I'm kind of confused on the topic of xbox emulators. I heard from one source that you have to transfer it to your xbox's HDD via FTP. Another source told me that you have to put the roms in the specified roms folder, then compile it to and iso and burn it to a DVD. What's the easiest way to do it? I heard the most common way is to use FTP, but I'm interested in the second method, because it won't take up as much Xbox HDD space.

There are many ways. Including both that you mentioned..... easiest is subjective.

Personally i have them all on my xbox HDD (Which is upgraded) this way i can have pretty menus and screenshots in XBMC (My dashboard) and the games are there permanantly, so i can take the bxo to a buddys place and everything is ready to go.

Emulators on xbox and games on network share is probably the way to go though, as to get games onto the xbox is nightmarish as filename lengths are a problem with the fat-x filesystem and have to be short.

But sounds like for you, DVD is the way to go. Set it up with one game with FTP first and get things working how you'd like. Then burn to DVD with all games is my advice.

Read the readme.txt that comes with whichever emulator you are using for specific instructions.

Shorty

Qwix is the program you want in regards to burning emulators (or any other X-Box apps) to DVD. Use that to turn the files into an xISO, then burn that to disc using your usual software (eg. Nero).

Your PC should not be able to read the result, but the X-Box should boot off it.

The easiest way to transfer for a noob would probably be a USB thumb drive. Its very easy to save files to your Xbox this way. The only thing is you would need a USB to Xbox adapter ($10-$15 on ebay) that would allow you to plug in your USB drive and your USB drive would have to be 4GB or smaller.

You could also burn a xbox compatible data disc using Nero which is fairly easy but you need to have a DVD drive that will read recordable DVDs and the brand of DVD you will be using.

Last option is to FTP which is probably the hardest for a noob but still not all that difficult.

I am having the same problem. My friend modded my xbox before he moved to France and since I have no FTP set up at all, he gave me a disk with emulators and roms on it (DVD-r). my drive reads it just fine (samsung) but I follow his directions for adding roms Systems-memory-file explore-E:-avalaunch-default xbe-file manager and then I can add the files to my queue and transfer them to my HD (500 GB partitioned to 32 clusters) but then they won't play. All the rom files end in .smc...is that a problem? Any help is greatly appreciated since I have relatively no experience.

how do you mean they won't play? the emu wont run the game?
if that's the case what emu are you using?

Exactly right. I see the game file show up on the emu sub-file but it won't play through the emulator. I have the emulator FCE for NES and xsnes9x for SNES and both do the same thing. The file seems to be added but then it won't run via the emulator.

thats odd, try removing the emulator savegame and rebooting your xbox. (fresh start so to say)

Btw you really should learn how to ftp, its so much better then installing outdated emulators from an install disc.

Not to mention the Xbox suffers from pretty poor DVD rom drives installed by M$ so the more you rely on them the better chance you have of them failing. HDD is definitely the way to go.

Okay, okay. I am going to try and get this FTP set up. Is a Linksys Play Link going to work for what I'm trying to do? Are there any better (cheaper ) alternatives?