modding an xbox360

[chubsta]

i have an old 360 slim sitting in the loft doing nothing so was looking to mess around with it, the plan would be to somehow mod it so it is able to run home brew etc ??

only thing is i am having a hard time understanding what is the best route to go down, i see references to jtag etc but am not really sure what would be best for me,?or even what is achievable.

i am pretty good at soldering etc but only have an imac so connecting to the 360 may be problematic i beleive if i do try to mod it.

is there anyone who is able to succinctly able to explain what i need to do in language a dumb old man can understand?

 

[ZedEx48K]

Flashing the drive will get you playable 'back ups'. Homebrew and custom menus require JTAG & takes a bit more work and requires the Xbox to be on certain firmwares to be able to do it (otherwise the e-fuses are blown).

 

[mr grissom]

Jtag is the best route, sure someone on here does those.
once jtag then it can actually be region free`d within dashlaunch. pretty much turns it into a dev kit u can play discs from any region even if they are region coded so no need to even flash the drive..

U can dump any disc to hardrive so u dont even need disc in anymore..

 

[robotech]

Wasent beaps doing most console mods

 

[mr grissom]

Yes could well be,i knew someone did just could`nt name them at time.
The slims are the best ones to do, had mine done years.

 

[Venom]

Prompted me to get mine out the loft too !! It was a slim with a 250gb drive. Now a slim with RGH 1tb drive.

Will be great for the caravan site when it opens !

I looked into it and thought f**k the software side seemed painful. So paid someone to do the install and set the drive up with the dash, kind of plug and play ! I did not fancy buying a ready done one, wanted to use my own as had it from new.

I have some homebrew to put on and there is even mame and Snes stuff too. You can also get the complete aracde live installed !

Not that I have time to play anything !

Inside view !

Outside view

The dash is great !!

I am getting to old for this sh*t to do it myself. I dont mind upgrading dreamcasts or handhelds or even launchbox set ups Its fast booting , I think chips are getting better !!

 

[ZedEx48K]

What is it that they've used there to do it?

 

[Venom]

As its blue I assume its a

Mini Matrix GlitcherBut he uses the Ace 3 ones too which are black.

Both are on ebay.

 

[mr grissom]

Prompted me to get mine out the loft too !! It was a slim with a 250gb drive. Now a slim with RGH 1tb drive.

Will be great for the caravan site when it opens !

I looked into it and thought f**k the software side seemed painful. So paid someone to do the install and set the drive up with the dash, kind of plug and play ! I did not fancy buying a ready done one, wanted to use my own as had it from new.

I have some homebrew to put on and there is even mame and Snes stuff too. You can also get the complete aracde live installed !

Not that I have time to play anything !

Inside view !

Outside view

The dash is great !!

I am getting to old for this sh*t to do it myself. I dont mind upgrading dreamcasts or handhelds or even launchbox set ups Its fast booting , I think chips are getting better !!

Not sure what chip is inside mine had it done 8/9 years ago.

Heres a thing too the 360 becomes completley region free once RGH installed, and by that i mean even disks that are region specific will work ( japanese / ntsc ones )

You can dump disks straight to the HD too and also you use and external hardrive aswell if you run out of internal space.

I have same dashboard aurora you can update that.

to play original xbox games then its built in just a matter of sticking images in right place.

I tried a few emus they work ( a long time ago ) but the emus where a bit flaky so may well have been updated.

I dont think MAME was ever updated ( could be wrong ) it used a very old version , it was ok for older games but you needed to use a specific rom set ( again could well have been updated )

i used a tool on pc called iso2god, what it does is strip out from x360 game iso just the game ( ie if iso is 4gig then most likley after stripping game files out you would end up with a much smaller size, so that saves on hd space )

could you imagine installing an iso of 4 gig to hd when the game maywell be just a couple of hundred meg, easy to transfer aswell and usb stick will work ( i use 16gig usb to transfer files ) just dump it to correct folder then refresh game list it goes off and grabs the artwork for you.

 

[Venom]

That's an interesting read , I ll check which mame it has etc.

I have all the games 3.1 TB of them all in the right format already so that save sh*t loads of time, no ISO extraction required.

The live arcade totals up to about 6oogb, every title.

I think I have messed up. I bought a 4tb portable drive (£85) to copy the games to, as I borrowed the drive of someone and had nowhere spare to copy it !

Took Fukin hours to copy and I left it NTFS.

