synergicity
04-24-2004, 12:15 AM
Ebay Xbox with 2 controllers, advanced AV kit, and DVD kit - $150
160 gb Samsung hard drive - $60 (after rebates)
Mod chip and install including drive - $100
Being able to stream just about any format I can come up with over my network and having my newly modded xbox arrive with 58 games on the hard drive - Priceless
I am a happy camper. I have had the xbox in the house for two days and it is already doing its job. We are streaming music, photos, and video (in vob, iso, or avi formats) and occasionally playing a game or two.
The xbox, for those of you who don't know, is a 750 MHz Pentium III box, running a stripped down version of Win2k (I've heard) with a dvd drive, a 10/100 ethernet adapter, a USB subsystem, and Nvidia graphics. And it costs $149 these days which includes one controller and the necessary hookup cables. A number of very smart and curious people have taken this device apart and have managed to devise a variety of ways to modify the xbox.
I am using the xecuter 2.3 lite chip and have added a 160 gb hdd, replacing the stock 10 gb drive. In place of the stock xbox UI (called a dashboard) I am using the popular evox dash, which caters to the added capabilities of the modded xbox. I can run applications like a file explorer and an FTP client, in addition to a variety of other tools. I can backup the xbox game dvds I've purchased onto the hard drive and then play them from there. Using the amazing and free Xbox Media Center, I can connect to my SMB shares on my network and stream music, photos, and videos to my home entertainment center. I can also do other stuff like connect to IRC, browse the web, instant message, and a bunch of similar stuff I have no interest in doing from my xbox.
Now for the downside. The fan is loud and you can hear the hard drive. It hasn't bothered me much, but it may be an issue for some. There is a control in the dashboard to lower the fan speed, but I haven't messed with that. To quell the hdd noise, you can buy a quiet drive. I went for cheap. On the software side, most of the xbox software is only easily available as source code. You need to compile it and to do that you need the xbox developers kit. Unfortunately, you can't really have the XDK, thus creating a paradox. To get this stuff onto your xbox, you have to either rely on your installer (and many will do this for you, not officially of course, but if you wink and nod...), or get busy in certain IRC channels and bittorrents. My box came preinstalled with most of what I wanted, but I did download a newer version of xbox media center and a couple of dashboards I wanted to try out. Installing new stuff is as easy as connecting to the xbox with an ftp client (the dash has a built in ftp server) and copying it over.
To get the thing working properly took a little messing around. First I had to setup the IP address in the dashboard. It was pretty straightforward. I chose to use a static IP, but you can also use DHCP. Then I ftp'ed over to the box, which worked first time, and mucked around a bit. There are a couple of ini files you will want to edit to get your sharing setup just right. First the dashboard. It's basic xml and there are plenty of comments. For streaming media, you have to edit the xml config file for xbox media center to tell it where your shares are. My files live on an XP Pro box, so I setup an account for the xbox (you can choose the login name and password) and created a share for music, pictures, and videos. I added the paths to the XBMC config file and just like that, they were available on my TV.
I still am a rookie with all this stuff and have a few functions to figure out. One drawback is that the games don't know that they are being run from the hard drive, so the only way I've figured out to exit them is to cycle power on the xbox, which just feels wrong on a computer. I also haven't figured out how to get it to play all the vobs in a ripped dvd in a row. It can do it I have been told, but I haven't taken the time to play with it yet. And although it will play ready to burn dvd isos, it can't deal with the menus, so it's better to create your isos with just the movie. I've also had trouble with multiple soundtracks. One rip I've made has both French and English audio, and it plays the French without an easy to find way for me to switch to English. I'm confident I will figure this stuff out, but haven't had time to do it yet (the xbox has been kept busy playing music and games so far). It has played a variety of avi files just fine and allows you to fast forward easily.
There is so much else available I haven't touched on yet, including a couple of Linux distributions that run on it, direct connections to other xbox's on the network for backup purposes, internet connectivity, etc. I will have a lot more to play with and will continue to report back as I find out new cool stuff or run into other roadblocks.
