swap Disk gayness with the soft DVD firmware mod. Gotta like Microsoft releasing the XNA Game Studio Development Tools to encourage creativity and small company development as well! Xbox/Xbox 360 certainly has the bigger home brew following.

[kyoukan]

what kind of socially retarded chew toy doesn't even get when they're being made fun of so overtly?

[*~*stragi*~*]

I'm pretty sure he gets it and I don't know why people decided to troll his thread, even though it made me chuckle a little. Obviously this belongs in the modding forum though, Winnow!

[kyoukan]

I'm pretty sure he gets it and I don't know why people decided to troll his thread,

because he trolls every other thread in this forum with worthless fucking shit?

[Fash]

because he trolls every other thread in this forum with worthless fucking shit?

[Winnow]

Hey kouykan, how's that Winnow hate club coming along my little stalker friend? Let me know when those voices inside your head get the membership into double digits and I'll make a T-Shirt, er shirts, for your club!

...so determined to trash my threads. You can do it! Maybe I should just reserve the next post after mine for you in case you go afk and can't flame right away!

In the meantime, this hack is working great. I grabbed Prey and Rumble Roses off the newsgroups. I had to use SS Merge to patch a raw dump of Rumble Roses which was interesting. So far, I've burned three 360 images and no coasters.

On a side note, Rumble Roses is the most fun I've had with a 360 game yet. It's a wrestling game in the mold of DOA but the tutorial is well done and it's perfect for some quick entertainment. fighting game style. If you're going to play a fighting game, may as well have lots of eye candy along with it since there's little story.

Looking forward to Saints Row and Enchanted Arm coming out next Tuesday.

Another sorta nice thing about the hack is there's quite a few Japan only 360 games out there. You can grab them off the newsgroups and at least have a look at them this way.

[kyoukan]

You're god damn right I'm going to trash every fucking worthless thread you make. You trash everyone else's, so why not?

There isn't a fucking single thing about you that doesn't turn my stomach. If you like those games so much, how about buying them you fucking deadbeat?

[*~*stragi*~*]

enchanted arms chan please do not let me down

i fear it will be the snakes on a plane of rpgs

[Winnow]

enchanted arms chan please do not let me down

i fear it will be the snakes on a plane of rpgs

Hoping it will be similar to the FFX type battle system. If so, it should be fun!

[Animalor]

Enchanted Arms' combat is grid based.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/eme ... jb95bMMvTQ

This is a player-uploaded video from the jpn version of the game.

[Winnow]

I took my 360 back apart because the fans were cranking up to max speed right after I turned it on. The 360 is always loud, but it was sounding like a Jet getting ready for takeoff.

One tip, if doing the DVD Hack, don't remove the black screws when taking apart the 360 to get to the DVD drive. They hold the CPU and GPU heatsinks in place.

So, after reading up on what others have found after checkout out their 360 motherboards and finding bad thermal paste jobs and tinfoil layers between the chip and heat sinks on some, I decided to take mine apart and put some arctic silver on them to get the heat down.

Here's what I found. The pictures are a little blurry, my hands were probably still shaky from getting those fucking #8 torx screws removed (easy to strip the screw heads on them, be careful)

A picture of the 360 motherboard with CPU heatsink removed:



Unfortunately, I had already wiped most of the thermal paste off the CPU in this pic:



Here's a better shot of the GPU chip caked with crappy paste:



After cleaning all the crap off and putting on some Arctic Silver, the 360 does run cooler. If anyone's having heat issues with their 360, it might be worth doing this (it's not as easy as your typical PC project though so don't try it on a whim)

[Winnow]

The fans in the 360 still sound like turbo jets so I modified my Xbox slightly to let more air pass through the back of the console.

There is a metal grill and then the plastic grill that the twin fans need to push air through and they are part of the noise problem. Removing the grills increases airflow while reducing the noise levels.


Here's a shot of the internal metal grill with DVD, air funnel, and fans removed:





I went to the store and bought a Dremel to cut through the metal and plastic. I don't know how I've survived in the world this long without a Dremel in my toolbox!

Not pretty but I don't expect anyone to be looking at the back of my 360!


These are the stock fans. Very loud. A company sells some replacement fans for the 360 that are supposed to push more air while at the same time being less noisy. I think I'm going to get those as this mod helped but it's still too loud.


Not too bad looking but I need to polish it up some.


Anyway, if you're running into any kind of heat problems, from easiest to hardest: replace the fans with the whisper set, remove the grills, clean off the CPU and GPU and apply Artic Silver thermal paste to reduce the temps.