From what I can NOW tell on portable drives they have to be formatted to fat32 and Xbox will only see 2tb

I was never planning on using the external drive was more to enable me to copy what I want to the 1tb internal drive.

Just means I will have to use another portable drive , format that to fat32 and copy games to that first. i.e I just wont be able to copy direct from the 4tb to the 1tb internal.

Thank goodness I have some spare 1tb portables.

TBH I am just going to load it with say the top 50 games I actually want to play, so no big beer . Just frustrating !!

Cheers

 

[Venom]

I guess I may be able to FTP them via my laptop but may be slow ?

 

[tronads]

Venom, if I remember correctly there is a Mac format you can put on the hard drives to enable larger sizes to be recognised. I think its called HFS+
The only problem is its a pain to read the drives on a PC.

 

[mr grissom]

That's an interesting read , I ll check which mame it has etc.

I have all the games 3.1 TB of them all in the right format already so that save sh*t loads of time, no ISO extraction required.

The live arcade totals up to about 6oogb, every title.

I think I have messed up. I bought a 4tb portable drive (£85) to copy the games to, as I borrowed the drive of someone and had nowhere spare to copy it !

Took Fukin hours to copy and I left it NTFS.

From what I can NOW tell on portable drives they have to be formatted to fat32 and Xbox will only see 2tb

I was never planning on using the external drive was more to enable me to copy what I want to the 1tb internal drive.

Just means I will have to use another portable drive , format that to fat32 and copy games to that first. i.e I just wont be able to copy direct from the 4tb to the 1tb internal.

Thank goodness I have some spare 1tb portables.

TBH I am just going to load it with say the top 50 games I actually want to play, so no big beer . Just frustrating !!

Cheers

Yeah the limit is 2tb on a 360, which is down to fat32. easy method is just to plug a drive into usb port on 360 and go to options to format it ( u can goto normal dashboard on 360 even with aurora installed just hit the xbox button )

You can get back aurora easy enough.

as for emus i dont bother , mine was just to play xbox games with out having to use disks ever again.

multi disk games work without a problem too.

You can dump original disks to hd too easy enough, using ios2god to strip down the isos is simple and very quick, it will batch file loads of games at once too.

But as you stated your files are like that anyway so thats all good.

You can install any DLC that is available for games ( provided you can find it ;-) )

I have around 30 games installed ones i play more often than any others

 

[Mark H]

Beaps from this forum is your Xbox mod man. He's done three for me. Top notch bloke.

 

[penrhos]

Not done any xbox modding since fitting "executer" chips on the original XBox.

If i pickup a glitcher does it need programming and is it easy to fit?

I can solder reasonably well (I've RGB modded a few PCE's, Famicom's so VIA and reasonably sized chip legs I can do).

Think my 360 is an original Xenon on ancient firmware with the more desirable optical drive.

 

[Venom]

I had a quick look was more the software sh*t that put me off.

The price for me to get it done locally was worth the money !!!

Penhros if you do get it done give me a shout as have about 3tb of stuff you are welcome to.

 

[penrhos]

Turns out I have a pair in the garage - My original non-hdmi 360 and a later one.

So I've got a Xenon (which is apparently a crap one to mod) and either a Falcon or Zephyr depending on what PSU is has (which are better options).

I also seem to have 2 * 20Gb drives and 2 * 120gb drives in caddies. I've got a couple of old 250Gb WD laptop drives lying around from SSD upgrades so I should be able to upgrade the 20Gb drives easily.

Pity it won't work with a 1Tb WD laptop drive as it looks like the biggest it supports is 500Gb (rest of space is lost) 360 doesn't seem to support SSD's but as I only have a couple ot 250Gb ones spare it's not a problem.

Just need to fire them up and check they work OK before modding /getting them modded.

 

[The Last Bandit]

Getting the 360 modded is well worth it even if paying someone.
They are a pain to do, the mod chip installation is straightforward enough but they're is a lot of faffing about on the software side to get it working and booting quickly.

Think the max internal drive size is 2TB which is decent enough.

Very good guide on the process here.

https://www.se7ensins.com/forums/threads/jtag-rgh-r-jtag-xbox-360-ultimate-exploit-guide.804054/

 

[Venom]

I have a 1tb internal in mine.

You can run external usb, so my brother runs one 500gb with the arcade stuff, then a 2tb with the games on.

Yes software side looked a pain in ass !!

 

[Beaps]

Yeah I still do modded 360 Elite & Fat consoles if anyone needs one