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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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:

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

i will help if i can. btw, i did notice something. On the kiosks inside walmart, if you look at the controller there is a holster for a memory device. if you look at it upwards from underneath you will notice that there are four or five wires soldered on the bottom of the port.

they are red, green, white, and black. the same as usb. don't know if that means anything, but i would assume so.

Hi,

i succesfully connected memory card to my pc with a 3.3 voltage regulator, but xp doesn't recognize the usb device...can someone help me to find a generic flash ram driver?
Also i have connected to another system and it recognize as mass storage (M-System Diskonchip 2000) with some errors..i'll try with linux.

BR

LukeZ

here my device manager:

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c396/lukecalypso/dd.jpg

Get the driver directly from M-systems:

http://www.m-sys.com/site/en-US/DeveloperZ...5.x/default.htm

I tried no result..i suppose there is an hardware conflict on usb bus, i'll modify my prototype with an usb hub..

LukeZ

you must have the xbox memory card wired wrong. i opened mine up and soldered a usb cable to it. i can post a pic of that later also for proof. this is what my computer showed when i hooked it up. two separate devices. the memory unit first and the security device second.

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1636/fl...rivexbox0ht.jpg

you must have the xbox memory card wired wrong.

i opened mine up and soldered a usb cable to it. i can post a pic of that later also for proof. this is what my computer showed when i hooked it up. two separate devices. the memory unit first and the security device second.

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1636/fl...rivexbox0ht.jpg

willpower101 have you tryed with the driver SilentWathcer ref. to ???

Sweet, its good to see some progress being made here as I haven't had the money to burn on a Memcard (being the holidays and all). So willpower, was my diagram for the pin out correct or were the data pins different than what I thought??

Thanks man and good luck!

Any more progress on this yet?

there won't be anytime soon.. it's not just the USB flash you need, but you also need the security chip that gets detected.. which you will have to rip from a memcard basically, so overall it makes very little sense, not to mention the solder work involved.

you MS!!!

That's not the news I was hoping for, but good things come to those who wait...

Given all the talk about requiring licenses for 3rd party peripherals, I would assume that all dvices will have the same sort of security device in them.

Ok I decided to give this a try.

I messed up my first memory card so i had to go buy another one. I am glad i messed up the first one becasue i was able to make a adpater to let me have the memory card slot pins outside the case. See pic below.


Here is a pic of it with a femlae usb port attached to it. (the xbox will do its little circle thing like it is trying to find a drive but it will not find a hardrive attached to it or a thumbdrive)



I then went out and bought a new memory card and wired it the same way but this one still has the chip inside of the shell. Here is the pic of it.



I then used the pin layout descibed by Rustmonkey here I also downloaded the driver from Silentwatcher's post here.

I hooked up the memory card to my computer like this and it found a xbox sercurity thing and a gerneric memory card. Here is the pic of the xbox sercurity thing. . If you look further up under my drives you will see the memory card. I forced it to used the driver. I really dont know how, i installed the driver and played with it for a while. If anybody needs a indept detail guide, i will hook it up to another computer and try to amke a guide with screen shots.

After i got it hooked up i was aked to format the drive.
I did and i was able to put files on it. BUT the second i put it back in the xbox and then put it back in my computer it asked me to reformat it. I alos put a profile on the memory card and then stuck it in my computer. Formated the card and when i put the card back in the xbox the profile was still there. That was strange to me. I think the profiles are stored on a different chip because i have 61.1 mbs free after i format the card. I hope this is a start to anybody that knows more about the sercurity ship on the card.

I have a jump drive that has a 256 mb smasung chip on it. I might try to replace the chip on the xbox memory card and see if i get ore memory on the card. I know this gets us nowhere but it is a start.

I might install linux and see of the format of the card is the same as the hardrive and the contents can only be read with a program that sees the format. I will need to study up more on the harddive project. I will have 10 hours of brdem at work tommrow to do it to. then i can come home and work on this some more.

Here is a pic of the memory cards device page.

Here is a pic of the memory card hooked up to the computer and the xbox at the same time ( the xbox could see the card, but the computer could not)


Im tired so im off to bed. I hope this helps and i hope we can go somewhere with this and if not. I have one mutated memory card.

EDIT: If anybody was wondering, I used terminal strips so i could change the pins to a different usb wire if i had to.

Nice work JoHnnyTK36. Now you have a mem card to USB does it work if you plug it into one of the front USB ports on the 360?

Just trying to figure out if the mem card ports are just USB but different connectors.

Didn't even think about that last night. DUH

I will try that on my lunch break if i go home.

johnny, you need linux cvs with the capable XtaF support (can be found at free60)... well the filesystem's support atleast, but from what i assume, keep going with this and go get those files off of free60 and we might be going somewhere, but just to let you know, dont hook your 360 up to live, just in case of updates...