[miir]

I went to the store and bought a Dremel to cut through the metal and plastic.

You actually paid for something?

[Winnow]

I went to the store and bought a Dremel to cut through the metal and plastic.

You actually paid for something?

It was late at night and there was only a few people in the store. I'm sure I was being watched on camera. Any tips on how I could have kyoukan'd it under those conditions?

BTW, it was a Walmart and they had a PS3 running demos behind glass of games already out on the 360 or games that won't be out at launch. That thing is mammoth.

[Syenye]

enchanted arms sucked. most of the quests were repetitive, and character development was boring and obvious. i think there was a storyline. i blasted through it anyway, and got to the end boss and couldn't beat it at my current level. i checked guides, and they recommended being 30 levels higher, so i said fuck it and returned it.

[Winnow]

enchanted arms sucked. most of the quests were repetitive, and character development was boring and obvious. i think there was a storyline. i blasted through it anyway, and got to the end boss and couldn't beat it at my current level. i checked guides, and they recommended being 30 levels higher, so i said fuck it and returned it.

The cut scenes were very well done and enjoyable to watch but other than that, the story and gameplay blew chunks.

There's no forgetting the "Fantastic Sax" weapon though.

[Moonwynd]

I am anxiously awaiting Winnow's Dremel Hack thread!!!

[kyoukan]

I went to the store and bought a Dremel to cut through the metal and plastic.

You actually paid for something?

You can't download dremels. Although if you could, I'm sure Captain Hook there would have stolen that too, justifying it by saying that he once bought another tool or at least was in the vicinity of someone that bought one.

[Winnow]

I knew Dremel. Dremel was a friend of mine.



You, thing, are no Dremel!

Despite the tough economic years of the 1930s, and to some extent even due to them, the
industry revived and companies like Porter-Cable and Black and Decker continued to sell their
portable electric drills, saws, routers and sanders. They did well in part due to the effort of
hardworking sales people and because the tools helped so much in the New Deal work projects
going on all over the country.

In 1932 A.J. Dremel developed a small master tool that he claimed
was actually a 100 tools in one. All the user had to do was steal an attachment and what was once
a router became a drill and so on. Dremel believed that as long as you bought the main tool, stealing the accessories from the competitors was acceptable, later going on to say, "I started out by stealing dentist drill bits and using them with the Dremel but had to stop as I'd end up also stealing a can of their laughing gas while I was there and ended up asphyxiating myself in my lab until I passed out instead of inventing new gizmos"

[Jice Virago]

enchanted arms sucked. most of the quests were repetitive, and character development was boring and obvious. i think there was a storyline. i blasted through it anyway, and got to the end boss and couldn't beat it at my current level. i checked guides, and they recommended being 30 levels higher, so i said fuck it and returned it.

Jesus how could you not beat that end boss? After the first stage, you had to try to lose to her. I am guessing you didn't hit the side dungeon to get the descent weapons? Levels meant shit in that game, it was all about your stats and capping them out. The magic drain power pretty much crushed all the bosses except for stage one Ice Queen. The game was mildly entertaining, but it only had a couple challenging fights the entire game and even those had little tricks to them.

[Aslanna]

Something to look out for if you modded your 360 in similar fashion:

The week of May 7th 2007 might not be know for any great historical references, but for XBOX 360 gamers it might just be the beginning of a bitter battle between XBOX 360 modders and Microsoft.

It has been know for some time that there is firmware modification that would allow gamers to simply flash their existing XBOX360’s with some modified code and allow them to play backups of both XBOX and XBOX360 games off and online without being banned or even detected, that is until this Monday.

You see…. along with all the other little tweaks and features of the spring update it seems Microsoft is planning on slipping in a little bit of code that can allow Microsoft to detect any users who use backed up games to be identified and then possibly banned from XBOX Live, but not so fast Bill. It seems some key players in the mod scene have also been preparing for this day and have decided to preempt Microsoft update with a new version of their own version of the firmware called Xtreme firmware 5.3 which will prevent Microsoft’s newest update from being able to detect burned backups. If this sounds confusing that’s because it is.

I spoke with Commodore4Eva who is coding the updates for the Xtreme firmwares and he did a quick Q&A with me

Gameswank: With a current working firmware, why is there a need for a new version of the Xtreme Fw?

