Usb Flash Drive As Memory Unit, Any progress? Options

[crb0621]

I waited outside walmart for 9 hours and got shafted by being 5th in line. They only had 4 premiums so i bought the core since the only accessory I wanted was the hard drive since i got HD cables for free from a friend. Now I can't find hard drives anywhere and I don't want to spend $40 on a memory unit.
What I want to know is: has anyone made any progress on using a regular USB flash drive as a memory unit? Is the difference between it and a memory unit in the hardware or is it formatted specially? I realize nobody has probably done this yet, but hopefully this can spark some interest. Thanks.

[LORD_Beefy2000]

i got stuck 5th in line too and they only had 4 premiums.
My main problem is that none of the stores have harddrives.
I dont wan't to buy a mem card roughly half the price of the hard drive

[crb0621]

Yeah, hopefully they might just whip out hard drives at the stores on friday, but if they don't I'll order online somewhere and it'll be on backorder or just wait. I can wait a while for xbox live, but I just really want to save games.

[Dameon]

I would expect that the memory card is a standard USB Mass Storage device, but the Xbox identifies it as a memory card by certain identifiers. If anyone has ever used udev rules with a thumbdrive on Linux, you know what I mean. Has anyone fashioned a Controller <-> Computer cable as of yet? Are the controller and memory card on the USB bus at all anymore?

[crb0621]

I'm not sure what you would need the controller cable for as it is just a standard USB plug for the wired one. Also, the memory unit plugs into a standard USB port so we have to figure out what makes the 360 recognize it as a memory unit as you said so we can just use a USB mass storage device. Hopefully we can figure this out soon.

[Dameon]

Ah. You'll have to excuse me, I don't have my own unit.

USB devices have certain identifiers such as serial number, product name, and manufacturer that are known to the kernel but not prominently displayed to the user. On linux with udev, you can get insane amounts of info on the device. The problem is causing an existing mass storage device to report what we want.

I'm interested to see the output of the following command:

CODE

udevinfo -a -p `udevinfo -q path -n /dev/<the memory card device (not partition)>`

[crb0621]

I'm not very familiar with using Linux, hopefully some experienced coders can figure out a way to change those things?

[Dezro]

The memory unit does not plug into a standard USB port. It has a larger 5-pin connection. Although it probably is USB - either something like the old Xbox port or some kind of giant perverted version of Mini-USB (GameSpot seems to think the latter). Either way, the Memory Unit port's pin 5 should be USB's pin 4.

Hopefully, the only thing keeping the 360 from recognizing a memory stick as a Memory Unit is the port you plug it into, and all you need is an adaptor. But this is doubtful.

Can anyone confirm that there's +5V going from pin 1 to 5? I can't find my tools at the moment.


...hmm. I wonder if MS did anything to prevent reading a memory unit on a computer? Other than encryption or a funky filesystem, I mean.

[crb0621]

Wow I'm stupid Forgot about those things right on the front of the case that say Memory Unit on them. My bad

This post has been edited by crb0621: Nov 26 2005, 12:50 AM

[scuzzell]

From what I remember reading, MS set up some kind of program with 3rd party hardware developers. If they didn't pay their license fees, any hardware they design won't work. I'm not saying that it's not going to be possible to use a USB mass storage device as a memory unit, but I doubt it will be as simple as just wiring an adapter to the memory unit port.

[Dameon]

I believe the license fee is an "I don't wanna get sued" type of deal. However, that doesn't mean it is as simple as an adapter.

This post has been edited by Dameon: Nov 26 2005, 06:25 PM

[Rustmonkey]

Going to try to decipher the pin out later today on the memcard slots... if I can get to them without opening the console... I'll see if we have a 5volt, a ground, and the data +/data - pins... but, if it is the usb ports, I can probabley figure the data pins by the position of the 5 volt... hopefully... but what pin was the YELLOW extra wire on the original xbox ports? Middle? Left? Right? Anyone know?

Thanks!

[Rustmonkey]

Well, did a little testing and, sorry boys and girls, but I don't believe its a modified USB port, unless its simply running at a lower voltage because ti powers only a memory card... might be more proprietary like Sonys memcard slots. The pins measure (voltage) from top to bottom with the 360 standing up:

Pin 1 = 0
Pin 2 = 0
Pin 3 = 0
Pin 4 = 3.27 volts
Pin 5 = 0

So there we have it... might be able to somehow figure out how to run a card reader off of it if we can figure out the data pin configuration, but I'm not sure if a normal USB memstick will run off of only 3.3v.

Anyone know?
EDIT:

Ok, after another quick test, I've discovered the outer pins are both grounds.

So theoretically the layout is probabley

Pin 1 = Ground
Pin 2 = Data
Pin 3 = Data
Pin 4 = Power
Pin 5 = Ground

The extra yellow wire from the original xbox controller isn't needed because we're only powering a memcard, not an entire controller????

Anyone know how to decipher which data pin goes to plus or minus? Trial and error I guess If its layed out like a normal port then it should be that pin 3 is - and pin 2 is +

Might try wiring some stuff up to the port and see what happens when I plug in a memstick


oh and heres the link to another thread I started before this one evolved to memcard slots

---- > http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=463399

This post has been edited by Rustmonkey: Nov 27 2005, 12:30 AM

[Rustmonkey]

Ok, attempted to wire up a usb cable to a memory card slot and had no success... I know I had power and cable signals, but I couldn't get it to recognize a jumpdrive no matter which pin I chose as data- or data+...

So may not have enough power to run a memstick if this is the case... may try it later with my xD to usb converter as well... if anyone has an OPEN console, you might try soldering directly to the board instead... maybe MS deliberately lowered the power for the port so that USB devices aren't compliant. If we could bypass this limit, maybe we could get it to recognize... i might try pulling 5v from the front USB ports later, but right now I've got homework to do

Good luck all

EDIT: Ok, only took about 5 seconds... tried it with power off of USB ports and still nothing... got the memstick to power up though (LED blinked)... so it might be that I'm not getting a good connection with the data pins, but I'm really not willing to crack the case on my box to figure it out

This post has been edited by Rustmonkey: Nov 27 2005, 02:06 AM

[crb0621]

Thanks for helping out man. Hopefully someone with their case open would be willing to keep trying? Thanks again.