Xbox Software: Download Here!!!

didn't notice this one wasn't stickied already; i've been far too busy breaking my xbox; was up 'til 6am (no lie) this morn fighting with a standard softmod and locking my new 500GB hard drive, got it all working then up again at 9 as had other things to do also, now reverting the softmod and starting over as it's all gone to pot, thankfully i've got all chunkhead's tutorials printed out

 

Thought i'd post an update of the fun i had doing this..



..First attempts at softmodding eventually went ok (while using the stock hard drive) but then it all went to pot, so started again (the softmod went fine but was having horrendous networking problems as UnleashX would change IP settings then lose them, XBMC was doing the same, and on top of that was having sporadic problems with the wireless gaming adapter working one minute and not the next.
ps for the first softmod i used SID 4.0 then AID 4.10 (tried adding some addon packs from AID 4.12 but maybe i didn't do it right so that might have been what messed things up (especially as i hadn't got hold of AID 4.11 anyway). I liked UnleashX as the main dashboard but really just wanted the xbox to boot straight into XBMC..

Uninstalled the softmod with no problems; second attempt at softmod went fine, and stayed fine (still using the stock hard drive at this point btw); this time i used SID 5.01, and AID 4.10 'as is' ie with no addon packs added on. Installed XBMC as my main dashboard this time. All working fine so it was time for a bigger hard drive (oh forgot to mention that i had quite a few attempts at putting a new hard drive in before any softmodding, as i wanted to keep the stock hard drive exactly as it was, for a perfect backup. However all attempts to use xboxhdm 1.9 to setup the new disk went fine except couldn't lock the new hard drive, so tried a couple different hard drives. Still couldn't lock any of them; then realised i wasn't hotswapping correctly and managed to get one of the drives to lock).

...So went straight in for the kill and put a slightly bigger hard drive in - a nice shiny 500GB Western Digital WD500AAKB, which worked & locked without a hitch (well i did suffer unexplained data loss when the drive was nearly full).

** found out (after i took out the 500GB drive) that any drive over 250GB will suffer corruption if not formatted with 32K clusters, this explains the data loss i was experiencing, will remember that if i ever put in a drive larger than 250GB in future. **

Anyway, then got the gaming adapter working properly, so can FTP nicely from any of my wifi PC's, put a handful of MP3 albums on there, a few AVI's etc, just to test out XBMC. Works beautifully, so next step was to chill out and play some games

(the problems with the gaming adapter went away once the networking was stable, no surprise that the gaming adapter was so unstable before - turns out this was due to the IP settings being messed up by the dashboards for some reason, doesn't matter how or why as the xbox/networking/XBMC are all 100% stable now)

Almost finished now, just installed a few games to the hard drive using DVD2XBOX, works a treat. All finished except a few hundred Gigabytes of music to chuck on there, that will have to keep as it's going to take forever..

So the point of my post was really to say that the tutorials were spot on, any mistakes i made were from spending too long on locking drives and the networking hassles, spent 'til 6am the next day messing with the various aspects of the modding as was determined to get it working. It paid off in the end as XBMC is amazing to see in action.

Files i used from the list in the Chunkhead's first post up top of this thread were -

Action Replay with a supplied memory card and USB dongle

AID v4.10 (without any addons)

FlashFXP v3.4 (though of course i now use the free Filezilla instead)

LiveInfo BETA 3

MS Dash 5960 (Clean)

XboxHDM v1.9

Softmod Installer Deluxe (except i used version 5.01)




..i'm an xbox convert, i now use it as my main music/gaming system, it's an incredible setup.

..just need to get all my tunes on there then setup the other xbox in the same way.

edit- just finished redoing the above xbox, took out the 500GB and put in a 250GB, needed the 500GB for other things..

Exact steps i took (no different to chunkhead's softmodding tutorial, i just made notes as i went along, just helps me to remember for when i do this again). ps - these aren't necessarily the exact same options other people should choose, i'm just explaining how i did my setup for my HD TV..