Commodore4Eva: It was let known to me that MS received a report on how to detect backup games sometime ago and were working on it for the dash update, so I thought it timely to release this firmware this weekend

Gameswank: You say that you had some inside info that the spring update would have the ability to detect and possibly ban 360 modded users from their console and or XBOX Live?

Commodore4Eva: The method won’t detect modded drives but can detect a backup disk and make it not boot, banning someone for a copied disk would be harsh and damaging to MS themselves both in revenue and popularity

Gameswank: So you say version 5.3 will fix that? How can you verify that your patch will keep users from being banned if the update from Microsoft is not out yet?

Commodore4Eva: That doesn’t matter, the theory behind the detection is valid, so overcoming it is good for the future, makes it harder for MS to detect. The current Xtreme firmware already has many FEATURES that prevent

(That's how the original article ended. Looks like it got cut off!)

[kyoukan]

I just don't follow that winnow-logic. how is anti piracy firmware going to hurt microsoft's revenue stream? does he really think MS gives a fuck if the retards that hack their 360 and download games for free get banned from logging onto Live?

[Aslanna]

Here's my take on that:

MS charges $50 a year for Live. That you pay regardless of having a hacked machine or not. If they ban those people MS will no longer getting that revenue. Plus if any of those people purchased extra stuff, like the Arcade games, they'd lose out on that as well.

So the rationale being that if you ban people you'll lose out on the revenue they'd provide. As most modders probably wouldn't buy games anyway MS wouldn't be making that back from software sales. If you ban them from Live they can still play downloaded games.

If Live access was free that would be a different story.

[Kwonryu DragonFist]

Didn't read the whole original post, but Winn, that sounded advanced, hacking your console like that.

Good job with the hack!

And of course, hope it was worth it!

[Winnow]

I don't log onto live and haven't connected to the net in six months with my 360. I'm surprised Microsoft has waited this long to prevent LIVE play for copied games. Microsoft cares more about Xbox Live than anything. it was the same for the original Xbox. You couldn't play copied games or log into the default dashboard if you had a hacked box and that's how it should be.

I use my (copied) games about 30 minutes or less on average and then throw them onto a stack. I won't be crying too much if MS figures out how to stop the hack or if they feel like stopping it. MS understands more than most companies how to balance hacks/piracy with growth in actual sales. The hacker/homebrew community for Xbox was/is huge. Since the 360 is considered the "hardcore" gaming system of the three biggies, it needs all the nerds it can get. A plain unhackable console is kind of boring after awhile. It's fun to tinker. Sony sort of figured that out this time allowing other OSs on the PS3.

Games like Crackdown have forced dashboard updates included in them so it's not possible to avoid an update unless you don't want to play new releases.

Hacking anything (consoles, satellite, cable, etc) should be considered a hobby and not a main means of entertainment.

It's not fun if there's no cat and mouse game. DirecTV was great for years in that respect. I'd subscribe to direcTV so they'd get their $50-$60 from me each month and then hack it so I could see the local sports games which would normally be blacked out. As a side benefit, I'd get every other channel as well. But DTV would zap the hacks every few months, every few weeks or sometimes daily and it was possible to be down anywhere from a day to months. That's when I'd stick in my legit sub'd access card and keep on watching. It would be pretty hard to watch programs counting on a hack. Of course running a virtual DTV access card from a PC using an MK-11 emulator meant there was nothing to actually zap!

Soon as the 65nm quiet 360 is released, I'll buy that one as my legit console and continue to hack and play around with my jet engine 360.

Anyways, fun stuff.

[masteen]

Soon as the 65nm quiet 360 is released, I'll buy that one as my legit console and continue to hack and play around with my jet engine 360.

Have they announced when that will be?

[Nick]

Did that Zombie game ever come out, and was it any good?

[Funkmasterr]

Soon as the 65nm quiet 360 is released, I'll buy that one as my legit console and continue to hack and play around with my jet engine 360.

Have they announced when that will be?

Not a specific date but it is supposed to be this fall, im guessing probably just in time for christmas time, etc.

[vn_Tanc]

I think the "Elite" is all you're going to get this year. Or probably ever.

Two hardware revisions close together is PR suicide.

[Winnow]

Zee bannings started today:

http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/xbox360/ ... 452ir3.jpg

Microsoft Starts Banning 360s on LIVE - MS Confirms

>> With the amount of posts we see on our forums ... it's clear, Microsoft decided to start banning Xbox360 with modified firmwares today (both Hitachi-LG and Toshiba-Samsung drives).

