I've learned alot from sites/forums like this one, and my Xbox works great thanks to helpful people who write guides about mods. But every guide/FAQ I've found that mentions the bank switches on the X3 chip only tell me how to switch them...not why I would want to. What all can I do with this chip? Do you install multiple BIOSs on the different banks? So far I have the X3 BIOS on the original switch (1-4, I think), but I'd like to know exactly what bank switching is used for.
Ok, I'm gonna show you a pic of the X3 switch settings you can use: If you recall the X3 chip can support a BIOS from 256K through 2048K in size, so, if you think about when you acquired the X3 BIOS, regardless of version, the file size was exactly 1024K. Now, using simple math again, if the available flash memory we have is 2048K and the X3 Config Live BIOS is 1024K, we need to 'bank' 1024K of memory in order to flash the BIOS correclty. If the lowest common BIOS size is 256K and the max we have is 2048K, then we have 8 banks of 256K memory available for flashing. Now, since we need 1024K to flash the X3 BIOS correctly, we use the switches on the front to select those banks. To add to the confusion, we still have 1024K of memory available to us for flashing since we have a max of 2048K available. Which could be in either memory bank 1234 or 5678. So, say you wanted to flash your chip w/ the Evox M8 Plus V16, which is a 512K bios. You would then switch your bank to a 512K bank, and flash it and then once you boot your Xbox back up again, you will load the M8 bios instead of your X3 bios. Are you kind of catching on?
Thanks, PimpDawg. I actually have a couple of diagrams like the one you posted. I'm pretty clear on how to flash a new BIOS onto the X3, my main question was why would I want to? I haven't heard of any BIOSs adding functionality the X3 doesn't already give. I assume the chip has all that extra memory for Xecuter updates, but I asked because I'm constantly learning of all kinds of wild/cool stuff that people are doing with their Xboxes, and I wondered if there was any special advantages/uses on the extra X3 banks.
Well, sorry to treat you like a beginner then! Many groups customize their own bios's and add little special querks to them. I personally have not even tried any hacker based bios's, just because the bios's that are meant for the modchips I flash work just fine. The X3 bios is far more superior than most bios's, so I would just stick w/ that one.
Thanks again, I was just wondering. I *am* a beginner, I just try not to be the kind who asks questions without researching for myself first. I like this forum, though, alot of patience is shown towards noobs. One other question about the BIOS, is it only the BIOS that can control how an LCD is used? The LCD is a useless add-on, but it looks purty. I was hoping there was a way to program it to reflect what's going on from the dash (i.e. displaying game titles, file titles, etc.) instead of just saying "Rick James, BITCH" or whatever you write in from the X3 options menu.
The X3 bios should be the only one that can activate the lcd screen, unless someone hacked something for it. As far as what the lcd screen says, some programs have the source code for the display and use it appropiately. DVD2XBOX display progress on the rip and XBMC displays time location/remaining/etc. I beileve that the new nexgen dash will have lots of lcd code built in to it with some customization abilities like what you are talking about.