I have it connected to my satalite internet. So it's not that good for playing games, all i use it for is to see if my friends are online and downlaod demos. I'll dissconect it when i get home.

If somebody can point me to any guides with how to get the linux stuff working i would be grateful. Imagine it or not i am lazy. I also need to know what version of linux i need. I haven't used linux in years. I know shame on me but all the stuff i did for school was in windows so i used it so much and got less and less free time to mess with linux, so i just took it off.

OK i tried pluging the memory card into the xbox's usb ports via my adapted usb cord. It did its little circle thing to find a drive but nothing came up. So no go there.

Hey, go get Hex Workshop, and then installit. Fire HW up and then goto Open->Open Drive. Then do a sectordump and upload it to eg. Xbins or somewhere, then give us a link and we'll check it together

Ok i did the sector dump. I got this error when i was opening the drive.

You can get the dump here

Sweet! Good to see someone is still interested in this... haven't had money to blow on a card yet (Christmas presents for the wife and kids took most of it...) so haven't tried any of this myself.

A few suggestions... if you are able to read the file structure with the Linux tools, try uploading an original XBOX gamesave to the memcard... hell try it in windows after formatting and see what happens (probabley might need to be in a UDATA folder first... or maybe just in the numbered gamesave folder). And probabley try a gamesave that is exploitable for shits and giggles. Did you actually try putting data on the card after the successful format? Like maybe a music track or something the 360 would recognize? Or even just data that your PC would recognize?

thanks and good luck!

I might just have to go out and pick up a memcard now and fiddle with this...

i put a music file on it but you can't play music from a memory card. The option is faded out.

Edit: does any oneknow a device that i can turn a knob or sometihng to output any volage i want. Like from 1v to atleast 24volts. I can't remeber the name of one i used to know of.

Is that option still present without a music file on the card? If it is not, then obviously the 360 can see the data uploaded from a computer... which means you might be able to experiment with Xbox 1 gamesaves placed in different folders...

Ah, you dumped the flash drive after you formated it in windows so that's just a dump of a regular FAT32 usb thumb drive.

Stick it back in the xbox, have it format it, then try to get a dump.

HexWorkshop isn't going to be able to do the dump because windows doesn't support the FATX filesystem.

If you boot up any live distro of linux you should be able to just run "dd if=sda of=thumbdrive.bin" and get a 1:1 dump.

The option is not avialible at all. With or wiithout the music file on it.

After i format the card and put it back in the xbox it now says format, i have to format it in the xbox before i can use it again in the xbox. I dont remember that being there last night when i did the experiment the first time.

Edit: im downloading linux right now, so i hope to have the raw dump up in the hour.

Sorry, make that:

dd if=/dev/sda of=thumbdrive.bin

that is, if sda is the name of the thumbdrive.

Ok i see the memory card under usb devices, but i can not figure out how to mount it so i can grab the dump.

i am using a slax live cd version of linux.

HELP?

no need to mount the device, even if you could. just use the dd command.

Ok under system information it calls it "memory unit". So i typed

dd if=/dev/memory unit of=thumbdrive.bin

it says that

dd: unreconized option 'unit'

so i tried

dd if=/dev/memoryunit of=thumbdrive.bin

it says

dd: opening '/dev/memoryunit' : No such file or directory

i then tried

dd if=/dev/"memory unit" of=thumbdrive.bin and
dd if=/dev/'memory unit' of=thumbdrive.bin

both said

dd: opening '/dev/memory unit' : No such file or directory

any ideas?

i won't get to play with this till i get home from school this afternoon.

I might need to get the file for support from free60, but i can't find it. Can somebody show me how to add that support to linux.

I guess i need to get a linux guide, since i havent used it in so long and i never used it that much when i did use it.

Hex Workshop CAN make a dump of a drive without supported filesystem, as long as it gets recognized by windows as a drive. I've done it with a corrupt memory card.

I know that Xebian could be run as a live linux cd in your pc, in addition to running in your XBox. It did indeed have FatX support, but I'm not sure as to whether it's been updated with the latest 360 supporting driver. I'm not sure whether they offer the Updated FatX in Module form, but if they did, you could simply add that module to an installed linux distro I believe....

Oh, and BTW, you should rename the memory card on the 360 to something like X360MU. If we find that as plain text, it's likely to be not encrypted (but can be signed though).
EDIT: That dump got heavily compressed, 64MB to 700kb Good thing, makes downloadin a lot faster

I know i was thinking of where i was going to host it, then i compressed it and it went down it 700kb. It made things alot eaiser. I made a dump wih hex workshop after i re formated it in the xbox. and before i formated it in the pc. It was different from the other dump. I will post it once i get home but i dont think it will help, I didn't see much in it.

Don't use "memory unit" with the dd command. That's not the real device name. It will probably be sda. If that doesn't work try sdb, sdc... ect.