I just picked up a second xbox to play on LIFE (used from Gamestop) and well.. I put one of my backedup games in it and they ran perfectcally. I opened it and found no modchip, so the people on the backups forum said the game was soft modded.. a term I never heard of before.
So how do I double check to see if the system was soft modded or not.

well you can ftp in and look if you find softmod files. it could also be that it was tsop flashed which doesn't require a chip also

i imagine it boots to ms dash.

good way to check for tsop is to use a spare 8gig hd and try and boot a slayers disk, if it boots, then chances are its tsop'd, if its softmodded, the hd must be locked.

if you dont have a spare hd, try booting that hd in a pc with a xboxhdm, if you can see the contents in xbrowser its unlocked.

If it's booting to the MS Dash, it's not likely to be softmodded. Sounds more like a TSOP flash to me.

softmods can be setup to boot to ms dash.... but i agree, sounds more like a tsop.