HOW to read your XBOX's EEPROM and GET the HDD KEY WITHOUT removing the chip Or Modding the XBOX

yeah a 5V power supply works best, and easy to get one at radio shack or off something. Glad that worked for you. You can see how it saves your butt when you can't power on an xbox to HOT SWAP it.... as someone in this post dosn't seem to understand why you would want to read the EEPROM.

Good luck modding them.

 

Dev14a

Well it's not that simple, you really need to do a softmod with one of the Game exploits, or you can do a mod chip.

If you have a buddy who has an xbox modded with a soft mod you can copy his C and E drive files over to your PC with an FTP program, then make the Restore CD I talk about but use his C and E drive files on it make sure YOUR Xbox HDD EEPROM.BIN file is on the CD too in the EEPROM folder then you can unlock you xbox hdd and restore it with the CD lock it back and then put it in your xbox and it will be softmodded!

Read thur the last part of my Tutor and it explanes some about making a restore CD to do that with.

 

hello first of all... I would like to thank UNICRON for his genius and thank him for everything he's done for me. I had softmodded two of my friend's xboxes and accidentally messed them up. stupid me I hadn't saved the hd key so I had to make the eeprom reader that unicron shows in this thread. First try didn't work so I built another one and then that one worked fine. I unlocked the hdd, formatted and restored the hdd and then locked it back. (whew...fun though) now I have another problem and a question. First, the problem is that I have put the drive in the xbox and everything is hooked up correctly... the drive is set to cable select. I've checked and double checked files on the hdd and such. what happens is that when I turn on the box it will get to the green x with the white microsoft appearing and then it will reboot. and then it will reboot... and then reboot... and then reboot... (repeat infinitely). Is it possible that I screwed up the eeprom and this is why it is doing this? or is there something else?

thanks in advance!

zachboy

 

you could try setting the HDD as master and see how that works out.
If not I would check that your HDD cable didn't get pinched.

Also if you can, I would replace the HDD cable with a 80 pin ATA 133 cable, get the one thats rounded cable, then cut off the rubber so you have just wires, makes it easier to use in the xbox, the rubber makes it to stiff and you can't shove it anywhere...

And no you can't mess up your eeprom by reading it.

also try leaving the xbox hdd unplugged and see if it goes into the error 16 screen or at least one of the error screens.

LEt me know how it goes.

Unicron

 

I guess I should ask this too...

when you made yor restore cd you did put the c and e drive files on in the linux directory before making the ISO image?? if not the drive has no software on it!!!

That maybe why it's rebooting too.

 

I have a theory on the reboot.
Did you restore a stock set of MS dash files..or softmod files?
The reason the softmod files don't work is because they are pointing at another dash in a hidden folder on the E:\ drive, and that doesn't get transferred with the rest (well they do but not into the right place...it's to do with the way the exploit works but I'm not going to get that technical). If you have rebulit with stock MS files try a live game and go to the live account settings screen and let it update. Don't connect to the internet, that's not what's needed..just let the game load and select live account settings..then it will go into an update routine and when it finishes everything should be good.

 

thanks for the quick reply.

yes after you mentioned the c and e drives, I checked and yes I did put them in the linux folder before i made the iso. the hdd cable seems to be fine... no pinches anywhere. when i set the hdd to master it does the same thing and when I unplug the hdd cable I get an error 7. just for fun I decided to unplug the power cable and leave the ribbon cable in and it got the same error... (I knew it would but I thought I'd try it anyway)

also, I cannot boot any kind of media. It gets to the white microsoft but then reboots before anything can load up.

I got some original ms dashboard files off the net so Im gonna make a cd off of them and try that. I'm convinced that its a file that is missing or something that is causing my msdash not to boot correctly. I'll let you all know how that works out (crosses fingers).

zach

 

Just a quicky.. check on your disk that you don't have anything in any E:\ cache folder there may be. That's known to cause all sorts of strange things.

 

ok... I did have some files in cache on my other boot cd but the new boot cd didn't even have a cache folder when I made it. however when I format with the new boot cd and then put the hdd in the xbox it causes an error 16. I probably downloaded a bad backup of someones xbox hdd. anyway... I'm out of cd's to make for the boot cd. I'll have to get a cdrw...lol. keep the ideas coming! they are really helpful and I think we're narrowing it down. (besides, I'm learning a lot in the process).

thanks!

zachboy

edit: Hey I just read something about the dashboard language files and I realized that my newest boot cd didn't even have the lang files on it. eesh... no wonder it didn't work. the ms dash loads the language files as the flubber animation is goin on and if it doesn't find them then whats it gonna do? thats right, nothing. I'll have to get me a cd-rw and try fixin it.

 

thanks everyone for all your help! I finally got it working wit a little help and some much needed files. Now on to swapping my other xbox hd with a 300 gig. to make a media center xbox

zachboy

 

@Unicron1

I want to build the ephrom reader but my computer doesnt have a serial port. Would a USB work?

 

Hello, first off I want to thank Unicron for the excellent tutorial, but I am having a problem with the one I made. I have followed all the directions of Unicrons Eeprom reader to the letter, and have checked and double checked my connections, even started from scratch. Let me digress, my box has a dead hard drive, with no mod chip. With the reader disconnected from the serial port, the box will boot to the needs service screen, and christmas lights. When I hook the reader up to the serial port, it goes to a flashing yellow, with no video. Now I went ahead and tried Ponyprog, and I get "Read Successful Device Size: 256 byte", which I saved. Then I used LiveInfo and get zeroes in all areas. Also, I put the wires on the LPC, and directly to the Eeprom with same results. Any help will be greatly appreciated

 

I have a version 1.6 and I wanted to solder it the easy way, but I wanted to make sure what points to solder to on the LPC pad? Can someone post a picture. The spots It looks like on the older versions looks to be points 13,14,and 15. But, since I have a version 1.6, are they the same, and do I need to just solder the 3 points and a ground? On the other picture for the 1.6 it looks like points 7,8,and 10? Please let me know. I'm also using 3.9k resistors instead of the 4k. Is that ok?

Thanks

 

More answers here.. http://forums.llamma.com/viewtopic.php?t=3773

No more console forums here for me.

 

Got the eeprom reader built for my 1.6 xbox.
Connected the 2 wires to the eeprom and the ground to the screw.
Problem I'm having is with the ponyprog program. I tried the new 2000 version and the older one but get same error.
After selecting com port and calibration. When I go to read the eeprom it gives me the error "bus busy or hardware error [-11]"
does anyone know what that means. I checked the connections everything seems good. I put an ohm meter from the serial end to the eeprom, and both connections read 3.9Ohm like you would think.

I just can't figure it out. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Should reak 4kohm or thereabouts. What resistors have you used?

 

I got 3.9 ohm resistors and 5v diodes

I get that same error when the serial cable isn't even plugged in also.

 

I mean 3.9K ohm resistors, sorry about the double post.

 

Those sound ok..are you sure the reading on the scl and sda busses are only 3.9 ohms?

Try externally powering the eeprom with a battery.
I'm trying to get an answer off unicron but he isn't replying to me tonight..

 

I'm sorry the reading is 3.9K ohm off the eeproms just like the resistors are.
Any ideas about the error message?

THanks.