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

big thanx for this thread (amongst others) i now have a fully working xbox ...

thanx guys ,,,not bad for a tenner for the xbox and 1.99 to fix it !!

cheers
dave

 

hello everyone... I have been doing a lot or research on everything that has been posted on here. I don't mean to offend anyone or anything but there are some things that has my head a little spinning. If unicorn would be able to E-mail me this way I can talk with them one on one with it all it would be a lot easier on me. If not then that's fine too I just don't know how often I can check on these thread ( by the way are unbelieveable GREAT ). IF Unicorn can't E-mail me then on big question I have is does my Xbox have to be modded to do any of this then? Thanks Unicorn and everyone who has posted on here for all the help.

 

your xbox HAS to be modded to :

1, play backups (copies of games)
2, play games from other regions (imports)
3, put in a bigger HD for media center and copying games to hd

just 3 of the main things you can do if you mod your xbox .there ae lots and lots of other benefits .The main point is if you CAN mod it DO mod it

IF YOUR XBOX WORKS IT`S SIMPLE TO MOD : JUST USE HOTSWAP / XBOXHDM AND NDURE FOR BEST RESULTS !(10 MIN JOB !!)

dave

 

Noob question: Im about to start building a reader but im kinda confused on a couple of things, First off Im gonna use the LPC board as the EEprom is to small and Im bound to F* it up.
On pic 1A, points marked 1(pink), Is that a piece of wire connecting both points or is it solder connecting both points? On Pic 1A points marked 2(blu), Does the green cable have to be touchng both points? Either one?

If I understood correctly, thet tut says if the Xbox has power then I dont need to supply an "External power source". With that in mind on
PIC1B:
Does the GRound(green wire) goes connected to the Red point? If not, where should I place the Green(gnd) wire?

Sorry for the Noob question but I wanna be real sure before I really start.

 

question 1 : either as long as it`s touching (PINK)
question 2 : yes (BLUE)
question 3 : if you have power in th board just connect the wires to the chip and connect the green wire to an earth point on the board (where the screws go in)

 

Alright I build it twice and both times came up witht he same thing. Xbox reboots 3 times and then shuts off. Im using the LPC board as im not really confortable soldering the Eeprom itself with it being so small. Also im gettin an Error 14(hardware error) when I try to use PonyProg. Any ideas what im doing wrong?

 

I had the same problem. I finally got it to work by allowing it to boot to the error screen and then connecting the reader. It took quite a few tries but I finally got it.

I am still at the same place I started at though. Initially I had not planned on modding my box at all and then 5 months after I bought it the hardrive went out (MSFTS 30 day warranty FTL.) So I built this reader with the intention of recovering the EEPROM and using it to replace the hard drive. I have tried several different dashboards and maybe I'm just missing something obvious but every time I end up with the same result.
Infinite reboot.

If anyone has any suggestions I would be very grateful... I just want it to work... I don't even care if it is modded or not in the end. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Infinite reboot.. Covered this before, it's because your dash files are not installed properly..

Other problems.. If the box is rebooting 3 times the device needs to be powered from the external batteries. It will not work if you are trying to boot a machine with other hardware errors while trying to do the reading.. No power to the xbox required How many more times do I have to make this point clear?. You will get all kinds of errors with the drives disconnected, and there are mains live parts exposed with power supplied with the xbox.. Very real risk of electrocution!!

This is our method to repair and rebuild totally stock dead xbox units, no mods needed. That's how the project came about, fixing error 21 without risking a working drive, and repairing error 7 when no hotswap is possible.

I use one to recover eeprom data from totally dead motherboards to re-use the drives in repairs.

Can't help with specific software issues due to doing the reading in a different way.

I may be able to get unicron to have a look at this sometime, but he's now working on other projects.

@ pink_floy.. success is good.. I tend to leave this for long periods, you seem to have it well under control. If I can get hold of unicron I'll get him to give you a shout.. ;-)

 

Haha, note... I was the one with the previous Infinite reboot issue, as I said I have used several different dash files including the default ones that obviously have worked on other boxes.

You may be very knowledgeable but when the answer you give me is "there is something wrong" your not all that helpful, especially when you act as if you’ve already covered it in depth. However it would be helpful if you could give some kind of an example of possible specific things that could be wrong. Just give me something to run with…

Thanks again for your effort.