1/ Prepared (ie 'rebuilt HD from scratch') the 250GB drive (previously used in a PC) with xboxhdm 1.9 (the cd-rw i've been using has the eeprom from the original xbox) then locked the drive with xboxhdm
2/ Installed the 250GB drive into the xbox
3/ Using Action Replay, copied the SID 5 installer and the PAL Splinter Cell savegame onto the memory card, then put the memory card in the controller
4/ Booted xbox with no game in the dvd drive (obviously the xbox is now 'stock' but with a much bigger hard drive in)
5/ Copied the 2 files off the memory card onto the hard disc then remove the memory card
6/ Put Splinter Cell dvd in the drive and start the game, choosing Linux savegame, checkpoints option
7/ SID 5 installer now boots
8/ Made the usual 2 backups, first the eeprom backup then the MS backup
9/ Installed 'Dual Boot softmod (Hacked Dash/softmod menu)'
10/ Chose 'Virtual C + Eeprom for HD'
11/ Chose Unleashx, Unleash started up
12/ Ran AID 4.10 from here (my cd-rw of AID 4.0 is 'as is' as i didn't bother merging in any addon packs)
13/ Chose dashboard section
14/ Chose 'Install E Drive dashboards'
15/ Chose XBMC as my dashboard
16/ Chose 'Larger HDD (E+F+G)' as this is a 250GB drive
17/ XBMC now boots as the dashboard
18/ setup the networking in XBMC (which in my case includes a wireless gaming adapter
19/ Install 'all applications' (to F drive) and a few emulators from the AID 4.0 cd-rw
20/ While still in AID i formatted the G drive
21/ All done, reboot and tweak any settings in XBMC, and install a few games via DVD2XBox, copy loads of music videos and MP3's over
22/ Can now start enjoying XBMC!


(btw I sometimes pull out the wireless adapter and use good old ethernet to copy stuff over to the xbox if i'm putting masses of stuff on there as it's quicker than wireless)

edit-i no longer bother with SID 5.01, 4.0 is more than adequate, the memory card just stays in the box as 4.0 ready for more xbox purchases


edit-i no longer store music on the xbox hard drive, all my equipment is fully networked now so i use the xboxes to connect to pc's to play media ie the xbox hard drive can then be used purely for installing games onto; but it's very handy to be able to put huge hard drives in an xbox, that space always comes in handy.
Plus i no longer use XBMC as the main dash on my main xbox, i use UnleashX (XBMC is still the main dash on my 'lesser' xboxes however). XBMC is simply called via the Applications tab in UnleashX.
Also i no longer use wireless for any xboxes (or for any pc's for that matter), all are wired, to a Buffalo WHR-G54S, which is linked wirelessly via another WHR-G54S via 'WDS' (one Buffalo is upstairs, the other is downstairs).

edit- See my post on page 5 of this thread for info re new updates of Auto Installer Deluxe.. - http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_jump.cfm/557450/4127036

 

i found it somewhere on a torrent site, can't remember where now, it's only 7MB.

- i'm Region 2, and if you mean the black & white screen problem after the softmod, yes i did; however the xbox is hooked up to a HD Ready LCD and somewhere in the SID or AID setup i chose an option to cater for HD screens; i should've taken some notes as i've still got to setup the other xbox.

I stole the picture off google but yes, XBMC is amazing to use, and it looks awesome too; it's 230am here and i'm FTPing loads of music videos that i've collected over the years, something like 100GB of them, watching some 6year old ones now, memories

 

- it was, well each drive i used, was.. turned out i was booting the PC with the actual drives attached to the IDE cable, ie the BIOS was getting a lock on the drives so the lock/unlock tools couldn't do their magic. Once i booted without a hard drive, then attached it after the boot to xboxhdm, all was fine; doh! i wasn't paying attention properly..

- yeah, i rememebered you said the SID 5 was buggy, i was ok with it but as you know more about this stuff than me i'm only here to say i was fine with it, but it's better if other noobs (i'm a noob too!) stick to SID 4 just in case or feel brave (or have other info that we don't)

good idea, i'll look at that later on, hadn't peeked into the Library function yet...

 

cheers, just reading it now; i've rebuilt the xbox again, have documented it up top of this same page, now i'm looking at having most of the media on one or more PC's instead of the xbox hard drive, wanted more space for games

 

yeah i know what you mean about media in one place, i'm already juggling 3 or 4 huge hard drives in USB2.0 enclosures, plus i've not slept in 2days, being as i can't sleep i'm sorting out the shares on a couple pc's