Aladdin Bad Flash? Vga Cable? Help Needed :), wonder if anyone has some tips for my problem ;) Options

[mastha]

First of all i don't know if this is the right subforum to place my question at since i didnt find any specific Aladdin thread.. I have the limited green edition of xbox think 1.2 or 1.3 with Aladdin chip installed.. box is working as media center.. i was trying to make that vga cable but when i changed the region from PAL to NTSC and applied the Frost* VGA bios and rebooted the box just tries to start for 2 times (green led light stays on then goes of, 2 times and then the famous red/green flashing light.. now the question is did the flash go wrong or is just the cable that isnt good? for example when loading xbox dashboard if u dont have a cable connected it will blink green/orange until you plug it in..

Anyway i had my drive backed up, so i tought about softmodding the xbox, so picked up some old ide drive i have laying around, connected it to pc, copied the softmods, locked the hd and booted the xbox up using the original dashboard, with hopes that if after booting evox, i could enable the chip by setting it on in the switch and then flash it from there.. too bad it doesnt work heheit gives some error like cant access etc..

So my question is, what to do now?:

1: Already ordered some frozen vga adapter from divineo to see if it displays the image.
2: Is it possible to flash aladdin's bios via bootable cd/dvd? (according to alladin website i have the aladdin mini)
2: Get someone with same chip, boot the good chip, and then swap it with mine in orther to flash it (wish me luck since everyone caught the 360 fever oh and i forget i seem to have the version of aladdin mini modchip cheapmode!)
3: Order some other modchip that allows me to have more than 1 bios bank.. so i can run multiple bios, and which allows me to flash a bios via bootable cd/dvd maybe?

Hope to hear from the community, dont let the xbox scene die!! great abrace

[Heimdall]

Sounds like a bad flash. Which BIOS did you flash?

2. No, because you need a working BIOS to boot in the first place - catch 22!

3. You can hotswap the chip with a different chip to reflash it - the working chip doesn't have to be another Aladdin.

4. DuoX2 is a good alternative, with 2x 512k banks. You can buy them in BST - have a look here.

You could buy a DuoX2, set it up to dual boot while you debug the system (VGA on one bank, standard on the other), then hotswap the Aladdin and reflash that.

[mastha]

Heimdall, ok so the bios was, ind-bios.5001.06.vga.b1-junkmonkey altough the flash went correct and even after rebooting the xbox it was ok.. just the image sort of green using the a/v cable which according to what i read is a normal thing to happen, now in order to test the vga cable i did, i needed the region mode to be set to NTSC, and so i did.. changed it using enigma's video mode changer and rebooted the xbox, after that we have the FRAG light :] thats why i wonder if i needed the vga adapter to be connected (like if my cable wasnt well done and i didnt work, same as if you power the xbox on without any video cable attached to it, leds with flash orange/green until you plug the cable in).

Ok so here's my setup, this chip must be unsoldered before hotswap right? dont think its doable to hotswap this one right? Its just better to forget it and go for another chip like the option you mentioned, again if i go this way it will be better if i just let the "D0" cable there and use it for the other chip right?

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/6956/hpim2448lq7.jpg
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2074/hpim2442nh0.jpg
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/6014/hpim2475ud8.jpg

(didnt post the images right away due to high resolution, it would just mess up the post)

Tks again for the help Heimdall, its just too bad people tend to forget the old greeny console in favour to the top generation consoles nowadays..

This post has been edited by mastha: Feb 19 2009, 06:53 PM

[Chancer]

The flash obviously worked if the box rebooted OK. The problem seems to have been caused when you switched video region. Could be unrelated and just coincidence. But a reflash is not going to help by the sound of it.
The chip doesn't need to be unsoldered for the hot swap, unless of course it is not fitted on a pin header.
If it is on a pin header simply solder Xbox D0 to ground and then link BT on the chip to pin 2 on the chip if the CPLD is a 4032. If the CPLD is a 4064 link BT to L1 .That way you can simply unplug the chip and hot swap.
I would try booting enigma from disc (cold boot) and swap the region back blind, but it is very possible it will no longer boot the disc.

This post has been edited by Chancer: Feb 19 2009, 07:21 PM