I have the crystal xbox... I am led to believe that this is v1.6? I would like to softmod my xbox. I have the original SC, made the controller / usb Franken-cord. found the software to get the job done... then I run into a wall... like (What seems like) so many others, I have a problem with my USB sticks not being recognized in AR software (v1.4). So... After going through no less than 9 sticks without any luck (Some borrowed, most purchased), I am losing hope, and growing in frustration over what should have been (in a perfect world) a ten minute job. I am now wondering, is hotswapping the answer? My understanding is that a hotswap is essentially the same as re-formatting a drive. Its rebuilding the 'guts' from the ground up. So no softmod would be in place after, correct? That leaves.... what options to mod my old xbox? keep investing money in thumb drives? (I have searched for the drives listed around that are 'proven' but... I cant even find them... short of ebay - not an option) Investing in a chip and actually doing a hardware mod? I suppose this hasnt been helpful... but I'm at a loss.... any help, suggestions... would be greatly appreciated. Xbox works 'fine' - I just want to mod it.
hot swapping then is your answer. the only thing that hotswapping does, is temporarily unlock your harddrive. normally, if you only take out your harddrive out your xbox, put it in your computer the drive cannot be accessed. since it is locked. hotswapping unlocks your harddrive to make it readable and writable under windows/linux. as soon as it is unlocked, you can either use the hdm disc, or use the fatxplorer program to access your harddrive and put the files in there manually.
thank you for your response. I seem to be having some trouble unlocking the HD. I was unable to force an error involving the dvd drive... 16 was it? regardless, I was unable to do it, tried to unlock it by playing a cd for about five minutes then disconnecting... no good... I will have to keep trying to do something, after reading more (as I'm sure I'm just not doing it correctly). any ideas or suggestions would be helpful - thank you again for your response.
hot swapping works, million others got it to work. i never got it to work, tried different things. never got it in unlocked state. good luck with your tries, can not help you with this.
I had a hard time hotswapping the first time I did it too... My suggestion is to use the Ndure 3.1 and xboxhdm 1.9 method. When ur going to hotswap have the boot CD in ur CD drive turn off ur computer and then unplug the IDE cables from ur hard drives in there. Then boot ur machine. Hit the pause/break button before it starts to find the drives on ur machine. Then turn on ur xbox with it hooked up to the tv and right when it says microsoft under the X unplug the IDE cable from the xbox hard drive then put the cord from ur PC in it and hit space bar. Ur machine should boot from the disk and its pretty self explanitory from there as long as u read the intructions for Ndure and xboxhdm.
