Tsop Flashing. What Can It Do For Me? Options

[kolosus]

I have a 1.0 xbox. I used 007:AUF to get it softmodded. I played around with it some more after the initial unleashx install. Right now it is booting xbmc first. I installed a few emulators. Currently I have a 160 gb hdd in it. I have my current collection of movies on there and my music collection.

What I've been reading about now is TSOP flashing. What is it that TSOP flashing will do for me that I cannot currently do? I've gathered that it'll allow me to put a bigger hdd on this... but there's only so much hdd space that I need. I'm not going to be playing games on here...

Someone give me some pointers please. Thanks.

[iwanttheagrocrag]

basically the same, but i think you might be able to go online with a softmod.

[Bomb Bloke]

TSOP flashing won't extend the capacity of drives that can be installed (assuming you're running a decent softmod). It will, however, make it a lot easier to install new drives, and certainly makes it easier to recover if something goes wrong with the console.

[kolosus]

...capacity of drives that can be installed (assuming you're running a decent softmod)...

What do you mean "a decent softmod"? I didn't realize there were different versions! So, since I have a 160gb hdd in the xbox I'd assumed that it was only using the 137gb of the lot.

How do I find out how much of the total hdd capacity is being used? 137gb or the hdd's full potential of 160gb? PS: I dont have a G: drive. I have it but it has no space to spare.

Second, How do I find out what version of the softmod I'm using and how to get to a "decent softmod".

I'm starting to think that I'm going to try the TSOP flashing after all. I mean worst case it'll go terribly wrong... but I have a second xbox (ver. 1.6) in the unmodded state. All I did on that one is to make a backup of the eeprom.bin and nothing else has been touched on that one. If I fry this one (ver 1.0) for some reason I can always use that one (ver 1.6) .

[Bomb Bloke]

How do I find out how much of the total hdd capacity is being used? 137gb or the hdd's full potential of 160gb? PS: I dont have a G: drive. I have it but it has no space to spare.

One way is to run XBPartitioner. If you lack LBA48 support it'll outright tell you as soon as it starts.

Second, How do I find out what version of the softmod I'm using and how to get to a "decent softmod".

To identify your softmod, take a look at the autoinstaller package (the exploited save game) you used to install it in the first place. NDure is the way to go these days: Krazie's NDure Installer can apply this via game save exploits.

I'm starting to think that I'm going to try the TSOP flashing after all. I mean worst case it'll go terribly wrong... but I have a second xbox (ver. 1.6) in the unmodded state. All I did on that one is to make a backup of the eeprom.bin and nothing else has been touched on that one. If I fry this one (ver 1.0) for some reason I can always use that one (ver 1.6) .

If you decide to flash the 1.0 box, use the X2 5035 BIOS. It supports large drives "out of the box" and has all sorts of other useful features which you may or may not ever use.

[kolosus]

Thanks for your input Bomb Bloke.

Unfortunately it seems that I've flashed myself to a corner. Before you got your response in I flashed my TSOP (st branded) with cromwell. Now it wont boot anything. I cant get my drive to recognize the xebian or xbuntu cds (and dvds) that I've made. I tried a different drive (the samsung from my 1.6) and also tried a TSST (samgsung) dvd writer drive. The other drives recognize the cd/dvd and start to boot it... but doesn't get much further past the booting up screen. It just hangs...

So at the moment I'm stuck with a 1.0 with a cromwell bios with which I cant get anything to boot up.

I've been racking my brains as to how to get back into the TSOP to flash it with anything... The original would be the best. From there I can start experimenting again... Very carefully.

Turns out that I wasn't that keen on using the v1.6 as a replacement for the 1.0 that I had. But that's only after the bird has flown the coop. Sniff. I'm at a loss here. If you (or anyone really) has suggestion feel free to toss it this way.

[Bomb Bloke]

Lovely. I assume you used this guide?

In a nutshell, Cromwell turns the console into a dedicated Linux box.

Try X-DSL, I suppose.

[kolosus]

I'm guessing, given enough time, I'll try all of the xlinuxes over time. Not sure how to reflash the TSOP after I get linux booted. Xebian doesn't come with raincoat within it. Someone was telling me to use ssh from a remote computer to flash the TSOP... Might be on to something.

Raincoat should be requirement.

I guess giving xdsl a try is definitely worth it.

[Bomb Bloke]

I recommended X-DSL on the basis that I seem to remember it having raincoat (so if you did use that guide I linked, you should have no problem using it to flash to something else). I could be wrong, though. It's been years since I used it.

[kolosus]

Bomb Bloke. You were right. XDsl did come with raincoat already in it.

Only problem was that I couldn't get any sort of media to boot from my dvd drive. But reading another thread that I started about TSOP flashing I got the idea of a frugal install that dsl has.

So I used the 1.6 that I had to ftp into the hard drive of the 1.0, after using xboxhdm's locking/unlocking features. After getting ftp access to the hard drive I did a frugal install to the hard drive and then swapped the hard drive back into the 1.0. Again having to unlock/lock the drive of corse.

After there was a frugal install on the hdd itself cromwell booted it up. Then I realized that the original bios.bin file was not on the drive... so after swapping the drives again I finally got to the terminal, used raincoat to reflash the TSOP again.

This time I flashed it with the original bios.bin. Maybe next week I'll flash it again with a more feature rich bios.

Thanks for your help Bomb Bloke.

Which leads me to my next question for you Bomb Bloke. You mentioned that I sould flash my TSOP with X2 5035 BIOS. I got it and I was looking at it and saw that it was a 512kb file. So what's gonna happen if I flash my TSOP with it? Should I flash with it being 512kb while I have a 1mb TSOP?

Some help here before I bork my box again.

[Joes2Silly]

Unless you are flashing with a program that automatically sizes the bios image (like Evox), you need to resize the bios, especially if you are using raincoat to flash it! There are a few tools you can use to make the image 1 mb, either xecuter 2 bios manager (X2BM) or EVtool should work fine, I know there are more, but those are the ones I use.