I have received an original Xbox from a friend who no longer wanted it, which I believe was soft-modded as it booted to"EvoX 3???" not sure on the version or how it was soft-modded, it even has a white led on the eject button and a custom paint job. His ex-girlfriend had bought it used from a friend of hers so there is no way for me to find out how it was softmodded. It worked perfectly fine, had a copy of Halo (which booted fine from its hdd) and even some emulators on to boot. I was considering possibly upgrading the stock hdd as it had something like 6g of space and planned to load some pre-owned games onto it.

Then comes the moment where I didn't do enough research and began fiddling (bare with me)

I found this thread and began following instructions to update the softmod with HeXen, which didn't seem to install UnleashedX or EvolutionX correctly and after continuous fiddling through other settings couldnt get any dash to boot. I have no trouble booting to the HeXen menu but I'm completely lost as to what to do to even get this back to how it was.

An original copy of Halo 2 booted fine if i turned the system on with it in the drive but after ten minutes of play the screen went black but i could still feel rumbling from the controller. Don't know how relevant this is?

Ultimately I would like to upgrade this systems hdd and play some older games I'd missed out on like KoTOR and Max Payne but I'm a little bummed that I may have ruined this from over tampering without having done the required research. For now I would be happy to get it working again before I purchase any hdd upgrade.

I believe the version of Hexen I got was 0.99b11-22 and im connected through composite cables (its a PAL system aswell btw). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ready to cooperate and thanks in advance.

I'm not sure the Xbox was softmodded at all....

Is this what currently happens?

1. Boot with no disc in the DVD tray -> flubber, then blank screen.
2. Boot with a game disc in the DVD tray -> flubber, then game loads.
3. Boot with HeXEn in the DVD tray -> flubber, LED turns red, 40 seconds later the HeXEn menu appears.

Two more questions:
4. When the Xbox boots is the flubber the same colour as on a stock Xbox?
5. Is there any text displayed while the Xbox is booting, or are there any non-standard logos on the screen?

Edit: also, 6GB of free space means it's definitely not a stock HDD.

Is this what currently happens?

1. Boot with no disc in the DVD tray -> flubber, then blank screen.
2. Boot with a game disc in the DVD tray -> flubber, then game loads.
3. Boot with HeXEn in the DVD tray -> flubber, LED turns red, 40 seconds later the HeXEn menu appears.

Yes, Exactly. Barring the led turning red part. I believe it has been fully replaced because I've only ever see it light up white.

Two more questions:
4. When the Xbox boots is the flubber the same colour as on a stock Xbox?

The "flubber" goo thing is green but the "X" it turns into is pink along with "XBOX" in pink.

5. Is there any text displayed while the Xbox is booting, or are there any non-standard logos on the screen?

Not that I can see, just the "flubber", pink XBOX logo then black.

Edit: also, 6GB of free space means it's definitely not a stock HDD.

That was just a rough estimate on my part. I know it has Halo: CE on there aswell as quite a few ROMs and a single psx iso. I figured it would be around 6 or so gigs but having said that, that's obviously not a standard size. On the HeXen menu it says C:, F: and G: all have 0 free. E: has 532.27MB free.

Excellent. Your Xbox is chipped or flashed, not softmodded. The giveaway is the non-standard Pink X.

Fixing it is relatively easy, but I'd suggest you start off by running HeXEn then using FTP to take a backup of the E partition, in case that's where the games and emulators are. You shouldn't need to, but it's better to be safe.

Next, use the file Manager in HeXEn (under 8. XBox Admin) to copy D:\root.xbe to C:\, and rename it evoxdash.xbe

Then select HeXEn option 3.5.2. Clean C partition after TSOP flash. The passcode is AYBX.

Reboot without HeXEn, and your Xbox should boot UnleashX.

The next step is to check the BIOS and if necessary flash a newer version, but let's get it booting properly first.

Great! I can now boot into UnleashX, I skipped the backing up of E: as I was having trouble working out how to ftp files over and losing whatever games/apps were on there doesn't bother me. I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the process (I have ftp'd to my iphone several times) but im still at a loss over what application to use on the xbox side and the proper settings to connect. I have filezilla but I haven't managed to get it connected yet. Do I have to go through a home network connected to the internet? Is a simple ethernet from laptop to xbox good enough?

I have also used the BiosCheck in XBox Admin>Applications and got this info
(please excuse my crude photo of the screen, I chopped it together as to be readable)

READY FOR THE NEXT STEP!

FTP: Plug the Xbox into your home network (Internet is irrelevant), fire up Filezilla on your PC, connect to your Xbox. So long as your home network has DHCP it will work first time. The dashboard is the FTP server.

Try a later version of Xbox BIOS checker - 5.0 was the last one. It detects more chip types and BIOSes.

So finally got the FTP working and sent over bioschecker v5. Not sure whether these results help me though.

You're right, that didn't help much at all.

You're going to have to open the case at some point, you might as well open it now to see which chip it has.

So I took the xbox apart, and this is what I found.



Something tells me I found it.

Seems you use Evox dash to flash it. You may not really need to, since it is working, but if you wanted to know what bios was on the chip, you could flash it - or try booting different banks to see what is on there, since it looks like you are booting from one 256k bank. (and you have 4 of those)

You could flash it with x2 5035 (512k bios, will use up 2 banks) or Evox M8 or iND 5003 (256k bioses)

You have to add the info in this thread to evox.ini:

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=61755

Try to leave a known working bank alone for recovery in case a flash goes bad.

What version Xbox is it?

Looks like a 1.2-1.4 to me (256k TSOP)

Looks like a solderless adapter? BTW I think you have to enable the different modes listed in the ini file information with the dip switches on the chip itself? Not sure.

As well Evox dash is supposed to have information for your chip built in if you go to system info or some such. Interesting chip.

I don't know, is there a way to determine the version through the UnleashedX dashboard?

It seems perfectly capable of running games. Now that I'm just looking to fit a bigger HDD to store more, would I actually gain anything from updating the bios?

It's not that you would gain from updating the BIOS, it's probably essential. Older BIOSes simply don't support large drives properly.

HeXEn tells you the Xbox version on the screen, but software detection has its limitations - the only reliable way is to open up the Xbox and use one of the many physical identification guides (PSU connector, video chip, cooling fans) on the web.

Oh, and it's UnleashX, not UnleashedX.

@Movax. Yes, looks like a Winbond, which would make it a 1.4 IIRC.

Such things always happen with inherited xboxes
Remember: if someone says he or she doesn't need it anymore, it'd most likely mean "this old stuff doesn't work and I need a new one"