 

yeah i electrocuted myself once trying to take the fan off and i forgot to unplug it first, !!! man i was sweating after that shock i have pictures if anyone is interested of my built eeprom reader i had the frag 3 times thing happening but then i checked to make sure my ground wire was screwed in underneath the mobo and it wasnt so i reseated it and wahlah!! i now fixed 3 broke xbox's thanks to unicron the m**** F***** man!!! hail unicron and that game omikron for dreamcast!

 

I got confuse because the tut states that if the XBpx has power not to use an external power supply. Now I got a 3.6v battery but not sure where to place the cables(red and black). Im guessing black goes to either a screw on the board or pins 1-4 on the Eeprom and the red goes to pin 8?

 

OK..another source of infinite reboot is bad bios. It's possible for the bios chip to fail, as with any component.
What we need to know is the exact version xbox you have, as there are a few different m$ bios used depending on the kernel version. 1.0 is different to 1.1-5 and 1.6 is different again.
There is a lot of information about specific kernal/bios issues scattered on xbox-scene. The3 only one that should give you any issues like this is a 1.0 with later dash files... but if it's a tsop/bios chip fault things will be hard to cure.

A little bit about bios.. The bios calls a dash file, a hacked bios can be set to call a dash from anywhere, whereas a m$ bios calles only the m$ dash files on C: The infinite reboot machines I have encountered usually have a fault in the C: dash files as there is enough to start the boot sequence, but then due to being corrupted or incomplete fail to load fully, causing the xbox to go into a kernal panic so reboot scenario. It's most probably a corrupted/missing fonts or audio file somewhere. These need to be the right files for the xboxdash.xbe file..they are a set and you can't play mix and match with them. That's what I think is happening..probably a corrupted fonts file from a set of softmod files has found it's way into the fonts folder and isn't being overwritten.
What I would suggest is putting something else on the C: part of the drive after unlocking it..to make sure it's really wiped..
active@killdisk free is pretty good at wiping partitions.

Another place the bootloader looks is for any temp cached settings in x/y/z partitions. There could be a file in one of these partitions with a reboot flag set.

 

The reason I need the reader is because I unlocked the hdd and now I need to lock it back again but since I never backed up the Eeprom.bin I need the reader to get the key. If theres another way to get it? Before that my Xbox was working perfectly. I know for a fact that all the files are intact. Since I have a backup of those files, Showld I replace them before trying again? Or just wipe it out completly?

 

Ok I was wondering if I can use the EEPROM HDD key file and Place it on another HDD and use that HDD for the Xbox, because I fried the Original HDD and this is the Cheapest way to fix it.

 

Yes you can but you will not be able to get on to Live if you have signed on with that box before. Live documents your HD serial number the first time you sign on and if that ever conflicts it will ban your box.

 

janrocks -

I really do appreciate your follow up and help. I pretty much gave up on the box out of frustration and just haven't relaxed enough to feel like messin’ with it again yet. I do know that it is a 1.6 box but if you are looking for a more exact number I will have to get back with you... I think I'm just going to save up and get a bigger drive to put in it and start fresh or maybe buy a chip to make the whole process easier...I just don't know enough about the chips to know which ones are worthwhile. Since I won't be able to use live no matter what I do with this box(the whole reason I'm in this situation is because my drive went out on me 4 months after buying the box) I'm just aiming to be able to run back up games and use it as a media center.

Thanks again for your thoughts; I wouldn’t have a clue where to start if it wasn't for these boards. (It’s starting to feel like I just have a new paperweight anyway though)

 

Mine is a 1.6 Xbox

 

@ C Rod

Thanks Now I just need to build one.

 

i need help i have FTP but i do not know how to get the mods off my computer onto my xbox

 

Sorry for bringing up the thread, but I have a few questions.

I am using LPC pads, because my xbox is working, which means it has a power supply. Anyways, I built the eeprom reader according to the diagram, the diodes are in the same positioon as drawn in the diagram, is that the way it should be?

So, I connected 2 wires to the LPC pads and 1 to ground, I start the xbox without the harddrive connected and connect the reader to my serial port. I try to do a read with ponyprog and I recieve an error, (I only have 1 serial port, but 2 are shown to select from in the setup menu) it doesn't matter which one i select, on one, I get, "device is busy" and another one i get, "Device not connected", probe fails on both ports. I don't know what I am doing wrong, I have everything double checked, and I've tried booting up with the harddrive connected, but that did not work.

Thanks