Cheers,
synergicity (working his way through Halo on Legendary)
160 gb Samsung hard drive - $60 (after rebates)
Mod chip and install including drive - $100
Being able to stream just about any format I can come up with over my network and having my newly modded xbox arrive with 58 games on the hard drive - Priceless
I am a happy camper. I have had the xbox in the house for two days and it is already doing its job. We are streaming music, photos, and video (in vob, iso, or avi formats) and occasionally playing a game or two.
The xbox, for those of you who don't know, is a 750 MHz Pentium III box, running a stripped down version of Win2k (I've heard) with a dvd drive, a 10/100 ethernet adapter, a USB subsystem, and Nvidia graphics. And it costs $149 these days which includes one controller and the necessary hookup cables. A number of very smart and curious people have taken this device apart and have managed to devise a variety of ways to modify the xbox.
I am using the xecuter 2.3 lite chip and have added a 160 gb hdd, replacing the stock 10 gb drive. In place of the stock xbox UI (called a dashboard) I am using the popular evox dash, which caters to the added capabilities of the modded xbox. I can run applications like a file explorer and an FTP client, in addition to a variety of other tools. I can backup the xbox game dvds I've purchased onto the hard drive and then play them from there. Using the amazing and free Xbox Media Center, I can connect to my SMB shares on my network and stream music, photos, and videos to my home entertainment center. I can also do other stuff like connect to IRC, browse the web, instant message, and a bunch of similar stuff I have no interest in doing from my xbox.
Now for the downside. The fan is loud and you can hear the hard drive. It hasn't bothered me much, but it may be an issue for some. There is a control in the dashboard to lower the fan speed, but I haven't messed with that. To quell the hdd noise, you can buy a quiet drive. I went for cheap. On the software side, most of the xbox software is only easily available as source code. You need to compile it and to do that you need the xbox developers kit. Unfortunately, you can't really have the XDK, thus creating a paradox. To get this stuff onto your xbox, you have to either rely on your installer (and many will do this for you, not officially of course, but if you wink and nod...), or get busy in certain IRC channels and bittorrents. My box came preinstalled with most of what I wanted, but I did download a newer version of xbox media center and a couple of dashboards I wanted to try out. Installing new stuff is as easy as connecting to the xbox with an ftp client (the dash has a built in ftp server) and copying it over.
To get the thing working properly took a little messing around. First I had to setup the IP address in the dashboard. It was pretty straightforward. I chose to use a static IP, but you can also use DHCP. Then I ftp'ed over to the box, which worked first time, and mucked around a bit. There are a couple of ini files you will want to edit to get your sharing setup just right. First the dashboard. It's basic xml and there are plenty of comments. For streaming media, you have to edit the xml config file for xbox media center to tell it where your shares are. My files live on an XP Pro box, so I setup an account for the xbox (you can choose the login name and password) and created a share for music, pictures, and videos. I added the paths to the XBMC config file and just like that, they were available on my TV.
I still am a rookie with all this stuff and have a few functions to figure out. One drawback is that the games don't know that they are being run from the hard drive, so the only way I've figured out to exit them is to cycle power on the xbox, which just feels wrong on a computer. I also haven't figured out how to get it to play all the vobs in a ripped dvd in a row. It can do it I have been told, but I haven't taken the time to play with it yet. And although it will play ready to burn dvd isos, it can't deal with the menus, so it's better to create your isos with just the movie. I've also had trouble with multiple soundtracks. One rip I've made has both French and English audio, and it plays the French without an easy to find way for me to switch to English. I'm confident I will figure this stuff out, but haven't had time to do it yet (the xbox has been kept busy playing music and games so far). It has played a variety of avi files just fine and allows you to fast forward easily.
There is so much else available I haven't touched on yet, including a couple of Linux distributions that run on it, direct connections to other xbox's on the network for backup purposes, internet connectivity, etc. I will have a lot more to play with and will continue to report back as I find out new cool stuff or run into other roadblocks.
Cheers,
synergicity (working his way through Halo on Legendary)