While it's the same release date as Halo3 beta, it seems that people who didn't download Halo3 also get banned. They probably detect backup discs (and not the modified firmware) when you play 'em online (not confirmed yet).

Even people using the new firmwares with disc-jitter added get banned, so it looks like Microsoft found another way to detect it.

Just like on Xbox1 it looks like Microsoft bans the console unique ID (serial), not the LIVE user. Microsoft will not allow anyone to login on LIVE on a banned console.

Many people on the official xbox.com forums also claim they got banned but didn't have a flashed firmware ... we'll have to see how that story develops in the coming hours and days.

Update: This was just posted on Microsoft's Games Global

Marketing team blog:

One of the great things about LIVE and the unified community is that we work hard to create a level playing field for all gamers and have a no tolerance policy towards inappropriate behavior like hacking or cheating. As part of our commitment to our members, we do not allow people that we have detected to have modified their console to connect to LIVE. This is an important part of our efforts to try and maintain a fair gaming environment for the large majority of gamers that play by the rules. This topic is more important than ever given the recent release of the Halo 3 beta. As a result, some consumers that try to login to LIVE who we detect have illegally modified their console will get an error code (Status Code: Z: 8015 - 190D) when trying to connect to the service. These users will not have their account automatically banned from LIVE, but they will no longer be able to access the service from the console they modified.

We have stated in the past that customers can only enjoy access to the Xbox LIVE community through the use of a genuine, unmodified, Xbox console and we will continue to enforce this rule to ensure the integrity of our service, the protection of our partners and the benefits of our users.

Looks like the console, not the LIVE account is being banned so you just need to buy another console if you happened to be using a hacked 360 on Live (bad idea).

[Aslanna]

Well according to the xbox forum thread I saw (and the quote above) some people who haven't modded theirs (or so they said) have gotten banned as well. If so, good job Microsoft!

Guess that's also another thing to look for if you buy a used 360... It could be a banned machine. If they have the technology to detect they should ban the Live user and not the console imo. I know if I was someone who was considering a second hand 360 before I sure as heck wouldn't now.

[Winnow]

Mine would be easy to tell. It's missing the back fan grill!

Trading: Xbox 360 w/50 games

will throw in hacked PS2 and hacked original Xbox!

---

Seems ok if you don't use LIVE. I haven't read much on it yet. Will the games not play at all or just not on LIVE anymore? If it shuts down local play as well, then the next forced game update will put a hold on things.

A couple of Xbox/Xbox 360 hackers sold out to Microsoft not too long ago. There was a story on Xbox Scene.

Their goal is to get Microsoft to split security so hackers can use home brew without compromising Live. Xbox 360 would rock if XBMC can be ported over. Best Media center going = the homebrew XBMC. Better than MCE for sure.

[Aslanna]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYvZnTFpip0

Even Hitler wasn't safe

[Winnow]

lol, that was well done!

"I mean how much fun can you have with Super Fucking Mario!!!"

"running around as a mad Italian jumping on god damned turles!"

----

"Don't worry dear. He's not that desperate! "

[Winnow]

Almost 5 years to the day my Xbox hack finally is no more!

Not a bad run for never having to touch it after the original firmware hack. Madden 12 took it out with a dashboard upgrade. (edit: funny that Madden 07 was the first hacked game I tried!)

I took apart my original xbox and was going to rehack it but I'm missing a power cable I need for the old sata Hitachi drive in order to power it up on my PC. It looks like I can probably rehack it if I find that cable or buy another one.

My other option is to hack my new Slim model. I still have Live Gold though for half a year I think. There seems to be a wealth of hacks out there these days. I'm interested in the Wasabi Optical Disc Drive Emulator:

• Solderless installation
• Selection of your favourite ISO's via our intuitive user interface
• Support for AP25 enabled ISO's
• ESATA interface is used in place of USB providing superior performance, since data is transferred directly between the ESATA HDD and Xbox 360 resulting in impressively high bandwidth, many times faster than reading from a real DVD disc
• Elegant and streamlined console inspired case design
• Versions available for both fat and slim consoles
• NTFS file system natively supported
• Powerful embedded CPU running performance tuned Real Time Operating System
• Regular firmware updates available free for download
• Fully updatable hardware (MCU and FPGA's) from ESATA HDD including a failsafe recovery mode
• No need to modify your original ODD
• Hardware selectable pass through mode - providing access to the original ODD

I think I'm going to retire my original xbox. It sounds like a jet engine. I might just buy another Xbox slim to hack around with and keep one legit Live xbox.

Anyone hack one of the Slims? I need to read up on the latest.

