Possible To Softmod Board With Wrongly Flashed Tsop? Options

[competes2win]

Hey guys, so I have this xbox that was previously TSOP flashed. I accidently screwed up the TSOP by trying to change the bios to a wrong sized one. I then installed a mod chip to get the box working again. My question is whether it is possible to soft mod this xbox even though the tsop doesn't work. I'm thinking not, but if so my end goal would be to softmod then re-flash the tsop.

Thanks for any clarification.

[shambles1980]

hi,
should have stuck with the ind bios as it works well withextra ram upgrades. but you can 3 or 6 wire trick it to boot.

technically all the wire trick does is select a bank to boot from. so as an example. your xbox has a 1mb tsop and you wanted to use a 256kb bios. this fillied up one bank. It should have also been used on the 3 remaining banks but did not so it fails to boot.
with a 3 or 6 wire trick, you will select the 1st 256k portion and then it will boot.
you can then dissable the switch (disconnect the wires) and re flash.

its also possible to just leave the wires connected and simply run from the 1st 256k.

if you do manage to get it to boot i would boot with hexen and reflash the tsop with the ind bios. as mentioend the ind bios works prety well with extra ram, other bios's may not actualy be able to use it.
but some of the x2 bioses work ok, and the x3, But id just go for the IND bios on hexen as if you chose 256k on hexen it will correctly expand to populate the entire tsop.


EDIT..

some interesting reading right here ...
this is from the therad you linked to for "your motherboard"

"A19 is grounded so half the TSOP still has the original bios on it, you can unground A19 and hook it to a toggle switch to dualboot. Write enable lines are still connected so you can easily reflash the bios if you like. I have also installed a pinheader and D0 wire for easy installation of a modchip, though not necessary."

have you tried to unground a19?
could let you boot to a situation where you can flash. or to a point where you can Soft mod then flash..
all depends on the flash configuration on the chip though

This post has been edited by shambles1980: Apr 28 2012, 02:18 PM

[Heimdall]

but some of the x2 bioses work ok, and the x3

Nearly...

You can't run X3 BIOSes on a TSOP, or an any chip that isn't an X3. If you flash an X3 BIOS to a TSOP you need to fit a chip, or use a 29-wire mod, or remove the TSOP and flash it externally.

its also possible to just leave the wires connected and simply run from the 1st 256k.

...

have you tried to unground a19?
could let you boot to a situation where you can flash. or to a point where you can Soft mod then flash..
all depends on the flash configuration on the chip though

The 3-wire trick doesn't quite work like that. All wires floating (i.e. disconnected) means that all banks on the TSOP have to contain the same BIOS, because the boot code checks that, so disconnecting A19 doesn't work if the TSOP contains different BIOSes.

You have to have A18 and A19 either grounded or connected to +3.3V in order to select a specific 256k or 512k bank:

- If A19 is connected to ground then the xbox only sees half of the 1MB tsop chip which is 512kB in size
- If A19 is connected to 3.3v then the xbox only sees the other half of the 1MB chip which is 512kB in size

The example above will get you going if 2 banks is enough and would require only one switch. If you want to have 4 banks then while you have A19 connected to either ground or 3.3v and it only sees one half of the chip you have to also connect A18:

- If you connect A18 to ground the xbox will only see half of that 512kB bank which is 256kB in size
- If you connect A18 to 3.3v the xbox will only see the other half of that 512kB bank which is 256kB in size

So:

CODE

            A18 Float    A18 Gnd     A18 3.3v
A19 Gnd     0-512        0-256       256-512
A19 3.3V    512-1024     512-768     768-1024

This post has been edited by Heimdall: Apr 28 2012, 04:12 PM