How Could I Check to see If One of the Modded Xboxs I HAve bought
Has it's Ram Upgraded?

And does someone Happen to Know
How I Could Split A Cold CATHODE Light Set that came with two 12" Light Tubes attached to each other
I Only Want to use one of them, And they are attached to each other by wire.
Could i Simply Cut one of them off, or would that Make the Other one not work?
It's for my xbox.



I Had thought they would have come each one by itself with the plug in. Turns out they are connected to each other and only one plug in.
So The Question is How Could I Remove one of them. ?

Sorry I don't know the answer to the first question but neon lights...

The little black box converts the DC voltage into AC and jumps it up quite a bit so don't get fried doing this.

If you unplug or cut one light the other shuts down? Which says they are rigged in a series circuit and not parallel like house lights. So if you cut a line and reconnect the dead ends together the other light will come back on. However the amperage to the single light will double. Without the twin there to suck off some amps the light will take on that extra making burn hotter. That means a shorter life. But since you have two bulbs you have the replacement option. IF you have the information INPUT/OUTPUT volts and mAmps you could buy a fuse and place that inline to cut the amps down and save the bulb life. For example if the bulb is rated 250 mA you could use a 0.25 AMP fuse. To cut the extra current to that bulb. But without it the bulb might be getting 0.5 Amps and while it might look real cool the bulb will get warmer and shorten the life rating. Blubs like this normally last 20 to 40 thousand hours.

I hope this helps.

Thanks For that man that really helped.
I think I'll Go Ahead And Do That with the lights.
Even Though Today I Got another idea after i had posted this up, and that is that I Can
Still Use both of them One in the Front Like I had Planned And One In The Back To Lighten things up even more.
I'll Think about it.

XBMC's system page will tell you how much RAM the system has.

If you want physical proof, here's a picture of an old motherboard. See how there are two rectangular spots on the motherboard where it looks like chips should be? Well, if yours are uncovered like this picture, then you don't have the upgrade. There are also two similar spots underneath (all four must be filled).

1.6 consoles cannot be upgraded. You require a flashed TSOP or a modchip to take advantage of a RAM upgrade.

Thanks For the Info.
But What You Said Above is that 100% True?
What If The Xbox Is Softmodded.

the think spambot said about the fuse is incorrect u would need a resistor a fuse is meant to protect from over voltage not to step it down the way he said if u put a .25 amp fuse into a .5 amp circuit the fuse would blow

If you take apart your xbox and look on the motherboard, you'll see the ram chips attached to the board. Now if you have spots that are reserved for more chips and aren't filled in, you have a factory 64mb board. If those spots are all filled in you have a 128mb board.



If you look at the board, the black chips are your ram. Now to the right of the chip on the right there is an empty spot. That's for additional RAM. there's also empty spots on the underside of the board. If you have chips in those reserved spots, then you have upgraded ram. If not then you don't

Steveo
Doesn't really matter anymore I Put Both The Tube lights on the Xbox.
One in th bottom Front And One in the back After I Cut The Case for it to fit.
Looks Great. I'll Put a Video Of It On Youtube once it's all painted.
Thanks for the info though

And

Awesome Thanks, Now I'll know what to look for.

.

I would be the first to admit I am 16 and have only taken 6 months of high school electronics but here is what the book says:

You can only reduce amperage in a circuit by reducing the number or size of devices plugged in to it. To make it easy, imagine you have a 120 watt light bulb. Given your household voltage is normally 120v this would draw 1 amp, (volts X watts = amps). fifteen of these bulbs would draw 15 amps, the size of a commonly used circuit breaker. The sixteenth light bulb added to the circuit should trip the circuit breaker or fuse to protect the wiring from overheating. If you chose to use 60 watt bulbs instead you should be able to burn 30 of them before th breaker trips. Likewise if you needed 240 watt bulbs, that same circuit could only carry 7 of them.