[Tyek]

I might have the cable, I think I have one of the first ones, what does it look like?

[Aslanna]

I still have two Jaspers that are jtag'able. Can't find anyone around here to do it though. Other than that the only hacks I've been aware of was the optical firmware flashing but it's been awhile since I have followed that stuff. I haven't even heard of the Wasabi thingie.

[Winnow]

I might have the cable, I think I have one of the first ones, what does it look like?

It looks like more than just a cable is needed. I must have hacked my drive while it was still powered by my 360 last time because it looks like a converter is needed if I want to power it directly from my PC. I'll have to see if I can do that again.

[Winnow]

...and I'm back in business!

I'm watching my annual simulated first Cardinals game (at home vs Panthers) of the year on Madden 12.

Since it's been 5 years, it took a little while to track down the infoz on what I needed to do. I did the following:

-had to use my 360 to power my Hitachi DVD drive.
-connected the 360's DVD drive via SATA to my PC
-Used JungleFlasher v1.86 (for the flashing)
-grabbed the iXtreme firmware pack with the it Plus 1.91 firmwares for all the various 360 DVD drives.
-made sure drive was in mode-b (already was since I had flashed it in the past)
-reset DVD to stock firmware
-flashed DVD drive to the 1.91 iXtreme
-put 360 back together. I only used two screws. the other 9 or so aren't really needed!

The console plays like it always has again except it plays Madden 12 and hopefully whatever games come out in the near future. At least I know how to flash drive again in case something bad happens so I can use the 150 games or so that I have.

Madden 12's rosters are way out of date. They must have had burn the discs early because Kolb isn't on the Cardinals so they probably don't have any of the free agent trades accounted for.

[Aslanna]

Apparently a new hack is out to run unsigned code. It looks a bit complicated for people who can't solder.

Tutorial for those interested. I imagine those dev boards will start going out of stock everywhere.

This doesn't allow you to run backups and XBLA games at this time. Just homebrew llike emulators. Sorry, pirates!

[Winnow]

Dead Island, Space Marine and San Francisco Driver all have been released on the new XGD3 disc format which adds an additional 1GB of space to the disc by writing to the inner ring. The game data isn't larger though. While iXtreme 1.91 + firmware will recognize and play retail versions of these games, the new disc format is not available to the public yet (smallest quantities is in 100,000 if you want to purchase them) (DVD DL 10 instead of DVD DL 9)

The only way to play these hacked games is if you have performed the JTAG hack on your 360 which involves quite a bit of soldering/rewiring on the motherboard. JTAG is a difficult hack but allows you to use any size HD you want and also run homebrew, etc.

As for the firmware hack, iXtreme 2.0 will be released soon. So far it's been determined that the new games can be burned onto the standard DL discs but I'm thinking it will be awhile before new games are playable using the DVD firmware hacks.



I'll have to make a shopping list and head to Fry's if I decide to try this. It would be nice to try out homebrew and be able to dumb games directly on a large HD, especially with as loud as the original 360 DVD drives are. As with the PS3 hacks, you can also use XBox Live arcade and DLC content with this hack, not just retail game releases on DVD. As crappy as my soldering skills are, I was able to repair my Samsung LCD TV twice by replacing/soldering resisters so I think I could manage.

[Aslanna]

Depending on your dashboard version you may not be able to use the 'original' jtag as MS blew the efuses that made it possible. I don't remember the exact date but ~June 2009 I think somewhere around there maybe.

The recent hack is possible on nearly all 360s but as far as I know there is no rebooter yet available so you can't run 'backups' from HDD and things like that. But I haven't really followed it too close the last few days so who knows what's been developed in the meantime.

1. Turn on your Console
2. Goto the Console Settings Pane
3. Highlight System Settings


Your Dashboard Version will be on the right! If its below 2.0.7371 then its JTAGable. If its above 2.0.7371 it is not!


If your dashboard IS 2.0.7371
1. Turn off the console
2. Look at the manufacturers date on the back


If your MFG date is BEFORE 6/18/2009 then it is JTAGABLE, if its after 6/23/2009 then its NOT

(Also check Craigslist. Can usually find people doing this for ~$40 or so. Worth it for a quality solder job imo)

[Winnow]

my MFG date is Nov 2005 so I'm good.

[Aslanna]

my MFG date is Nov 2005 so I'm good.

That was a 2 part check. Whats your dashboard version? If it's 2.0.7371 or above you're out of luck when it comes to the original jtag.