Chameleon, The definitive guide Options

[viscious07]

good news...there's finally a tut on the solderless adapter at xodus-chip.com

[explicitlyrics100]

impressive, the d0 even takes me 15 minutes when im not concentrating, mind u that time i had run out of wire and was using a strand from multistrand wire and doing the top d0 or it would have shorted. lol im lazy. mind u it was my xbox that time so i was doing it perfect in my opinion

try flashing a different bios, could just be the xp flash progarmmer doesnt recognise or something. otherwise i dont know, havnt had any time for anything xbox related recently

blue flash but having no effect i would assume is related to the lpc. however if it is booting the msdash normally then its a problem with the d0 connection (and possibly he ground connector on the lpc

[Iammontoya]

Well, I just came out of Chamaleon Hell, with your help, of course.

Here were my symptoms, some of which will be repetitious, but I am posting here in case you have the exact same problem, perhaps you will save yourself many hours of frustration.

The soldering: Save yourself some time and trouble. Just do the essentials first. Soldered the D0 point. I have an old Xbox, so I had to use braid to pull off solder from LPC. Worked like a dream. If you're new at this, just put the braid over a single hole, put your iron over the braid and watch the solder get sucked into the braid. Cut about an inch off of the braid and move on the next hole.

The symptoms:

Xbox lights up. Xbox shuts down. Xbox lights up. Xbox shuts down. Xbox lights up and... and... green light, red light back and forth, or... green light amber light.... dead in the water.

How to fix it:

As it has been mentioned here several times. The header pins need to be in and soldered...SOLID! Don't even waste your time. Put your pins through the way it is mentioned here.. push them in almost all the way from the bottom and put a neat little drop of solder right on the top of each hole, making sure there is soder IN the hole. Believe me, with a magnifying glass you can see the solder fill in the gaps.

Do the "pressure test". If you can push the pins in or out with your finger or screwdriver (flat part, of course), you have more soldering to do.

Did that and... Shangri LA! A chamaleon screen! But, wait:


New symptoms:

Try to burn a cd-rw one thousand different ways from Sunday. Different color CDRW's, different speeds, used the DUMMY.BIN file, tried with evox, tried with x2, blah blah blah... The screen would always read...waiting for disc. It did, however, offer me a glimmer of hope in an attempt to mock me, when it would finally say: searching for linuxbios.cfg...could not be found.. halt... or something of the like. This would prompt me to get creative and burn 10 more cdrw's thinking I was close. Hahaahah...it was evil.

Solution:
Use the matrix LPC programmer and the new programming s/w from Xodus. This little puppy will allow the upgrade to bank 0 that was so elusive with one caveat, of course: "the LPC programmer does not work on all LPT ports! Go figure!" If it doesnt see your device, save yourself some time and put the whole thing on a different PC.

I hope this saves you time, my friend.

[otakonx]

What about enable/disable switches for the solderless chameleons? Has anyone tried it? If so, where would one solder the “switch” to the chameleon? I’ve heard the D0 connection between the chip and the motherboard is good but I have a solderless adapter on mine. Can I just solder a switch to the D0 tab on the back of my chameleon? Also, if I have the e/p points soldered already, do I even need to install a enable/disable switch? I just don’t want to go online one day and find that M$ banned me from playing live… that would suck.

-Otakonx

[explicitlyrics100]

to disable the chip you will have to find some way of cuting the wire that goes to d0, if you cut the wire part from the connector to chip it should be much easier, but basically you will need to cut a wire and solder a swich in between, turn the switch off and the original xbox bios should boot fine (so long as drive is locked, filenames are the same and stuff like that)

[otakonx]

QUOTE (explicitlyrics100 @ Sep 4 2003, 07:53 PM)

to disable the chip you will have to find some way of cuting the wire that goes to d0, if you cut the wire part from the connector to chip it should be much easier, but basically you will need to cut a wire and solder a swich in between, turn the switch off and the original xbox bios should boot fine (so long as drive is locked, filenames are the same and stuff like that)

ok so what you are saying is the software controlled enable/disable (power/eject combo) on the chameleon isn't good enough for turning it off? And M$ will still see it even though the thing is "toggled" off? I keep getting mixed answers on this subject. It's probably really hard to know exactly what M$ knows and doesn't know about your system when you log on Live.

-OtakonX

[explicitlyrics100]

i cant see why it wouldnt be good enough but i dont know anybody who has tried and i dont want to so id just say better safe than sorry!

[neonmod]

Wouldn't using the switch to TSOP option in evoX settings switch the Chameleon off !

[perforator]

QUOTE (Xeero @ Jun 18 2003, 05:40 AM)

QUOTE (explicitlyrics100 @ May 30 2003, 10:20 AM) no for tsop flash. the bottom of the board for p/e is quite hard as the actual connection is to a chip not to a connection ring for a component but it might be worth taking a look any1 who has their console open. d0 is the ground and doesnt need anything other than that. Chris A "connection ring" is actually called a via. d0 is not ground...it is +5V or something...when you manually ground it (enable the mod), then the Xbox knows to use the LPC points as a location for the BIOS.

When you say manually ground d0, do you mean ground the d0 point on the Chameleon or ground the d0 connector on the mobo?

Just curious..
Thanks,
Mark

[JonDante]

You create the ground by connecting the D0 point on the MB to the D0 point on the Chameleon.

JD

[perforator]

Ok, so if you wanted to bypass the Chameleon, you could ground the d0 point on the mobo to chassis ground... right?

I'm guessing that the d0 point on the Chameleon is wired to pin2 of the LPC which is ground I believe?


Thanks!
Mark

[JonDante]

That sounds right from what I have read. Xodus could answer that better though. ( I believe it is wired that way on the solderless adapter.)

JD

[Deadpool]

Guys working on a ver 1.3 box.... has anyone had any luck getting the chameleon to work on this type of box.....

[explicitlyrics100]

yeh the 1.3 chameleon works on 1.3 xboxes, it seems to be fine, but u have to have the newer version of the chip

[MatroxMan69]

QUOTE (Deadpool @ Oct 5 2003, 08:15 PM)

Guys working on a ver 1.3 box.... has anyone had any luck getting the chameleon to work on this type of box.....

Did a brand spanking new from the store v1.3 last night...

- Header Pin install
- Soldered the top D0 w/30awg wire. Easier than most think. The 30awg fits IN the D0 pad!
- Used Matrix programmer to flash BIOS (evoxM7 in bank0)
- Wire from D0 goes to SPST switch mounted at rear of case, then to ground pad beside screw. You DO NOT need to solder it to the Chameleon. All you need to do is ground the D0 line to cause the machine to use the LPC port

- New 120GB HDD
- Slayers's 2.1 install (Not my box and it's quick )

DONE and have a DUAL "boot" box.