So I was both correct and incorrect, he should place a fuse or breaker inline to protect from surges. But according to the above it isn't needed. This is what my book "Modern Electronics for Beginners" defines a resistor:

A resistor is a device that resists, or limits, the flow of electric current through itself. The more resistance a thing has, the more it limits current (at the same voltage). In a circuit, resistance and current are inversely proportional. The more the resistance, the more current will be limited and the less current will actually flow. Resistors pay a price for limiting current - they create heat.

A resistor conducts current flow, but it heats up as a consequence to having current "forced" through it by some applied voltage. If the resistor is an appliance, it is probably being used specifically to generate the heat, because the heat is what is desired. When we need to dry our hair or clothes or we want to make toast or coffee. Incandescent lights could be seen as resistors, but we don't normally use them to generate heat. Heating elements, or thermal elements, are heaters - resistive heaters.

In electronics equipments, resistors are included in circuit designs to "develop" voltage and to limit current. Glass fuses are resistors that house the resistor inside an air space to keep trap the heat they produce. They are an integral part of the electronics world, and anyone entering into electronics will be seeing them and solving a number of problems with resistance.

Hope this clears up any confusion for future information.

I bet it looks a lot better with both neon lights anyways!

A fuse will stop all flow if the current exceeds a certain amount (the rating of the fuse), it will then have to be replaced. A resistor will limit the flow but always allow a specified amount thru no matter how much current is applied (unless you exceed the ratings of the requirement and damage it). You could in theory use a fuse like a resistor but the practical usage is about nil, since you aren't protecting from over amperage but trying to reduce the amount available to the bulb.

To my understanding, yes, it is true. I have not heard of anyone managing to use extra RAM with a softmod.

But considering that the difficulty involved in installing more RAM chips is WAY above the level of flashing the TSOP, I don't see this to be much of a problem.

first off Spambot if your book says volts X watts = amps its wrong its watts/volts = amps read this http://www.the12volt.com/ohm/ohmslaw.asp and plus simple math will tell you 120X120 does not = 1 and a fuse can never be used in the place of a resistor and to test that take out an multimeter and test the resistance or different fuses

oh miami you should try to see if you could hook the up to the Ring of lights like say to the error red one then set the led to flash that would be kinda different

YEah Thats What I Will Do Man. I'll Share a Video with you guys Of The Xbox Once I'm Done with it.
It Will be Finished By This Friday. Thanks for all the help people but LOL I'm not good with all that stuff so i just decided to use both of them I now know not to buy sets of two unless they say they come separate.
I Also Just Bought two 4inch Cold lights For my 500GB Xbox. =D
There will Be a Video Of That Pretty Soon also. Not Giving Details Of The Look Yet, But It's Got a paint job And nice Lights.

Ok Thanks Now i know for sure Softmodded Xboxs can;'t have Bigger Ram.


My Reply is .....?..... I'm Good for now man

One New Question I'm Adding.
And Someone Might have told me this before already but i never got to doing it and it went out my other ear.

So

HOW Can I Connect 2 Xbox's To Each Other To Copy Games From One To The Other??
Is That Possible? I'm Pretty sure it is.
Just Tell me What App My Xbox (Or Both xbox's) Need to have to be able to do that?

And Also
What Type of cable do i need to get to make it possible? a normal CAT 5 or what ?

The Unleashx dashboard has an ftp client buildin. You can do it with unleashx on both xboxes.

You will need a crossover network cable or a switch and 2 straight network cables.

regards.

ALRIGHT AWESOME THANKS.

Hey Guys

Remember I Was asking all Those questions About the Cold Lights, And How I Was Making This Custom Xbox For somebody, and that I Was going to Show it to you when it was done..?

Well Here It Is, LOL I Know i Took 2 weeks Of More Time But It's Now Finished,
Heres a Couple Of Pictures Of It.

Right Now It's In The Mail On It's Way To Her New loving Home

Lets See What You Guys Think

http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc0552vt2.jpg



http://img300.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc0557om3.jpg




http://img378.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc0561wz4.jpg

thats cool and i usually don't like white but thats really cool

Food for thought

I was thinking about the ram upgrade and I think it could still be used on a softmod.

Now I will say it really is of no use on the xbox side of things but it does have its uses in linux.

The answer would be phoenix bios loader or a softmod that worked with phoenix bios loader like the one that uses 5035 and has vga support.

Thanks

Oh And Run088
I Was Really Only thinking Of Getting A Ram Upgrade For My SoftModded Xbox
Just Because It's Got Tons Of Emulators On It.
Like Lets say MAME, And I Was Wondering if That Would make The
Roms Load Faster And stuff.
Other then the use of making The roms load Faster and Possibly Load up the Xbox Games even faster
Are my Only Reasons Of Wanting a 128mb Ram Upgrade.

i cant seem to see any real difference on anything you are asking.I have not noticed increased performance out of emulators either.Some have claimed to but I dont believe it myself.If you read up of the xbmc site on the topic it is discussed.The reason you see little performance upgrade is because of the way the bios are set up on the xbox side.The extra memory can be used but only on certain tasks and those task dont seem to be anything very useful.


I am no programmer but this is what the best minds of xbmc say.Xbmc does not use the extra ram either.I have tested and verified this myself.If you watch the memory usage and try maxing out caches or what not.When available ram left falls below 64mgs which would be 0mgs left on an xbox that does not have the upgrade the video crashes.

With that being said the extra ram is very useful for linux.It allows you to set your desktop to 720p and still use flash player.It also speeds linux up a good deal.This is because the bios are not setup for the xbox weather you have cromwell or xromwell when your running linux the bios change and the whole 128 can be accessed for anything.

It seems that if we had a media player setup to work on linux the same way we have xbmc on the xbox side we would be able to get better performance results out of the equipment we are working with than what we currently have.Some work is being done on xbmc intergrated into linux but the requirements for the hardware to run it at this time are out of the ream for the normal xbox.I believe it takes gpl2.0 which requires a processor of 1.5ghz or better which is twice the speed of the xbox's 733mhz and it requires ram somewhere around 256 or better which is twice the xbox max of 128.



So it is my opinion that if you are not going to be using linux then the upgrade would be a waste of time and money for you.

Well Run088 coming from you, a guy with 4 Xboxs with the 128mb Upgrade
I'll Definetly believe every word you said.

Ive Never Had an Xbox Running On Linux,
Wonder how that Is.
If You Have One Which I Guess You Do,
Why not make a Youtube Video of the xbox running all that good stuff
and show it off a bit

I would but I am to cheap to buy a camera.I might just have to break down and buy one one of these days.Or I might be able to borrow one and get some pics to show off.I will see about borrowing one tommorrow and I will let you know.

I don't want to hack your threat, but isn't 128 MB also usefull if you start develloping for the xbox? Debug exe's are bigger by nature, and the software that communicates with your pc also uses a piece of memory.
After all, there must have been a reason Microsoft shipped their debug consoles with 128 MB of ram installed?

regards.

You are right I use it for that reason as well just overlooked it.I cant program for nothing yet so I cant get much use out of it now other than xbox neighorhoods benefits but there is no doubt that this would be another useful benefit of the ram upgrade.I have said so myself before in past post I was just in linux world at the time but I will still stand firm on the fact the ram upgrade will not benefit a retail or hacked retail bios because of the way the bios are constructed.But it is useful for linux and debug.

LOL Man


And Yo People.
Since No One Feels Like Buying My Damn Debug-Kit
I'm Fixing to Start Using it for myself then.

So 1st, how can i Make it Play My Burnt Games?
Right now it's got a Normal XBOX dash with just the
normal options.

Actually lol what the hell can i do with a debug ?
I just want to see what the 128MB Ram Can do with it.

I Only got it Cuz I Though I Would Sell It FAST.
So Far it's been like 5 weeks And Nothing!

One crazy though, Could I Actually Mod It + Put a 500Gb In My Debug Kit and Use it like a modded xbox or no?